True Places(96)

“Hey, everyone.”

“Hi,” Suzanne said.

He looked away, not quite ready. Iris had her back to him. She twisted around and smiled, a bit tentatively. The girl looked exhausted and sad.

“Hi, Daddy.” Brynn’s tone was noncommittal, her glance skittish as she returned her attention to her sandwich.

Whit walked over and stood between his wife and his daughter. His hands moved toward them, one to each shoulder, but he hesitated, unsure, and stuck them instead into his pockets. Suzanne had been watching him, and it took him a moment to put a finger on what was unsettling about her look. He’d seen it before, in high school, maybe the winter of junior year. During lunch break he’d been searching for his friends, who weren’t at their usual hangouts. He was circling back toward the quad and came upon a group of girls sitting on a concrete wall, swinging their legs, huddled shoulder to shoulder to stay warm. The nearest was Suzanne, whom he barely knew. She wore a jacket with a fur-trimmed hood and fixed him with those intense brown eyes. There wasn’t anything friendly about it, or unfriendly, for that matter. Framed by fur, her face was that of a cat. Not a house cat, but a big one, like a mountain lion. She was stunning, but a significant portion of her beauty was quiet courage, giving her a sense of power. He had turned away from her then, intimidated, and when he encountered her years later at Mia and Malcolm’s reception and again at her parents’ house, that expression wasn’t in evidence. If she resembled a mountain lion then, it was one on the far side of a moat in a zoo.

Confronted with a version of his wife he hadn’t married, Whit didn’t know what to do or say.

Suzanne said, “Did you speak with Detective DeCelle?”

“I left him a message.” He came around the table, settled into the seat between Iris and Brynn, and helped himself to some of Brynn’s potato chips with more casualness than he felt. “So where did you go? What happened?”

Suzanne said, “The cabin is east of Buchanan, just north of Roanoke. I think it’s on private property.” She went on to explain how she and Iris used river geography and plant habitats to find it.

“Clever,” Whit said. “Is that why you were gone so long?”

“You know it isn’t.” Suzanne’s tone was matter-of-fact. She described the cabin itself and mentioned the note Iris’s father had left.

“What did it say?” Whit asked.

Beside him, Iris pulled back from the table, coiling in on herself.

Suzanne noticed, too. “Iris, I’m so sorry. If you don’t want to listen, you can leave.”

Brynn said, “Why are you upset, Iris? Isn’t it good news your father had been there? I mean, you didn’t expect that, right?”

Iris kept her eyes on Suzanne as she spoke. “We’re going to try to find him.” Everyone watched as she fought to keep from crying. She was so slight and intense and strong, and here she was holding herself together with baling twine. For the first time, Whit felt intense respect, even reverence, for Iris. She folded the paper around her sandwich. “I’m going to my room, okay?”

Suzanne nodded and the girl fled the room.

Whit turned to Suzanne. “What happened up there?”

She cast her eyes to the ceiling, as if consulting with Iris before continuing. “Near the cabin, we found a marker. Iris’s father made it for his son, Ash, Iris’s brother, who died in 2011. Iris didn’t know he had died, at least I don’t think she did.”

“What do you mean?” Brynn said.

Whit was confused, too. Either you know someone is dead or you don’t, but he kept quiet.

“She’d blocked out the memory, I think. While we were at the cabin, it came back. Iris remembered her brother became very ill six years ago, and their father carried him away, presumably to a hospital. The note her father left said he took responsibility for what happened to Ash, which had to mean his death.”

“Jesus,” Whit said.

Brynn pushed her chair back, startling both Whit and Suzanne. “I’m going up to see Iris.”

Whit put out a hand. “Maybe she wants to be alone.”

Brynn was halfway out of the room.

“Let her go,” Suzanne said. “Let her go.”

Whit leaned back in the chair and let out a long breath. “What a mess, huh?”

“Iris’s family, you mean?”

“Yeah. The cabin, the brother dying, the father going back.” Something occurred to him. “Any idea how long he was there?”

“June to September. It said in the letter.”

“Wow, that’s a long time to wait.”

Suzanne took a long sip of her iced tea, then stared out the window over his shoulder. “Is it? It was his home, remember.”

Whit imagined a man in a small dark cabin deep in the wilderness, waiting for his family to return, judging each day whether the wait had been long enough.

“Maybe not,” he said.



Brynn climbed the stairs and turned along the hallway, her mind swarming with thoughts. She’d been so relieved to see her mom, more relieved than she should have been, considering it had only been a few days. It felt more like they’d been apart a lot longer, and, in the ways that mattered, they had. But it wasn’t as if Brynn had suddenly decided her mom was her BFF—Brynn totally expected to be pissed off with her mom any moment now—but somehow things had changed. Her mom leaving had shaken up the whole family and left them spaced differently. Probably they wouldn’t stay that way, but no matter what, things would never be the same. Maybe it wasn’t because her mom had run away. Maybe it was what happened at prom. Maybe, she thought as she reached Iris’s room, it had all started with Iris.