True Places

by Sonja Yoerg

  She picked up the book, opened it carefully, and turned a few pages. “My mother had a book like this but with more drawings.”

  “She did?” Suzanne had not thought to ask what books Iris’s family might have had. She made a point of not prying, respecting Iris’s connection to her home, the woods, her past. Whit and the police had a different view, claiming they had a right to know. Suzanne agreed that finding Iris’s family was important but didn’t see the rush. Iris was recovering from one ordeal while coping with another. More, Suzanne could tell Iris’s memories were sacred to her. They were all she had left.

  Iris studied the drawings closely, running her fingers along the outlines of the leaves and flowers as if touching the plants themselves.

  “Did your mother teach you from the book?”

  Iris looked up from the pages, her violet-blue eyes less guarded than usual. “Yes. We had to know the plants. For food, for medicine.” She lowered her head and became very still.

  Suzanne suspected for the first time that Iris was holding on to more than memories. The girl had secrets, too. But pushing her now would only drive her further into herself. Instead Suzanne reached for the ethnobotany text, held it in her hands for a moment, feeling its weight, then turned to a random page and began to read. How had she forgotten how fascinated she had been with the intersection of people and plants? Each culture across the world, no matter the habitat, had discovered the utility of plants not only for food but also for medicine and in religious practices. Often all these uses were linked: sustenance, wellness, and spirituality were bound together, the way a plant is rooted in the earth while reaching for the sun. And despite the advances in modern medicine—and they were considerable—powerful natural sources of healing were being discovered, or rediscovered, all the time. Everyone knew about penicillin, aspirin, and digitalis, but hundreds of other, lesser-known medicines had been derived from plants. An extract from yew trees was one of the most potent drugs available against breast cancer, and the rosy periwinkle was used to treat childhood leukemia. Who knew how many more were yet to be uncovered? Plant compounds held so many answers, if we only knew the right questions. Suzanne lost herself to the ideas and possibilities.

  The next time she looked up, the oven clock said 4:40. Iris was slumped over, dozing on the open book.

  “Crap,” Suzanne whispered. She slipped off the stool and rummaged through the freezer for something to cobble together for dinner. Whit and Brynn had complained about the family’s recent overreliance on takeout meals, but Suzanne hadn’t had a chance to go to the store this week. Iris panicked when faced with crowds—anything more than a couple of people—and Suzanne had been too tired to grocery shop during an evening when Whit was home.

  The doorbell rang. Suzanne set a package of Italian sausages and a container of marinara sauce on the counter and peered out the window. A white car she didn’t recognize stood in the drive. Suzanne wiped her hands and went to the door. A woman about Suzanne’s age greeted her with a sharp nod. She fished in the pocket of her sagging tan blazer, extracted a card, and handed it to Suzanne.

  “Elizabeth Granger from Social Services, filling in for Ms. Rappoport.”

  “Oh, I hope she’s all right.”

  “I really can’t say.”

  Visits from Social Services were not announced—Ms. Rappoport had come the day after Iris moved in—but this stranger’s stern manner ruffled Suzanne.

  “Please come in. Iris is in the kitchen.” She closed the door behind Ms. Granger and led the way, resisting the urge to look around for anything untoward. What could there be? And yet the presence of the social worker, an inspector, made her suspicious of her own suitability as a parent. Had she left an open bottle of wine on the counter? Were the bathrooms a mess? It was ridiculous that her mind went to these irrelevant details, but she couldn’t help it.

  Iris lifted her head and swiveled her stool to face them. Suzanne gave her a reassuring smile, and it was genuine, because Iris looked nothing like the girl who had been near death six weeks ago. She had a touch of color in her cheeks, which were no longer gaunt, and the circles under her eyes, dark as bruises for so long, had begun to fade. During the two weeks Iris had been at home with them, Suzanne had introduced her to basic grooming—using clippers for her nails, for instance, instead of a knife or her teeth—but Suzanne wasn’t sure how far to go. People stared at Iris during excursions to the doctor and dentist because she was frail and unkempt. She didn’t care how she looked, an attitude that drew attention in a town replete with the healthy and self-conscious. Just yesterday, Suzanne’s hairdresser, Rae, a quiet woman not prone to gossip, had come to the house and cut Iris’s hair. Iris had no opinion about styles, so Rae chose a shoulder-length layered cut with bangs. “You won’t have to do a thing, Iris. Just comb it through and that’s it.” The cut was perfect, fresh and tidy, and accentuated Iris’s beautiful eyes. In the doorway to the kitchen, with Ms. Granger behind her, Suzanne felt proud for the first time of the positive changes in the girl.

