True Places

by Sonja Yoerg

  “Isn’t it? Then why haven’t you called Robert and told him what his son did? Why is it that the only person you’re angry with is Reid?”

  He blinked slowly and let out a long breath. “I didn’t mean to endanger Brynn. You’ve got to believe that.” He paused, waiting for her assent.

  Suzanne let him hang there. Wasn’t failing to act to protect someone the same as endangering them?

  “I know I should’ve listened to Reid. At the time, what he was saying seemed so far-fetched. I wish to God I had listened, but it seemed so crazy.”

  “Crazy or inconvenient?”

  “Suzanne. I know you’re mad—with good reason—but you can’t lay the whole mess at my feet.”

  “I’m not. I take blame for what happened to Iris. I should have been stronger. I should have stuck to my gut feeling that getting in a limo with Brynn and her friends was not going to end well. I blame myself for that.” Suzanne crossed to the bed and sat. Now that she had vented her anger, sadness welled in her chest. Her nose stung. She rubbed her eyes and smoothed her hair.

  Whit dropped his voice. “Don’t blame yourself. I’m the one who let Iris decide.” He moved closer. “Maybe we made the wrong decision taking Iris on.”

  Suzanne jerked up her head. “What?”

  “Maybe we’re not as good at being parents as we thought. What happened last night pretty much proves the point. And Iris has been a huge strain on us, you especially.”

  “You’re blaming Iris?”

  “No.” He took a step back, two. “I feel for her, I really do.”

  Suzanne looked at Whit a long moment. Did he mean what he said? Had he always been so self-serving? She didn’t know anymore. She’d lost her ability to judge, if she had ever possessed it. Perhaps she been too busy—always busy!—to see Whit and the rest of her perfectly constructed life clearly. She had chosen to march on, iPhone in hand, through the blizzard of duties, tasks, and obligations that she’d believed until this very moment had been mandated by her choice to bind herself to this man.

  Suzanne got up, went to the closet, and pulled a small duffel bag from the shelf.

  Whit followed her and pointed at the bag. “What are you doing?”

  She dropped the bag on the floor, pulled a few items from a dresser drawer, and stuffed them in the bag. She added a pair of pants, a couple of shirts, a fleece jacket, sneakers, and the toiletry case from her gym bag and zipped the duffel closed.

  “Suzanne!”

  She pushed past him with the bag, grabbed her laptop from the table next to the chair, stowed it in her computer case, and gathered both bags.

  Whit stood in front of her. “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know, Whit. Long enough to think. Hopefully long enough for you to talk to Reid and Brynn without me in the way or running defense or enabling you or whatever it is that’s been going on for a very long time.”

  He placed a hand on her arm. “Please don’t go. Please.”

  She shook her head. “You want to blame Iris because it’s easy. It’s misguided, Whit. You ought to be thanking her for showing us who we truly are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I hope you figure it out. I really do.” Suzanne moved past him, stuck the computer bag under her arm, opened the door, and turned to him. “Unless you object, I’m taking the Navigator.” His face was a canvas of pain, resentment, and confusion. Suzanne’s perennial response to her husband’s distress was to restore order so he could find peace again, or at least launch himself forward, always forward. Now she resisted the impulse to smooth his path so he could move through this difficult terrain. Her path mattered, too. She didn’t know what it looked like or where to find it, but nevertheless, at this moment, hers mattered more.

  “And Iris,” Suzanne said as she left. “I’m taking Iris, too.”

  She crossed the hall into Iris’s room and stood over the bed. The girl was curled on her side, hands pressed together under her cheek, knees drawn up. Her hair had fallen across her face. Suzanne fought the urge to brush it away and instead smoothed the cover over the girl’s shoulder.

  Suzanne had promised Iris that she would find a way to make her happy again. She intended to keep that promise. Somehow, at this moment, it seemed to be one she’d be able to keep, and perhaps the only one worth honoring.

