Kneeling in his robe with his back turned to me, he says, “Almost finished.”
“With what?”
“My gift.”
Connor always wakes up early. Dad says he gets lost in the outdoors with no sense of time, that he moves through the day like we’re not even here, that like an animal, Connor was meant to roam free. Dad says he won’t place limits on his boy genius. That’s why Connor gets to stay outside after dark. I don’t mind. Dad says I’m different. I’m pants … passive. Sitting in the lobby with a coloring book spread on the floor and my box of crayons is more fun than picking slimy night crawlers or knocking down wasp nests with Connor.
“What is that?” I kneel next to him.
“A paracord survival bracelet. Making it for Eli.”
“Looks like rope.”
“No, it’s parachute cord, stronger than rope.” He pulls on it. “Granddad gave me a whole bunch that day Grandma gave you the pinwheels.” He checks the size on his wrist. “He said it was used in the suspension lines of parachutes back in WWII.” He trims the ends with his pocketknife, then takes out a lighter and melts each end.
“What are you doing that for?”
He presses his thumb into the cord. “It makes the ends wide so they don’t slip through.”
I touch it and he slaps my hand. “We’re not supposed to play with fire,” I say.
“You can’t play with fire. I can. And it’s not playing.”
I notice the nasty sunburn and peeling skin on the back of his neck. I poke it and he slaps my hand again. “Sorry.”
“Stop bugging me.”
“Mom wants you inside for pictures.”
A branch snaps and Connor’s head jerks toward the forest. He lays his hand on my chest to stay still. Seconds pass. He stands up straight. Listens. Sprints away.
I follow, fighting to not slip on the dewy grass. “Wait. Wait up.”
He stops in the field behind the pool, next to the trail that zigzags into the pines. A wooden crate bumps up and down, set between a large rock and a pile of old fence posts. Not a blink comes from Connor. Not a breath. Not a shooing of the fly on his cheek. He watches me through the corner of his eye, stares at the crate, then back at me. I’m scared but don’t know why. And then I’m embarrassed about being scared. Connor’s not. He’s wide-eyed, eager for excitement.
“I think I caught it.” He grins.
“What?”
“The woodchuck that’s been eating up Mom’s flower garden.”
“Connor,” I whine, “I hope it’s not Boo.”
“It’s a live trap, Salem. Nothing’s dead.”
“I know.” I know that. Connor wouldn’t kill an animal. Even so, I don’t want Boo under one of his crate traps. “What are you gonna do with it? Take it to Granddad’s to live?”
“No. I told Mom to put a fence up to protect her flowers, but she hasn’t, so I need to trap the woodchuck and talk to it.” He steps forward. “I’ll tell it to find a new home. It has until August to move out. Then I’ll cover its burrow.”
“You can’t talk to animals. I’m not dumb.”
“Sometimes you are.”
“Shut up, poophead.”
“I’m telling Mom you said that.” He peeks between the slatted sides of the crate. “Nope, not the woodchuck.” He flips it over, and a rabbit scurries toward the edge of the forest, past nesting boxes attached to the first row of trees. “I know that’s you, Ralph. I’ve caught you before!” He laughs with his head thrown back, suddenly lost in a bluebird flying overhead. It lands on a nesting box and sings, tu-a-wee. “Good morning,” Connor says.
Tu-a-wee.
“Good morning,” I say.
Tu-a-wee.
“I wasn’t talking to you.” He smiles as he walks past me, inspecting Eli’s bracelet.
“I know you weren’t.” I wave at the bluebird. “She’s pretty.”
“It’s a boy.”
“He’s handsome.”
“That box belongs to a sparrow. The bluebird should leave it alone and go back to the pole boxes in the field.”
“Maybe he’s renting a room from the sparrow for the weekend like people do at the lodge.” I giggle, but Connor doesn’t laugh. “Mom said you act as old as Granddad sometimes.”
“They’re disappearing.” He pays no attention to my remark.
“Who are?” I skip next to him.
