The Girl in the Trees

by Tom Lichtenberg

  In fact, her parents became happier in her mind than they had been before. Calvin had not been the kind to protect a child from reality, so she knew very well that her real dad, Dean, was a drunk and a small time hoodlum who had spent a good deal of time in various prisons. She knew that Loretta, her mom, had been a methamphetamine addict who stole whatever she could whenever she had to. They had both been caught stealing by Calvin, who was not the kind to protect his own son from the consequences of such actions. It was also an event which marked the last time he kept anything valuable on the property. He'd moved his entire financial world online, so there was nothing left otherwise for Miranda, no cash, no jewelry, no bars of gold or hidden treasure. Miranda had no clear memory of either of her parents. According to Calvin, she would never have to worry about those two ever again, so she didn't. Instead, she gave them both much better new lives, where her mother was successful in real estate, and her father was on the road selling computer equipment most of the time.

  She didn't change anything about Calvin, except the fact that one night, about eleven months ago, he'd fallen asleep and didn't wake up. He was slumbering still, in the box that he'd built, in the hole that he'd dug, and he'd gotten there by means of a system he'd devised for "when the time came". She had only to roll his body onto the sturdy wheeled cart, raise up its sides and put on the lid. After screwing that down, the next step was to push the cart over toward the back door, which was wide enough and led out to a short easy ramp. From there she had only to attach the cart's leather straps to the buggy and hitch up one of the horses. When they got to the hole, a lever released a spring load which lifted one side of the cart and made the box slide off and topple into the ground. Calvin used to tell her he didn't much care which way he ended up facing. Afterwards, she filled in the hole and that was probably the most difficult part, because the mound of dirt standing by had grown hard in the cold. Calvin would have apologized for having died in the winter, but he would have been proud of the way she'd fulfilled his instructions.

  She still talked to him now, every day at least once, whether she was inside the house or out and about doing the work that she'd grown up doing by his side. He'd been sixty seven years old and still in great shape, except for his heart. Like her, he was not given to using too many words. It kept people from asking him questions. He used to like to tell her that the more you talk, the more people ask. She'd proven that theory in the virtual world, so in the real one she tried to say as little as she possibly could. She knew that if she started babbling, to one of the Carters down at the store for example, it wouldn't be long until they knew everything. The best offense, in her case, had to be defense.

  Miranda didn't really think she'd be able to get away with her plan. For the first few months after Calvin passed on, she woke up every day expecting the sheriff to be sitting outside the front door, armed with a big fat social worker lady and they'd take her away, put her into some kind of group home, where the other kids would push her around and take all her food. Calvin's general attitude towards people had wormed its way into her mind. They were all "looking out for number one", he would say, and why shouldn't they be? A person is the only thing he's got. Who else is going to walk in your shoes if not you? After a while, though, it started to seem like maybe, just maybe, she could make it out there on her own.

  She could do all the work. She knew that. She knew how to take care of herself. Calvin had been a great teacher, and he'd set the place up. Sure, sooner or later some bad thing would happen, the horses might take sick and die for example, or a storm might knock out the windows, or a hundred unexpected details like that which might require some outside intervention. Even then, if she approached it with the right mind, she might get away with near anything. She could always say that Calvin was out for the day if somebody had to show up to do work. She could handle a situation like that. If she played her cards right then maybe, just maybe she could make it all work, but six years was a very long time. She told herself to take it one day at a time.

  Chapter Five

  Tara Carter wasn't unusually given to gossip, but gossip was in a sense a big part of the family business. Being the only place in town aside from the post office and the biker bar, everyone around was in and out of there on a pretty regular basis. It was just a matter of course to pick up on snippets of this and that and pass them along. This was how, as they said, Daisy Quentin knew that Jack Billings had nearly drowned at Crown Lake ten miles away before he was even pulled out of the water. Word traveled fast. Everybody knew pretty much everything there was to know about everybody else, and this without any electronic social networking.