  CHAPTER 33

  Iris buckled her seat belt and glanced out the car window at the house, wondering if she might not see it again, and surprised to discover an ache of sadness take hold in her chest. She had already asked Suzanne where they were going—twice—and hadn’t gotten an answer, so there was no point in asking again. The reason for leaving was clearer to her. She’d heard most of the argument floating up from the kitchen and all of the discussion between Whit and Suzanne in their bedroom. She hadn’t been spying, but she had come to realize her hearing was more sensitive than other people’s.

  Suzanne started the car, and they began to roll down the driveway. Reid stood on the porch, his hands laced behind his head and his elbows sticking out, as if his head had gotten too heavy for his neck. Iris couldn’t see his face clearly, but everything was there in the way he stood, rocking a little from one foot to the other. He was sad and worried and probably afraid. Iris remembered how it felt to know she was about to lose her mother. It was like falling in a dream: the sickening dread of hitting the ground seemed to last forever and was worse than the crash could ever be.

  They turned onto the street and drove through town, quiet on a Sunday afternoon. They passed the school and kept heading south. The day was gray and it was spitting with rain, and the gloominess mixed in Iris’s stomach with the unsettling feeling of leaving without knowing where she was headed. That, too, felt familiar. Years ago she had left the cabin on a morning like this, except it was late summer, and had struck out into the woods, knowing she had to leave but not knowing how far or in what direction she would go. North, as it happened, on that day.

  The rain came down harder and Suzanne flicked on the wipers.

  “I’m sorry,” Iris said.

  “For what?”

  “For going to the party.”

  “I understand why you went, but thank you.”

  “I thought it would be fun.”

  “That’s pretty normal, wanting to have fun.”

  Iris thought of Sam grabbing her, and of how Brynn kept drinking more and more—how everyone did—until they didn’t know what they were doing.

  “I’m not sure the point of the party was to have fun.”

  Suzanne looked at her a moment, then returned her attention to the road. “No?”

  “When we got there, people were already bumping into each other, falling down. It seemed like the point was to find what happened after fun.”

  Suzanne didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry I went and I’m sorry I didn’t come straight back.”

  Iris could feel Suzanne thinking past what Iris had said. Iris looked out the window. The houses were farther apart now.

  Suzanne broke the silence. “How about we drive up to the parkway?”

  “Isn’t that where you found me?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What are we going to do there?”

  Suzanne stopped at a traffic light. “Drive. I think I’d just like to drive.”

  Iris was still thinking about what Suzanne meant and was a little concerned about what they were doing, but she’d hardly had time to mull it over before signs for the Blue Ridge Parkway appeared. Two turns later they were driving toward the spine of the mountains. The rain eased and the wind picked up, pulling the clouds into pieces and scattering them across the sky. A few cars passed by but mostly the road was empty. The tires hissed on the wet road. Iris opened the window a crack, and the smell of damp vegetation and moist, wormy dirt filled her nostrils. At first she strained to see into the woods, to catch a glimpse as they
sped by and extract a clear, still picture of what the woods were like in that spot, what might be growing or blossoming or creeping along. It was impossible, though, and left her dizzy. So she leaned back in the seat and took in what she could easily see and wondered if they would just drive forever. Without a home, it was hard for Iris to imagine where she belonged, and she had the feeling Suzanne felt much the same.

  They pulled off and parked in a small cleared area with a picnic table. Suzanne turned off the engine and hung on to the steering wheel, staring ahead. The rain had almost stopped.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” Suzanne pointed to a set of stone steps leading up to a level area, hidden by trees. “That’s an old railroad. That’s where I found you.”

  “I don’t remember it at all.”

  “You were so sick.” She twisted to face Iris and smiled for the first time today. “I’m so glad I found you. And not just because you needed help.”

  “Then why?”

  Her brown eyes filled with tears. “Because I need help, too.”

  Iris waited for an explanation. She couldn’t think of how she could help Suzanne, especially since she didn’t know what was wrong, at least not in detail. Suzanne was unhappy with her family and her life, but that wasn’t the sort of problem Iris had any experience with. Iris wanted to help Suzanne, she really did, but she had no idea how.

  “Iris, you told the police that after your mother died, someone came to the cabin, and that’s when you left.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m just guessing about why you couldn’t stay after that. It wasn’t your place anymore.” Suzanne spread her hands, helpless. “That’s how I feel, too.”