  Suzanne introduced Ms. Granger to Iris and offered the woman something to drink.

  “No, thank you.” She moved to the far end of the counter, removed a sheaf of papers from her case, consulted them, and spoke without looking up. “Iris, is it? Sixteen years old.” She regarded Iris, frowned at the unlikely veracity of this figure, and returned to the paperwork. “And no known family.”

  Suzanne came around the counter and stood at the kitchen sink, as near as she could get to standing between them. Ms. Granger ignored her and began asking Iris a series of questions about what she had been doing since the last visit. Iris replied succinctly.

  Voices floated in from the entry. Suzanne glanced at the clock. It would be Tinsley dropping off Brynn from an after-school project. Suzanne’s stomach knotted.

  “Oh, here you are.” Tinsley’s tone suggested Suzanne had been evading her, which was not far from the truth. Brynn followed her in and went straight to the fridge, her gaze lingering on the caseworker. Tinsley gave the woman a quick up-and-down and swooped in on Iris. “So this is Iris! How lovely to meet you, dear, at long last!”

  Iris pulled back as she studied Tinsley’s face.

  Suzanne said, “Iris, this is my mother, Mrs. Royce.” She introduced Ms. Granger to her mother and daughter and turned her attention to Iris, who had clamped her hands over her ears. Too many people. Too much talking.

  Ms. Granger made a notation on her sheet. “This is the first time your mother has met Iris? Is she visiting from out of town?”

  “Oh, no!” Tinsley interjected. “My husband and I aren’t far at all. I don’t quite know why we haven’t been invited.”

  “Iris is recuperating, Mother. As you know.”

  Ms. Granger said, “We prefer the foster child to be integrated into all the normal family activities.”

  “Good luck with that,” Brynn said as she ate from a pint of mango gelato. “Especially the ‘normal’ part.”

  Ms. Granger consulted her watch. “Iris.” When the girl did not respond, the caseworker shouted her name. The girl slid her hands from her ears. “Please show me your bedroom.”

  Iris looked at Suzanne, who nodded.

  As Iris crossed the kitchen on the way to the stairs, Brynn said, “She wants to see where you sleep, Iris, so you really ought to show her the hammock.” Brynn pointed at the back door with her spoon.

  “Really, Brynn.” Suzanne understood her daughter had become increasingly jealous of the attention Iris was absorbing, but this was too much.

  Ms. Granger went to the window and peered into the yard. “Mrs. Blakemore, is Iris sleeping outside?”

  “Sometimes, yes. When the weather is nice. It relaxes her.”

  “Is that right? I’m surprised you didn’t construct a kennel for her.” She frowned as she scribbled on her pad.

  Brynn stifled a laugh and Suzanne shot her a look.

  Tinsley sighed and adjusted her handbag on her arm. “I’m sure my
daughter and her husband are doing everything they can to help this unfortunate girl.” She blinked in Iris’s direction.

  “Thanks, Mother,” Suzanne said.

  Tinsley wasn’t finished. “But clearly a child that tumbles out of the woods is simply too wild to be inserted into a civilized situation such as this.” She swept her hand to include everything around them. But what bespoke their civilization? The stainless-steel appliances? The Brazilian granite? Certainly not her mother’s manners, referring to Iris as if she weren’t there.

  Ms. Granger appeared annoyed. “I’m not here to discuss theory. I’m here to see that Iris is safe and cared for.”

  Tinsley ignored her and continued in the same vein, talking in a loud voice about what was proper and right. Suzanne wanted to silence her mother, whose opinions on this matter were irrelevant, but didn’t know how without appearing rude or overly defensive.