  The fact that nobody had seen Calvin Harden that calendar year was common knowledge, but it was not a surprise to anyone. Calvin had worked up a solid reputation for wanting to be left alone. His property was marked on all sides by No Trespassing signs, and violaters had actually been prosecuted. This was a definite fact that had built up no shortage of resentment among some of the local so-called hunters who liked nothing better than to train their coon dogs up in those mountains. It was entirely illegal, of course, but if there was one trait shared among nearly all Los Arboleans, it was the concept that being remote from traffic signals meant being outside the regular law as well. Still, they respected Calvin's Law and for the most part steered well clear of him and his rifle.

  Tara had the girl on her mind, though, and brought it up with her parents at dinner after she'd seen her down at the store. The dinner was obligatory on the elder Carters part. If Tara was going to do their shift for them, they were going to cook her up a storm. This time it was a roast with mashed potatoes and green beans, like a holiday meal. Mrs. Carter didn't think it was a fair trade-off and grumbled quite a bit while she bustled around in the kitchen, her daugher sitting out in the living room with Mr. Carter watching college football and drinking beer. Just because she'd wanted to do some shopping in the city it didn't seem right she had to fix a feast for that lazy no-account daughter of hers. That's how Mrs. Carter saw it at least.

  Tara didn't consider herself lazy though she might not have put up a fight about the no-account bit. Here she was, twenty five years old, four years out of college and working as a paperless paper pusher for some stupid corporation, no other future in sight. She had had a list of boyfriends, tiring of each one after an average of thirteen months and twelve days. Her latest, some guy named Rick, was currently lowering that rate. He was a biker she'd met in town one Saturday night, and had developed the unpleasant habit of only showing up whenever the heck he felt like it, which was usually very late at night when he was quite drunk. Tara had already told him twice to stop coming around. Next time, she said, she'd really mean it. Trouble was, she liked to ride fast through the curvy mountain roads in the dark and in the rain and so did Rick. It was like any moment could be their last, and there was nothing to compare with that thrilling sensation.

  "Saw Miranda," she said while helping herself to another ladle of gravy. Mrs. Carter snorted in disapproval, not of the girl but of the helping.

  "Still no sign of the old man?" Tara continued, ignoring her mother's frown.

  "Nope," said her father, who was methodically cutting his beef into very small pieces. As a storekeeper he was just as precise, continually rearranging the stock on the shelves so that all of the packages were face out, front and center, ready for purchase.

  "Not a word?" Tara asked.

  "Nobody's seen him," her father continued, now arranging the pieces into a grid on his plate. "Not since when?" he said to her mother. "Christmas, I think?"

  "Think it was," Mrs. Carter replied, stabbing at a green bean with her fork. "Remember he called? Asking if we had any poppy seeds."

  "Sure, that's right," Mr. Carter agreed. "First and last time he called up, so far as I know. Said he was making something special for the girl, wanted to make sure we had poppy seeds before he came down."

  "Course we didn't have any poppy seeds," Mrs. Carter went on
. "Why would we? Nobody ever asks for those things."

  "So what happened?" Tara asked, reaching for another slice of roast beef.

  "I don't think he ever came for 'em, now, did he?" Mrs. Carter asked her husband.

  "Nope. The girl finally did, though."

  "Oh," Mrs. Carter said, "so that's what happened. I guess I thought you just sent all them poppy seeds back."

  "Nope, the girl came," Mr. Carter repeated.

  "And nobody's ever seen him since then?" Tara asked, at which both her parents sniffed and shook their heads, because hadn't they already said so?

  "I worry about that girl," Tara went on, but all her mother said was,

  "That girl don't need your worrying. Worry about yourself if you have to be worrying."

  Tara did not appreciate the comment, and used it to justify her leaving the house straight after dinner without even offering to help with the dishes. She also said she expected her boyfriend to show up at "her place" any minute. Considering that "her place" was the cabin out in their own back yard, her explanation was not sympathized with. She had a plan, though. Next time she worked in the store, she'd take some time to go through the old phone bills, and see if she could track down that number.