“The tree sparrows.”
“Is that why it isn’t in the nesting box?”
“No, there are plenty of sparrow species using the boxes, but the tree sparrows only visit in the winter.”
“It’s summer.”
“I’m just saying they’re disappearing.”
“How do you know if it’s not winter?”
“You ask way too many questions.”
“I don’t think they disappeared. I bet they’re on vacation.”
“They’re not finding seed in the fields, Salem. I’ve been watching.”
“For how long?”
“Would you stop it?”
“I thought you and Dad built the nesting boxes last year to help them out.”
“We did.”
“And you give them seeds in the feeders.”
“I do.”
“Maybe you need to build bigger feeders.” From the window, Mom waves to hurry. “We need to get inside.”
He ties his robe. “Don’t touch my trap, okay?”
“I won’t.” I skip ahead then walk backward until we’re side by side again. “Are you taking the woodchuck away after you catch it?”
“I already told you, no.”
“Why?”
“It has babies here that’ll starve. I’ll make her move them on her own.”
“How?”
He sighs. “Questions. So many questions.”
“I like asking questions. Tell me how you’ll get it to move away from Mom’s flowers.”
“All right. I might put a radio out here at night and upset it with noise. It will find a new place to go, over that way.” He points past the lodge. “In the field across the street. Doubt it will go in the forest.” He looks over his shoulder. “But if it does, Grady will catch it and eat it.”
“Yuck! That’s what my friends at school say. He eats rats. That’s why he looks like one.”
“I was only kidding.”
“But my friends say…”
“Is the cake out?”
“No. After dinner.”
“Eli will cry until he gets it. It’ll be out before lunch.” Connor swings the bracelet on his finger. “You like it, Salem? I can make you one.”
“Love it. Can mine be purple?”
“No.”
“Yellow?”
“Nope, only army green. Think Eli will like it? It’s eight feet long if he takes it apart.”
“Why would he do that? It’s pretty like it is.”
“To use it.” He tugs my hair. “To put his hair in a ponytail, like yours.”
“His hair is too short. And he’s a boy.”
“Granddad used to have one. I saw pictures.”
“Dad said that’s because he was a pippy.”
“Hippie … a hippie. Eli could also use it to hang a pot over a fire.”
“We’re not supposed to play with fire.”
“Or make a tourniquet.”
“What’s a turkey kit?”
Connor swings the bracelet faster. It flies off his finger, landing on the steps of the escape hatch. “He can use it as a belt or for shoelaces.” He picks it up and hides it in his robe pocket.
“Salem.”
“No, he can’t. Eli’s shorts have elastic. And he can’t tie his sneakers. Mom buys him Velcro ones.”
“You have no imagination.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Salem.”
“Then I’ll unknot it and teach him how to jump rope.”
&nb
sp; “I like that! Teach me, too.” I skip through the escape hatch and into the lobby. “Will you, Connor?”
“Of course. Brad’s big sister taught me. It’s super easy.”
“SALEM!”
• • •
My memory breaks. I’m halfway through the forest, using tree trunks as my guide amid the absent moon.
“Salem, I’ve been calling you.” Joss grabs my arm. “Slow down for a sec so I can catch my breath.”
My last memory of Eli—on his birthday no less—is a memory of Connor. I wish I had more time with Eli, remembered more, but Connor is always in the forefront. And if I don’t remember much about Eli, Eli wouldn’t remember much about me, if anything at all. I’ve tricked myself into believing that someday he’d wander home. He doesn’t have memories of the lodge. He has no memories of our family. This isn’t his home.
And now Nate … Nate’s digging. Nate knows. Nate knows he’s not coming home.
“Nate’s digging, Joss.”
“Salem, you listening?”
“Huh?”
“I said it’s freezing out here. Put on your coat and your mittens.” She pushes them into my chest.
“Thanks.”
“Jim said he’s digging for Grady’s animal bone collection.”
“That’s right.” Jim catches up to us. “He called it wonder crap.”