  Iris had been standing in the doorway to the dining room, following the volley of conversation. “I am.” Her voice was a whisper.

  Suzanne put her hand on her mother’s arm to quiet her. “Iris, what did you say?”

  She lifted her gaze from the floor and spoke directly to Suzanne. “I am safe and cared for.”

  The room was quiet for one beat. Two.

  Brynn tossed her spoon in the sink, letting it rattle. “Before we get too deep into this Lifetime movie, did anyone mention the squirrel Iris skinned and stashed in the fridge?”

  Suzanne bore the astonished glares she received from both her mother and Ms. Granger and decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that the squirrel had been roadkill.

  A half hour later, the kitchen was empty. Brynn was doing homework in her room, and Iris was napping, or perhaps coloring. Suzanne was simultaneously cleaning the kitchen and making dinner. While the sausage defrosted in the microwave, she opened the dishwasher to load it and found the dishes inside were clean. Reid had been charged with emptying it before school that morning. Suzanne sighed and began putting the dishes away. Before Iris, the house had been tidy, obsessively so. It didn’t bother Suzanne to know four loads of laundry were waiting, the stack of mail on the entry table threatened to slide to the floor, and the dining table was covered with art supplies and paper from Spanish fiesta posters she’d helped Brynn with last night. It didn’t bother her in the least, but it would irritate the hell out of Whit. The cleaning people were due in the morning—today was Tuesday, wasn’t it?—which meant Suzanne had tonight to organize it all. She’d just have to move a little faster.

  As she executed the mindless subroutines (rinse, wipe, chop, stir, rinse, wipe), she replayed the visit from the caseworker, wincing at her mother’s comments, though they were hardly unexpected. And Brynn. Brynn was angry, angrier than usual, and Suzanne felt responsible. She would find a way to spend time with her daughter, perhaps take her out to dinner this weekend, just the two of them. Yet the idea made her uneasy; they were likely to sit in strained silence or stumble over conversations that meant nothing, or everything. But she had to try. She had sought to make Brynn understand why helping Iris was the right thing to do, why she felt an obligation because she had found the girl, but realized now this was the wrong tack. Long before Iris had come into their lives, Brynn had pushed Suzanne away. Her daughter still needed her—to do things, to play the role of mom for others, and, occasionally, to hold her as only a mother could. Mostly, though, Brynn was contemptuous and dismissive. Suzanne had to get past the pain of that and find a way to reach her daughter. She wasn’t certain she had the will to give more, to risk more; she’d already spent fifteen years giving to Brynn. Hadn’t she earned a spoonful of compassion, a hint of friendship? Instead the scales tipped toward Brynn’s side more than ever. Brynn seemed impervious to Suzanne’s best efforts, and Whit was no help. Suzanne had asked him to step in, to address Brynn’s anger and manipulation, but since he saw a different Brynn, Suzanne’s data were suspect.

  Mothers and daughters. Could Suzanne reasonably expect a better relationship than the one she had with Tinsley?

  Suzanne set the water to boil for the pasta and began chopping onions for the sauce, keeping faith with the idea that a home-cooked meal was a building block for a stronger family. It almost made her laugh. She did, however, hold on to the thin hope that having brought Iris home would help their family, not through a common bond—they were not aligned over Iris—but through a revival of her own enthusiasm for parenting. It did, in the end, fall on her. She’d done everything she could for Brynn and Reid—at least she thought she had—and it clearly had not been enough. They did not, the four of them, share a life. They shared a home, money, the TV remote, but Suzanne couldn’t identify what held them together, other than the fact of being family. She worried that this, too, was a failure in parenting, for she was certain other families had more cohesion. If they didn’t, why didn’t it bother anyone except her? Maybe it did. Maybe mothers everywhere, and fathers, too, in smaller numbers, questioned what they had done, what they had accomplished in having children, raising them, in giving up and giving in, in giving, giving, giving.

  Suzanne would give to Iris. And because the girl was so different, perhaps Suzanne could discover where she had gone wrong, discover how her family, which was once imbued with more promise than she could have imagined, seemed to be held together by the fact of their relationships and by the force of her will rather than by shared goals and mutual respect.