  “And I’m the stranger that showed up?”

  “In a way.” She shifted in the seat, lining up her thoughts. “I’ll bet that cabin wasn’t home after your mother wasn’t there anymore.”

  Iris hadn’t realized it, but it was true. She dropped her gaze to her lap, remembering the emptiness of the cabin, the hollow space, too quiet, too still. Iris had been waiting for a reason to leave the cabin behind, even knowing how hard it would be to survive without its shelter. When the strangers had shown up—two men with backpacks—Iris stayed hidden until they’d left, then collected her belongings and fled. In escaping the contained emptiness of the cabin into the vast emptiness of the wilderness, Iris threw off the last tether to the parents who had created her. She was reborn without love or grace, and did what she could to survive only because she could not do otherwise. She was purely animal. Suzanne might have understood why Iris had left her home, but she could not possibly understand what Iris had become afterward. Sitting in the Navigator, Iris herself was so altered from the wild, solitary girl she had been that she feared losing the thread of her essential self yet again. How many times could she be reborn?

  Suzanne spoke, her voice thick. She was crying. “Sometimes it takes a stranger to show you what should be obvious, how far you’ve drifted from who you want to be, from what’s right for you, your true place.”

  Iris tried to swallow but her throat was pinched tight. She peered into the woods and was stunned to discover she didn’t ache to leap from the car, run up the stone steps, and fling herself into the world of green waiting there for her. Only the possibility of finding Ash again made her yearn to leave the car. Only that. Knowing she had, without intention, become connected to some part of this noisy, crazy, busy, unnatural place frightened her.

  Suzanne wiped her eyes and took Iris’s hand. “Let’s walk for a bit, okay?”

  They followed the curve of the railroad tracks, dappled here and there by light breaking from between the clouds. From the top of a young tulip poplar, a Carolina wren lifted its beak to the sky and released its song, a cascade of liquid trills. A pair of squirrels gave chase across the tracks and scrambled up the trunk of a black oak, disappearing into its boughs. Iris smelled water ahead, and in a few moments the crowd of trees parted to reveal a hill marked by a series of moss-covered limestone ledges over which water trickled, glistening. Iris noticed a cluster of bloodred flowers tucked beside a fallen log. She knelt to inspect them. Each plant bore three heart-shaped leaves above which three red elongated petals were evenly arranged. Three olive sepals, edged in red, poked out of the spaces between the petals.

  Suzanne knelt beside Iris and fingered one of the delicate petals. “Red trillium.”

  Iris nodded. “Wake-robin. I like the pink ones, too.”

  “What pink ones?”

  “They’re like this, but the leaves are narrower, like a finger, and the flower is pale pink, almost white.”

  Suzanne seemed shocked. “Do you remember where you saw them?”

  Iris stood and brushed off her knees, confused about why Suzanne would care about this particular flower. “Sure. Only one place, but they’d come up every year.”

  Suzanne’s sadness was gone, replaced with a sense of energy in her limbs and an eager spark in her eyes. “Was it near your house?”

  “Pretty near.”

  Suzanne walked a few steps off, then came back again. She was intent, like a robin cocking its head, tense, listening for what was belowground. “I think I know where we need to go.”

  “You want to go to the cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  Annoyance rose inside her. She’d been over this with the police more than once. “I don’t know where it is. I can’t just walk off into these woods and find my way back there!”

  “Maybe you don’t know exactly where it is, Iris,” Suzanne said, pointing at the flower at their feet, “but I think you know enough.”

  Iris didn’t know what Suzanne meant and didn’t want to ask. She wanted to see her house again more than anything but also feared it. If Ash was anywhere, if she could ever find him again, he’d be there. If he wasn’t, she wouldn’t have a thing left in this world that belonged to her.

  Iris turned in a circle, scanning the rocks, the water, the trees, ferns, and flowers, fixing the spot in her mind. It was her portal, through which she had exited her beloved woods. Was it a one-way door, like the narrow chute of a cave, or could she truly go back?

