More than anything Hannah missed the library. She’d read all her books so many times she knew half the words by heart, but it wasn’t safe to go into town now, Mercy warned her time and time again.
“What if someone reports you? What if June gets her hands on you and this time she really does send social services out here?” Mercy crouched down to peer into Hannah’s eyes. “They might try to take you away, do you understand? They might say I’m not a fit guardian.” And when Hannah nodded mutely, Mercy sighed and ruffled her younger sister’s hair. “You’re a Snow, little monkey. We can’t help that, but we can help keep it that way.”
Hannah longed for the life in town. Even though she knew she couldn’t trust June, she still thrilled to remember her visit to the soda fountain in Berlin, where the nice blond waitress had scurried around, bringing them food. Stuck in the ravine all day, Hannah grew more skittish, jumping when she heard a chickadee break into song or the crack of an icicle thawing in the noon sun.
It was almost as if she had two sets of eyes—one for the ordinary world of laundry being hung out to dry and dishes stacked in the sink and another pair that saw wonders that most other folks overlooked: a bird’s nest wedged in the fork of a tree and lined with what looked like the papery wings of moths, a fox curled up in the snow with a bushy-tailed squirrel, an ice patch frozen on the river in the shape of a heart. They were messages from Gert, Hannah knew. Pay attention, they said. I’m trying to talk to you.
Today there was a set of very faint indentations in the mud—so light that Hannah had trouble seeing them. She wondered if they were even real. They wound from Gert’s old gravesite down through the trees and headed first toward the river, then away from it, and then back down again, growing softer all the while. Hannah was alone. Mercy had refused to say where she was going. “Never you mind,” she’d snapped when Hannah had asked, but it must have been somewhere good, because her cheeks had been all lit up like a Christmas tree and she’d twisted her hair into a pretty knot at the back of her neck and smudged some gloss on her lips from an old pot of color. After she left, Hannah had taken the rouge and put some on her own face and mouth, then inspected the results in a cracked hand mirror. It was no use. She still looked like what she was: a child who was knobby to a fault and skinny everywhere else.
In the empty bowl of the ravine, it was easy to feel as if the world had gone on ahead without her. As she followed the mysterious marks, she thought about Zeke disappearing the night after the accident and wondered what would happen if she vanished like that, too. Would Mercy know how to read the signs she left behind?
She paced back to the clearing, having lost the trail of prints and her interest in them. Maybe she’d just been seeing things. The geography of the Snow land was simple to a fault—up or down, in the trees or out of them, above the river or straight into it. It was the kind of landscape that could almost be a hundred better places but never quite was.
Inside the smokehouse Hannah was met with the usual gloom and meaty odor, but straightaway she felt that something was different. She looked around, the hairs on her arms prickling. There was the rusty cot, angled just the same, and there were the three hooks, hanging like barbarous tongues, but the coffee can underneath them was gone. Shivering, Hannah stepped farther into the shadows and saw that someone had moved it over to the shelf with all her other riches. Her heart skipped a beat as she considered the implications of this. Had it been Mercy? If so, Hannah was glad she’d thrown away her loot, otherwise she’d be in for a whipping and a question-and-answer session when her sister got back.
But what if Zeke had left her another present? Maybe the footprints had been realer than Hannah had thought. She raced forward to peek inside the can and was both disappointed and relieved to find nothing there. She frowned and put it back on the shelf.
Standing under the maple trees in the sugar bush after a late-April morning’s work with the sheep, Nate couldn’t understand how a spot so filled with sadness could make him feel so alive, but he was guessing it was all to do with Mercy. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. The way her hands felt cupped inside his, the way her lips pressed against his own mouth until he felt as though the two of them were one person.