My throat constricts. “Wunderkabinett. Don’t make light of this.”
“I’m not,” he says.
“I know he’s digging for Eli.”
“He’s not.”
“Well, he’s not searching for Grady’s bone collection out in this weather, that’s for damn sure. He knows Grady killed my brother. He’s searching for the root cellar because that’s where he’ll find Eli.”
“Salem,” Joss says quietly.
“Nate came here and he’s digging because he knows.” I grip my coat snug under my chin, turn and throw myself forward to find the felled tree. “We always thought it was Grady”—tears well up in my eyes—“deep down we all thought the same thing. Didn’t we?”
“Salem, go back to the lodge. Jim and I will get Nate.”
“No.”
“She’s just as stubborn as he is,” Jim says.
My skin shrinks around my bones from the cold. Branches slap my face as I press on. I push them away, letting them snap back as I pass.
“Fuck.” One strikes Joss. “I’m behind you, you know.”
“Sorry.” I reach the stream and shuffle my feet forward over the tree trunk, inch by inch, my arms out for balance.
“Good find,” Jim says. His hair, beard, and green sweater are a slab of snow. The abominable snowman comes to mind. “I had to drop down the bank and balance on icy rocks to cross the water earlier.”
“My granddad cut the tree down when we were little.”
“Must be rotted out by now.”
“No. Connor said it would last a good fifty years.” My arms swing in a circle, blood pumping.
“Careful, Salem,” Joss says.
“One at a time.” I hop off and wave them across, continuing the slog to Grady’s cabin.
The forest is in complete disarray: pine branches low from the weight of snow, rocks and stumps lost in white, my tracks from the other day gone missing. And my head … my head is a pure tangle of confusion.
Eli might be out here.
Is it possible Grady put him in the root cellar after the police searched? Or could it be that no one looked because no one knew it existed? Granddad would’ve mentioned it to the cops if he knew. He would’ve. I just know it.
Terror, real terror of what I’m walking into hits me. What if I see bones? What does the murder mean if Grady is dead? Did Nate know anything? Did he see it happen? Did he know Grady killed Eli but never knew where the body was?
“Salem! Goddammit, wait up!”
I pass the fort Nate and Connor built. It’s now a square wall of snow, the bliss of childhood defeated by nature.
Connor was first born, a leader, brilliant, the one I looked up to. Eli was a toy, not human to me, cute and cuddly like my stuffed animals. Who was I among them? And who am I now without them?
“Salem, are you listening? Don’t go another step without me. Wait up so I can help you.”
I begin to run, taking wild steps through the fierce wind and snow, plucking my feet up high and thrusting them down again. I’m close. I’m at the crest of the hill that leads to Grady’s. But suddenly I feel like my life will end when I reach Eli, that his loss has kept me alive. The last Whitfield, the one who’s safe if Eli’s out there, the one who’ll wither and die once he’s found. My job to stay and wait for him is over.
“Salem, stay back!” Nate shouts from the bottom of the hill. He parked his truck at a distance behind a tree that obstructs the driveway. High beams light the property. Hundreds of small holes dug in the frozen earth are visible.
I stumble when I see Brad standing next to Nate. He raises a hand for me to stay away. I walk slower and slower, grabbing hold of a tree trunk to stop myself. My insides ignite and rise in my throat. Shovels lay on the ground. A bush was cut back. And a door set into the hill is propped open with a branch.
Nate walks toward me. I shake my head, a silent prod for him to say he hasn’t found anything.
But he doesn’t.
“Say something,” I tell him.
He doesn’t.
His hair is stiff, his face white. There’s no reassurance in his body language, no optimism in his walk, no hope left in his troubled voice.
“Salem, stay there. I’m coming to talk to you.”
No, I say to myself. I step closer to the tree, wanting it to suck me in so I can withdraw from the forest, from this scene, from what Nate’s going to say. A car pulls up the driveway, parks behind Brad’s vehicle. It’s Logan, the other Tilford Lake cop. Two cops, an open door, Nate coming to talk to me.