  CHAPTER 34

  Suzanne and Iris retraced their path along the railroad tracks, returned to the car, and rejoined the parkway, heading south again. A half hour later Suzanne turned right, descending from the parkway via Route 60 through the desolate city of Buena Vista into larger, more affluent Lexington. Home to two colleges, Lexington offered an array of choices for lodging and, Suzanne hoped, resources beyond the internet she might need to find a remote cabin. Although Iris might have been more comfortable in a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts, Suzanne selected a hotel in the center of town for anonymity. She didn’t want to have to explain their trip or make excuses for Iris’s manners to a well-meaning but overly friendly host.

  While they ate takeout burgers in their room, Suzanne explained to Iris how they might locate the cabin. Iris listened intently until exhaustion consumed her, falling asleep before eight o’clock. Suzanne lay awake on the other bed, worrying about what she had done in abandoning her family at its lowest point. Guilt, so familiar as to be comforting, washed over her. She imagined waking Iris, shepherding her to the car, returning to Charlottesville, walking up the front steps to her house. What then? What would make a difference in the direction in which their lives were heading? Suzanne remained firm in her belief—no, her conviction—that her life had become unbearable. As the hub of the family, if she did not change, no one else would. She had left because she could not stay. But she had also left because no one else could change without her action. Whit would have no choice but to deal with the fallout from Brynn’s (and Reid’s) deceit and dangerous behavior. He would not be able to wave his hands and make excuses for Brynn, and he would be forced to find a way to bridge the yawning chasm between himself and Reid. That was her hope. That was her prayer.

  But, if she was honest with herself, the mai
n reason she’d left was that she was too angry to stay. She was angry with the actions and inactions of Whit and her children and with the perfidy of her parents, and, more than anything else, angry with herself for going along with everything: the materialism, the shunting of responsibility, the shallowness, the lack of compassion. She was angry with herself for not being her best self, for hiding behind the injuries of her past, pointing to her scars, licking them as if they were wounds, saying again and again, I can’t.

  She turned toward the outline of Iris’s sleeping form. A sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t weigh ninety pounds had more tenacity and resolve than Suzanne had ever possessed, and Iris was losing it, piece by piece, on Suzanne’s watch. Suzanne didn’t know how to make Iris whole again, but she would try. And with Iris’s help, Suzanne would find a place where she might regain her own strength, her self-determination, and her integrity.

  Somewhere in those blue-green mountains, dissolved now in the ink of the night sky, was a cabin, a house, a home. She could not picture it. Instead, in her mind’s eye, she saw a stand of acacia along a dry riverbed, yawning blue sky above, pulled taut to the edges of the earth, and underneath the delicate weave of branches, the fleshy pink lobes of a plant, thrust into sunlight, emerging from its hidden underground lair. Suzanne saw Tennyson, in his faded, oversize Carl’s Jr. T-shirt, grinning, pleased for her. She felt anew the euphoria of discovery, potential spreading out all around her, ripples across the savanna, the probability that this, like most scientific beginnings, would come to nothing, but nevertheless harboring the slender hope of something . Suzanne felt that surge, and more, because she had been, at that moment, a woman with a passion and a woman in love. She cherished the world and a man cherished her. Together, that had been everything.

  On her hotel bed, Suzanne closed her eyes and allowed the residue of remembered happiness fool her into sleep.

  The next morning, Suzanne and Iris went out in search of breakfast and decided on the Blue Phoenix Cafe. Iris waited at a corner table beside a window while Suzanne ordered multigrain pancakes and fruit for both of them and a large coffee for herself. She sipped her coffee until her name was called, picked up the plates, and joined Iris. Halfway through her meal, Suzanne turned on her phone for the first time since they had left Charlottesville. She had asked Whit not to inundate her with texts. He had agreed and said he would pass the request on to the kids. There were two messages: one from Brynn, an emoji of a heart breaking, and one from Tinsley saying, “Call me. It’s an emergency.” Suzanne knew that if it were a true emergency she’d have heard from Whit, but since she hadn’t spoken to her mother about what had happened during prom night, much less why she had left, she decided it might be better to talk to Tinsley directly, lest her mother implode. Tinsley was guaranteed to pass on everything to Whit, saving Suzanne a reawakening of her anger with him and, she acknowledged, allowing her to sidestep her guilt.