Which was crazy, really, because she was nothing like him. In fact, she would have been the last girl he would have looked at twice. She was scruffy around her edges, not even really that pretty. Striking, yes, with her tangled mess of dark hair and unexpected angles, but it wasn’t a beauty that set out to please. Instead it hit Nate like a fist square between the eyes, completely unapologetic, in the world whether he liked it or not. Sometimes he wondered if his sudden infatuation with her was deliberately cultivated on her part, orchestrated to irritate his mother, but then he decided he didn’t care. He was young, alive, and in love. He closed his eyes and inhaled the intoxicating scents of fresh mud and bluebells and a whiff of something like molasses that evaporated before he could enjoy it.
He heard a noise. Expecting Mercy, Nate leaped up off the stone he’d been sitting on, but his face quickly reddened. He squinted. “Mrs. Flyte?”
Dena Flyte drifted into the clearing, past the skeleton of a fence he’d never finished putting up around the maples. “Hello, dear.”
Nate wasn’t quite sure what to say. Ever since Suzie’s death, except for church on Sundays, he’d had minimal contact with the Flytes. His parents thought it was better that way. He glanced around nervously. Moments ago he could barely wait for Mercy to arrive. Now he sincerely hoped she wouldn’t. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’m visiting Suzie’s stone. Hazel said she set one out for her.”
Nate looked around him in horror. “She was out here?” His mind began racing. Hazel must have seen the taps. They were hard to miss. She must know what he was up to. Maybe she’d even found the sap he’d hidden in the broom cupboard. He’d promised Mercy he would give it to Fergus, but he was still waiting for the perfect moment. He swallowed, trying not to panic. “I thought these stones were only for babies.”
Dena drew herself up. “Suzie was my baby.”
Nate didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never seen a single townswoman out here. Normally they avoided this place like the plague, taking to heart the maxim that once planted, sorrow was best left to sprout roots in solitude. The only thing he could do for himself right now, Nate figured, was leave—and quick. Besides, it was awkward standing in front of Suzie’s mother when his head was now full of Mercy. “I better be going.” He turned to start sauntering back toward the barn. If he was lucky, he’d be able to catch Mercy before she neared the sugar bush.
“Wait.” Dena put out an uncertain hand. “How have you been?”
Nate shifted, uneasy. For him to admit that the accident had changed everything for him, that he was not the same boy he used to be, seemed like it might pain Mrs. Flyte. But to lie and say he was fine also seemed like a sin. He shoved his hands in his pockets and mumbled, “Okay.”
“I hear you’ve been working out here with Hazel and her sheep. Imagine, a McAllister man freed from the mill.”
Nate wouldn’t have put it that way, but it wasn’t an inaccurate description of his situation. Freed was exactly how he felt. “It’s only until I go to college in the fall. My parents thought I could use a break.”
Dena didn’t say anything to this, and Nate remembered how furious she’d been when his father had fired Fred and how Mr. Flyte had gone on a bender worse than any of his others. Suzie had later appeared at church with red-rimmed eyes and a bruise on the side of her cheek, and when he’d asked her about it, she’d told him that what happened within the four walls of her family’s home was her business and hers alone. Then she’d asked him to get her father’s job back.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he’d tried explaining. Similarly to what went down in the Flyte house, what happened in the head office of the mill was no one’s business but his father’s. And one day Nate’s. Suzie had never forgiven hi
m for pointing that truth out, and that, in retrospect, might have been the last straw that drove them apart before the accident.
“It can’t last too much longer.” Dena had crossed over to what must have been Suzie’s stone. Nate hadn’t noticed it, but it was glaringly obvious now. The dirt around it looked raw and newly dug, and unlike the others it hadn’t had time to collect any lichen. Dena rested one hand flat on it, as if she were feeling for a heartbeat.
“I’m sorry?”
Dena’s gaze was hard. “The mill. All the layoffs. Your father won’t survive too many more rounds of those. Thank goodness Fred’s found new work.”
At that moment Nate heard Mercy sneak up behind him. She’d put some kind of rouge on her lips, he noticed, and the stain of red made her skin seem even whiter. Dena’s eyes flickered from Nate to Mercy and back to Nate again. “I wasn’t aware you two knew each other.”