  Chapter Six

  Grace had also looked through old records, though in her case it was her mother's email account. She knew very well she shouldn't be doing that, but come on, how could she be expected to resist? She'd been trying to figure out her mother's password for years, and when she finally came up with it, thanks to a keystroke-capturing program her brother had installed, her mother's world had suddenly become her oyster. It was no secret that her mother had had several boyfriends since the divorce. Grace and Lark had known most of them, or so they thought, but wow. Perceptions can change in a heartbeat.

  Lucky Rison, it turned out, belonged to many, many online dating sites and groups and was corresponding concurrently with at least a dozen different men. It took the children several nights worth of illicit reading, after they had copied the directory onto a USB stick which they then plugged into their own machine, just to catch up with the latest. The woman in those emails was not the woman they thought they knew as their mother. This was someone who did things they did not really want to think about, yet the writing was so compelling they had to read every word. A lot of gaps were filled in, explaining such various time lapses as all those hairdressing appointments from which she returned with the very same hair, those shopping excursions from which she returned with no shopping, and those nights working late when no one had answered the phone in the office.

  Lucky, it seems, was busy keeping up with her nickname. Born Lucille Robbins, identical twin sister to Loretta, she had come by the "lucky" monicker as a very young girl, when her father had cheated at some carnival game in order to win her a goldfish. Ever since, she'd been known as the favored one. While her sister had trouble in school, Lucky sailed through. While her sister ran with a bad crowd, Lucky met and married a life insurance broker, a dreadfully boring young man named Barry Rison, with whom she had the two kids, a nice house, a nice car, and a very lucrative settlement. Lucky now worked part time as a receptionist for a law firm, and apparently made a lot of contacts that way. Her address book was rather extensive.

  One of the listings in there belonged to Calvin Harden. Grace and Lark had to work their way back to the one and only correspondence with him. By that time, they'd grown used to the patterns of reconnaisance, foray, skirmish and retreat so typical of their mother's liaisons. Grace was even at the point of drawing up charts, while Lark was trying to think of a way to turn their mother's love life into a video game. The Calvin email turned out to be radically different. For one thing, the initial note was very formal, not like the usual happy-go-lucky Lucky they knew. For another, it referred to an aunt they'd been completely unaware of up to that moment.

  "What?" Lark nearly shouted, looking up from his Legos as his sister read out the email. "Read that again!" he demanded.

  "Dear sir," Grace dutifully began, "It has recently come to my attention that you may be in possession of some information regarding my sister, Loretta Robbins. I have not seen or heard from my twin in nearly ten years and would be most grateful for any assistance in contacting her. Sincerely, Lucille Rison."

  "Sister?" Lark jumped to his feet and ran to the desk where his sister was hunched over her laptop.

  "Twin sister!" Grace corrected him as they both scanned the email yet again.

  "What did he say?" Lark demanded, as Grace clicked on the reply.

  "Lucille," the email began, "I am sorry to say that I did know your sister. I had the misfortune to call her my daughter-in-law after she married my son. I regret to inform you that she died a year later. Calvin."

  "That's it?" Lark could not believe it. "She died? That's all he has to say? What about next?"

  Grace clicked through and read the note in which her mother asked Calvin for more information, but Calvin did not respond. She wrote him again, two more times, and still he did not reply. After that, she gave up. The most recent attempt had been two years before.

  "How come she never told us?" Lark wanted to know, but Grace only shook her head and sighed.

  "Maybe for the reason she never told us about any of this" she said, gesturing at the screen full of emails. "Mom's full of secrets. Who knew?"

  "It's not fair," Lark complained. "It's our . She ought to have told us."

  "Yeah, you're right," Grace said, "but what are we going to do about it? We can't come out and ask her, hey, how come you never told us you had a twin sister? She'd going to want to know how we found out."

  "Yeah," Lark sighed. "We can't ask her."

  "We can't tell her about any of this," Grace swore him to silence and he had to agree.

  "But we can write to that Calvin," he suggested. "Tell him who we are. Maybe he'll talk to us."