  She would give to Iris and hope for the gift of insight in return.

  CHAPTER 19

  Whit ran up the front stairs, exhilarated by the success of his afternoon. The enormous tract of land he’d been vying for—over a hundred acres right outside of town—was nearly his. Last week the deal had looked shaky; the landowner, a farmer whose family had worked the land for generations, had gotten cold feet, and had begun fantasizing that his sons would change their minds about their white-collar jobs in Richmond and Annapolis and take up farming, as he’d always hoped they would. The only answer to equivocation, especially this late in the acquisition process, was more money. Whit was confident the package would hold together. Hell, they were going to walk away with more than any other residential deal in the area’s history—but no one wanted to dip deeper into their pockets, even if all it required was a bit more leveraging. But he had calmed everyone down and gotten the key player on board: his new buddy Robert Shipstead. The rest had followed as he’d known they would. Business was relationships. It had never been clearer.

  He went inside and dropped his briefcase at the foot of the entry table, steadying the sloping mountain of mail on its surface. He felt a pinch of exasperation but pushed it aside and strode through the dining room, where the mess from some school project still hadn’t been cleaned up after two days. Thank God they were going out.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” He winced at the state of the kitchen and, worse, the state of his wife. She held a mixing bowl in the crook of her arm and scooped the contents into a pan. Her hair had fallen out of the clip, and she puffed it away from her face. Her shirt was splattered with tomato sauce.

  “Hi. How did your day go?”

  “Fantastic. But we have dinner with Robert and Juliette. And Malcolm and Mia, remember?” Whit kept his tone light.

  She froze, spatula held aloft. “Oh, crap. The social worker came by and I got behind. How much time do I have?”

  “Ten minutes to be on time.”

  “I can do it.” She dumped the rest of the pasta in the pan, set the bowl in the sink, grabbed the container of shaved Parmesan, and tossed a handful on top. She punched the controls on the wall oven and slid the pan in, then punched some more to set the timer. As she returned the perishables to the fridge, she said, “Whit, please let Reid know he needs to look out for Iris. And tell Brynn the pasta will be ready in thirty minutes.” She glanced around her. “And the kitchen needs to be cleaned up before we get back.”

  “Brynn has to clean up?”

  “No, the three of them should wo
rk it out.” She was already on her way upstairs.

  Whit followed. “What’s the bribe?”

  Suzanne laughed and shook her head. “I’ve got nothing. Appeal to their sense of fairness and duty.”

  “I’ll put three tens on the counter.”

  “Two. We haven’t made Iris into a capitalist yet.”

  They arrived at Triomphe only five minutes late and, critically, before Robert and Juliette arrived. The ink wouldn’t be dry on the deal for another month, so every meeting was a presentation, an opportunity to shore up the deal. Usually this felt like pressure, but tonight it could not have been easier. Whit was on the cusp of becoming the person he’d always dreamed he might be. He could never quite relax when the kids were small, leaving the whole family vulnerable. One bad stomach bug could upend a week’s worth of plans. Maybe they weren’t out of the woods yet, but Whit could see the light coming in from the clearing. Brynn was learning to drive. The milestones were spreading out, and his career was gaining momentum at just the right time. It was a great feeling.

  The three couples sat at a round table, away from the noise of the bar. Malcolm and Mia were in top form, meaning Mia was on the charming side of outspoken and Malcolm did nothing to provoke her. The food, as always, was superb, and the wines—Whit deferred to Robert on this—were delicious. And Suzanne? Well, no woman in the world could look so beautiful with only ten minutes’ prep time. She wore a simple orange silk dress and the silver hoop earrings and bangles he’d given her last Christmas. She had piled her hair on top of her head and allowed a small wave to fall from each temple. Her eyes, those gorgeous brown eyes, caught the light whenever she looked his way.

  Mia, on his left, touched his elbow and leaned in a little, confiding. “She’s exhausted, you know.”

  “She looks fantastic.”

  “Well, yes. It’s Suzanne. But believe me, she’s exhausted.”

  “We all are. Isn’t that a badge of honor these days?”