“We don’t,” Mercy said. She wouldn’t look at Nate. “Not really.” Her voice was high and nervous. “I should go. I’m not really supposed to be here.”
“No, I’m leaving.” Dena came over to Nate and raised her hand. For a split second, he thought she was going to slap him, but she simply put her palm up to his cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Your secret is safe with me, my dear boy.” Her touch was surprisingly gentle. Before Nate could try to deny what she was implying, or maybe justify it, she was gone, leaving a vibration of sadness lingering in the air behind her.
“She knows about us,” Mercy said, watching her go.
“Yes.” But how much? Nate wondered. Did she know that he’d loved Suzie right up until the moment she died, for instance? Did she know that he still missed her now? And could she tell as she passed out of the wood and into the sun that his heart was as pocked as the skin of the tapped maples around him?
Mercy came up and captured his hand. “It’ll be okay.”
“Maybe,” Nate answered. Or it wouldn’t be. Somewhere in the middle, there had to be a balance between smothering normalcy and catastrophe, he thought. He just had to find it, and he was beginning to suspect he would never do it in Titan Falls.
As an early graduation present, Nate’s parents had bought him a car. Nate wondered how his father managed to swing it with business so bad, but Cal boasted that he’d gotten such a good deal on the two-year-old coupe that he couldn’t pass it up. “Bill Tyne at the dealership in Gorham owed me a favor. Besides, you’ll need a car for college.” And then, in typical fashion, like a careless dog trampling a field of perfectly blooming flowers, Cal went and ruined the moment. “It’s a gift, but it’s not free. This summer, I expect you to work for it in the mill until it’s paid off—with ample interest.”
Nate was tempted to throw the keys back at his father and tell him to go to hell, but he refrained. A car would get him a lot farther from Titan Falls a lot faster than his own two feet. How perfect, Nate thought, if Cal ended up being responsible for helping his only son skip town.
Now, on the deserted road that led to Hazel’s farm, he held the door open for Mercy. “Please,” he said, sweeping his arm out. “You’re the first person to go for a ride in it with me.”
Mercy crept into the passenger seat and ran her hands over the fine leather seats. “Where are we going?”
Nate slid behind the steering wheel and grinned. It pleased him no end that his first traveling companion was someone whom his parents so reviled but he was so crazy about. “You’ll see.”
They drove out of town in the opposite direction from Hazel’s place and Devil’s Slide Road, which gave Mercy a measure of relief. She didn’t think it would do to have anyone from Titan Falls spot them together. As they bumped along a quiet road, sheltered on either side by tall stands of trees, Mercy leaned against the glass and let the cool of it soothe her aching forehead. She knew that being with Nate was a bad idea—maybe the worst—but there was something so irresistible about being taken for a ride like this, where she could prop her head on the seat and just let her mind drift. Normally when she was traveling, there were a million things to think about: whether or not she was too tired to see the blacktop straight, if Hannah was getting motion sickness, what they would find when they got to a new camp.
She hadn’t even realized until this moment how exhausting it was trying to steer fate like that. And could you really do it anyway? Suddenly she felt completely drained. The winter had taken its toll. When was the last time she’d eaten a full meal, or bathed her whole body all at once in water hot enough to scald her, or worn anything that didn’t itch or hang off her in unflattering rumples? She couldn’t remember. What would it hurt to let herself have this one afternoon with Nate, whose hands and mouth were so gentle they felt like a prayer unfolding along her own flesh? No one would ever have to know, and when the day was over, Mercy promised, she would give him up and let things go back to their natural order. She would return to the ravine, haunted by the silent shadow of her brother, and Nate would finish the summer at Hazel’s and then be gone into the wider world. And because she was starting to care for him, she would let him.
