True Places(47)

“Are there people?”

“Maybe a few. Maybe none.”

Iris shrugged. “If it’s not far.”

The girl’s grudging consent reminded Suzanne of Brynn. How had that happened? She pushed the comparison out of her mind. Iris was insecure and afraid. Brynn, on the other hand, was truly indifferent, except when she was adamant.

They were ready five minutes later and rode in silence during the short drive to Pen Park. Several golfers dotted the fairways and greens visible from the road. Suzanne turned left past the tennis courts, most of which were in use. Farther on, at the parking lot for the trail, there was only one other car, and the adjacent baseball diamond stood empty. Suzanne breathed a sigh of relief.

She stashed her handbag under the seat, grabbed a water bottle from the console, locked the car, and slipped the keys into the pocket of her jean jacket. Had she been with anyone else, she would have commented on the perfect day: fresh April air, leaves beginning to unfurl on the early-blooming trees, the scent of grassy warmth in the air. But Iris preferred silence and Suzanne respected her wishes. Small talk was just that, after all.

Somewhere in the nearby trees, a pileated woodpecker sang out its stuttering laugh of a call. Suzanne glanced over the hood of the Navigator to where Iris was waiting. The girl was listening for the call to repeat, and when it did, she smiled.

The beginning of the trail was a fitness course. The trail was paved and offered exercise stations every few hundred yards. If Iris was curious about these, she didn’t let on. She peered intently into the surrounding woods and strayed off the pavement onto the grass verge peppered with violets. Suzanne thought to direct her back to the trail but didn’t have the heart to break the silence for yet another rule about life in civilization. Stepping on a few violets didn’t seem so egregious. In any case, Iris seemed to instinctively avoid treading on the flowers. Her small feet hardly made an impression at all.

After a quarter of a mile, Suzanne pointed left to a dirt path. “This way, Iris.” The nature trail ran for a mile and a half through a swath of woods between the Rivanna River and the golf course.

Suzanne had supposed Iris would walk beside her now that the trail was not paved, but she continued on the verge, staying slightly ahead of Suzanne, and allowing her hand to brush across the understory plants. Suzanne was about to remind Iris to be cognizant of poison ivy, but Iris undoubtedly knew more about plants than she did. Suzanne resolved to stop worrying about Iris and enjoy the walk, a rare unscheduled slice of freedom in her day. She half closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face and relishing the quiet.

A rustling noise startled her. She caught a glimpse of Iris’s white shirt disappearing into the shrubby edge of the woods and bounded after her.

“Iris!”

The girl was moving so fast Suzanne thought she was hallucinating. The white shirt darted between trees, the low branches seeming to part for her.

“Iris! Wait!”

Suzanne pushed her way through clumps of dense bushes, stepping over downed logs and casting off thorny brambles that caught her clothing. Iris had disappeared, but Suzanne could hear her ahead and pressed on. What was the girl doing? Running away? She could’ve done that from home.

Suzanne ran, panting and winded from the effort of squeezing through narrow gaps between trees and disentangling herself from the clinging, strangling growth. She called for Iris again and again. She stopped to catch her breath and listen. A squirrel scurried across branches above her head. A mourning dove cooed.

She turned around, half expecting Iris to materialize behind her, instead of in front, the way she’d gone, but there was nothing but woods, thick and green and moist. Suzanne spun slowly in a circle, once around, twice, three times, searching, listening, hoping. With each turn, her breath quickened. During the third turn, all she could hear was her heart thundering in her chest. Sweat trickled down her back. Her hands were ice cold.

“Iris!”

Suzanne fell to the ground, clutching her heart, the pain in her chest exploding. Fear dove through her like a stooping hawk, talons piercing her skin.



The path confounded Iris. The hard surface was an affront to the woods crouching on either side, almost as wrong as the trees in town given only a small square of earth to grow out of, roots pushing up from below, cracking and buckling the sidewalk, teaching a lesson no one seemed to hear. The dirt path was better, but Iris couldn’t be adjacent to the woods, running her hand along the supple leaves and spiky stems. It wasn’t enough. She had to go inside.

As soon as she did, Ash called to her. Hurry up, you slowpoke!

So she ran after him, her legs springing with pent-up energy, her lungs sucking in air that smelled of violets and beginnings. As she bounded through the woods, among the trees, with the trees, the quiet power of the seasons, all four, but especially spring, was inside her again. She couldn’t feel it staring out a window, or reading about birds in a book, or even climbing a tall maple. She had to be enveloped in green to feel the buzz of her own life.

Hurry up, Iris!

Ash was here. Everything was all right now. She ran headlong into the wide joy of it. Running, running, running.

She came to a stop beside a walnut tree. Her scalp tingled and her muscles hummed. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, feeling alive for the first time since she’d left the woods. But this was only a park, and she didn’t know exactly what that meant.