No.
“Stay there,” Nate says.
“Why?” I step forward. “Say it, Nate. Why?”
Joss bounds in front of me. She seizes my shoulders and blocks my view. “Look at me,” she says. “We’re going back to the lodge. You don’t need to be here.”
Jim runs past us and meets Nate in a private huddle. Their whispers ricochet through the pines and coil around my neck.
Bones … It’s him … Get her out of here…
“Go back, Salem.”
“Joss, there’s nothing at the lodge.” My vision spirals like a kaleidoscope, teary eyes distorting the forest. “I’m not walking away from him.”
“It could be someone else.”
Broken and drawn, her cheeks sag, a gloom that forces her to lower her head and set her lips firm. She knows that’s not true.
My family, the Whitfield curse, they’re all dead. I’m alone in this. Alone to bury the one who was lost before anyone else, the baby, the one who should’ve lived the longest. Eli’s remains are only yards away, I can hold him if I want, but that would make this all too real. There’s still the possibility I’m dreaming. A chance that I’m not the unluckiest person in the world.
Joss squeezes my shoulders. “Babe, I’m sorry.” There’s a sudden tremor in her hands.
“How do they know? Ask Nate how he knows it’s Eli. Is he in his rocket ship pajamas? The blue ones?”
“Salem.” Nate’s voice is low, apologetic. He holds me, but I’m numb to his touch. Words are mute. Joss and Jim speak, I watch their lips move, hear nothing. Snow lands on my face; I sense nothing. Joss waits for me to break down, howl and weep, but I give her nothing. My eyes stay fixed on Brad, his flashlight, and the river of light shining down on my brother’s cold and lonesome bones.
I shed my mittens. Reaching under my coat collar, I pull out Eli’s key—a comfort I knew I needed to bring with me. I secure it in my hand and thumb his initials, finishing the hike down the hill.
“Salem, wait.”
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“Let her go.” Jim places his arm across Nate. “Think how you’d feel in this situation. She has to go.”
I repeat in my mind that there’s still a chance. But I know from experience that when people fade out of my memory, they never come back. Eli faded away when I was a child. I couldn’t hold any memories of him in my mind. He can’t come back. And as I walk closer to the root cellar, disappointment and heartache roil inside me.
I slip off my coat, ready to lay it over him to keep him warm. I think about the reason why this happened. How it came about.
“Don’t touch him,” Brad says. “You can go inside, but don’t touch him.”
I raise Eli’s key to a tear pooling on my chin, then slide it to my lips for a kiss. The key pulsates from my shivering fingers like it’s come alive.
When I enter the dank root cellar, I feel the same anguish that I’ve seen on the face of a gray fox in a coil spring trap, forlorn, desperate. The separation from family, the seclusion under the earth, his bones misshapen, skull in pieces … how he must have suffered, it rips my heart from my ribs. I don’t touch him or stare. I only cover him. He’s in a galvanized steel tub in need of warmth. He hated being cold. Even during the summer months, he’d sleep in winter pajamas.
Those are missing.
My emotions surge while waiting for Chief to call with instructions for Brad and Logan. They won’t listen to Nate, even though Nate knows a hell of a lot more than they do. He insists they call in a crime scene unit or a detective from the city.
Oblivious, Brad keeps repeating that there’s no crime scene to investigate, that he probably wasn’t killed in the root cellar, that he was likely put here long after the fact, that’s why he’s allowed me to go inside. Probably, likely, is what Brad says.
I block out the arguments and the ignorance, send Jim and Joss back to the lodge, and wait in the icy crypt next to Eli. I sit with him among shelves lined with dusty Mason jars, next to large bins labeled for potatoes and onions, among the dirt floor and concrete block walls, next to a wooden table with Grady’s animal creatures on top, and tubs of bones below. Is there another person’s skeleton in the tubs? The thought of that makes me sick. Sitting underground with the moldy, death-like odors makes me sick.
The Release of Secrets: A Novel Page 16