She drifted off to sleep, and when she woke, Nate was turning the car down a dirt road. He drove a little way into the woods, the wet spring trees hanging over them like concerned giants, and then pulled off the path. He grinned as if he knew a secret. “We have to walk from here. It’s about a mile. But it’s worth it, I promise. Come on.” He stepped around the car, opened Mercy’s door, and held out his hand, and she hesitated for only about a half a second before she took it.
Mercy could feel the lake before they came to it. Just like Arlene, she could sniff a hidden spring out of a forest in high summer with the same ease of a thirsty hound or find the smallest thread of a creek, no matter how twisted and shaded its path. Truth be told, she preferred those kinds of waterways. Rivers and lakes made her nervous. They were too much of one element in one place. A body didn’t stand a chance against them. As for the sea, Mercy didn’t even like to think about it.
The road was muddy, so they stuck to the woods, where the ground was cushioned by a thick layer of pine needles and rotten leaves. When they came upon the cabin, Mercy blinked in surprise to find a building so well hidden in the trees, despite its size. Nate pulled her in for a kiss, then scrabbled under a rock by the door for the key. “No one will bother us here,” he promised. “We can be alone.”
Inside, the air smelled of the previous autumn and dust. Nate flicked on the kitchen light, sparking the fixture, and pulled sheets off the couches. He felt suddenly shy around Mercy, aware of the dissonance her presence caused in a place that he associated with his parents. She must have felt the same, for rather than settling on the sofa next to him, she wandered through the room, touching the knickknacks on the bookshelves and picking up framed photographs, smiling at each image of Nate frozen in different stages of development. He blushed. No one in his family ever looked at those pictures. They were just props, like the ancient pair of snowshoes mounted on the wall above the door out to the porch or the stuffed prize bass his grandfather had caught a million years ago.
Mercy came to a standstill at a window that overlooked the porch and the lake. “Do you want to go down to it?” Nate asked. The water would still be frigid—it always was until July—but they could sit on the dock and dip their feet in.
She shivered. “No. I hate the water. I can’t swim.”
He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “One day maybe I’ll teach you. It’s okay, we can stay inside. We don’t have to do anything. We can just talk.”
Mercy surprised him then by turning around and kissing him. “That’s not what I’m thinking about.”
“Then what? Your brother?” Nate nosed the side of her neck. Mercy smelled like spruce and fresh grass. Green scents.
She twitched her shoulders. “Maybe. And Hannah. Everything. Also about what will happen in the fall.”
Nate silenced her with another kiss. Was this how it would have been with Suzi
e? he wondered. Would his heart have flopped around in his chest like a tricky fish and his hands sweated? Or had he and Suzie known each other too well ever to make the leap to being lovers? Maybe, if she’d lived and they’d tried, they would have been disappointed in each other and then they would have had to go on with that knowledge souring in them as they aged.
Everything about Mercy was strange to him, but the strangest thing of all was that ultimately she felt like home. Nate remembered playing tag as a little boy and the relief he’d always feel as his palm brushed whatever was base: a tree, somebody’s porch railing, the flagpole on the side of the school yard. Twisting himself up with Mercy felt the same way. He was flooded with a mixture of relief and triumph.
Without saying anything more, he led her upstairs to the loft, where the beds were narrow and the ceiling sloped like that of the tree house Nate used to have. Together they tumbled onto the mattress and, shivering, began to peel the layers of clothing away from each other. Mercy hid her face against Nate’s shoulder. The skin on her belly was hot beneath his hands, but her fingers were cold. “Have you… I mean, is this the first time…?”
“No.” She cut him off but didn’t add anything more, and Nate didn’t have the guts to ask. He’d been with two girls before, both cheerleaders, both times at parties when he’d been drunk, but this felt different. Mercy didn’t desire him because he was Nate McAllister, heir to the Titan Paper Mill. She wanted him in spite of it. And maybe, he thought, pulling Mercy’s frail body down onto his as he rose up to meet her, that’s what true love was—not the affirmation of everything he knew himself to be but the absolute erasure of it. Without that, he suspected, he’d never be granted a chance to change.
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