  That was how it began. Grace and Lark wrote the nicest little email to Calvin, and Miranda replied. She didn't know either, about her own mother's twin sister, or that she had cousins, or anything else. At first, Grace and Lark peppered her with questions, but Miranda became more and more reticent in her answers. She told them only that she lived with Calvin in the Cybelline Mountains near the Valley of the Sand, but she wouldn't be more specific than that. She did give them her number, and they talked on the phone a couple of times, but Miranda would hardly say much. She was better at writing, she said, so they resorted to online chatter instead. The initial excitement wore off, and after a short time the contact tailed off. Lark soon forgot all about her, and Grace put her on the back burner.

  Chapter Seven

  Miranda had simply assumed Calvin's old email account without thinking, just as she'd taken over his bank and cellphone accounts. He hadn't been getting many emails anyway, mostly financial notifications and spam. It never occurred to her to look back through the old stuff until she heard from Grace. Even then she was hesitant to go snooping around like her cousin had done, afraid she might come across things she didn't really want to know about, just like Grace. Miranda figured she already knew all she needed to know about her grandfather, having spent every single day of her life in his company up to the day of his death.

  Yet she also knew there had to be a whole lot of which she was ignorant. Living according to his rule of "as few words as possible", Calvin had kept his accounts of his own past brief and to the point. Miranda couldn't conjure up many names or events from his story, and it was on a day when she was missing him most that she decided to delve into the History folder of his email account. Grace had told her about how she'd worked backward and eventually come upon Calvin's address, but Miranda decided to start from the beginning, as far back in time as she could, which was only about as far as her own lifespan, give or take a few months. Before then it seems he had no account, which made sense. Email was still relatively new at that time.

  There were probably physical letters somewhere, but if they existed th
ey were not in the house. She knew every inch of the place and had never found anything of the kind. Emails were all she had, then. In the beginning there were more there were later on. Even before Calvin shared the news of the birth of his grandchild with a select group of friends, those same people, a small circle it seems, had been writing him on a regular basis. Names like Earl and Jarvis and Cookie and Beech cropped up often, concealed within codenamed addresses like theonepeach and holdem, rangerrover09 and missytootoo22. Some of the emails apparently were written by sailors, as they referenced various international ports of call, talking of sandflies in Panama, bikinis in Fiji, hangovers in Singapore and beachfront property in Myanmar. These same messages were filled with obscure inside jokes that Miranda had no way of ever figuring out.

  She knew Calvin had been in the Navy and worked in the shipyards up and down the West Coast, so she wasn't surprised to read so much about ships and ports and voyages like that. What did surprise her was Calvin's replies to the same. They were verbose. In fact, in those early emails, from before and around the time she was born, they went on for pages and pages. He talked at great length about the work he was doing there on the ranch, the life he was leading, the fences he built, the improvements he made to the house, the contracts he signed, his dealings with the county and the open space district and his run-ins with various poachers. He complained about neighbors and scolded the sheriffs and worried about how he was going to make his master plan work. He kept coming back to that theme. His big plan, to get off the grid and out of the world, once and for all. He made it plain to his friends that he didn't want to see anyone, for whenever any one of them invited him out to meet in the city when they were due to arrive, he said flat out 'no' and warned them away from his place.

  The more this occurred, the thinner the list of correspondents became. One by one they dropped off his radar. He also became much less garrulous. Miranda didn't make the connection, but this transition occurred right around the time she was born. In the last emails leading up to that time, Calvin moaned more and more about the return of his son and "that dreadful thing", which is how he referred to her mother. Dean and Loretta were not welcome. They had not been invited. They shouldn't be there. Yet they wouldn't leave. Calvin wrote to Earl, who seemed to be his best friend of them all, that he was "at the end of his rope" and didn't know what to do. Dean and Loretta were vultures, fiends, vampire bats, devils. He had no shortage of nouns for the two. They were his personal albatross, his burden, his cross. He had thought himself rid of the boy years before, but no, the creature came back.