by Sonja Yoerg
“Iris, I’m going outside to make a call. Just for a minute.” She pointed through the window. Iris nodded and kept eating. “If you’re still hungry, have mine, too.”
Suzanne paced the sidewalk and dialed her mother, who picked up immediately.
“What sort of a stunt is this, Suzanne? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Hello, Mother. Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Iris, too.”
“This is no time for wisecracks.”
“This is no time to shout at me. If you can’t be civil, I’m going to go.” Suzanne said this without rancor. Maybe this was why she had decided to return her mother’s call. For the first time since before she had left for college, Suzanne felt impervious to her mother’s judgment and interference.
Tinsley sucked in a sharp breath. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have to tell you that Whit is simply devastated.” She paused, and when Suzanne said nothing, continued. “You shouldn’t do this to him, Suzanne. He worships you.”
And there it was, her mother’s ideal. To be the center of a man’s life. Not to be his entire life (or he wouldn’t be a real man), but to preside over his heart, to be in sole command of his yearnings, guardian and mistress of the tender underbelly of a strong, successful man. This ideal had eluded Tinsley, and it infuriated her that her daughter held the holy grail and was blithely threatening to crush it. Suzanne made a habit of ignoring Tinsley’s efforts to twist Suzanne’s desires to match her own, but the time for tacit resistance had, she realized, passed. “I don’t want him to worship me, Mother. I want to be understood.”
Tinsley laughed, a mocking bray. “Don’t be a fool. You have a marriage, not a support group.” Her tone became even, honed. “Whit is a rare bird: a loyal man. And because he’s also a proud man, he works hard for you and the children. How can you throw that away?”
“I’m not throwing—”
Her mother interrupted, breathless. “Let me tell you something no one else will. You won’t always be beautiful, Suzanne. Men won’t always run after you.”
“That’s not a news flash. And it’s not a problem. I’m not hung up on appearances.”
“You ought to be! Think how this looks. It’s a scandal. You’ve abandoned your family.”
“Mother, you need to stop. This is not your business.”
“Not my business? My granddaughter has been suspended from school for a week. The poor girl!”
“School policy.”
“We’ve asked to speak to the principal. Your father’s on the board, as you know.”
“She should take her punishment and be thankful nothing worse happened. Don’t intervene. Please.”
“Of course we’ll intervene! You may have given up on everyone who loves you, but your father and I continue to support you and your family in every way we possibly can.”
Suzanne took a deep breath. The breadth and depth of her mother’s false assumptions, misplaced energy, and outright lies were staggering. Suzanne stacked the arguments up in her mind, straightened the edges, and prepared to take her mother’s illogic and self-aggrandizing nonsense to pieces. But what would be the point? Tinsley was nothing if not consistent. Suzanne had gotten one thing right over the years: she had not wasted energy in attempting to change her mother.
“Mother, I’m going now.” Suzanne lowered the phone from her ear. Tinsley’s protest was unintelligible.
Suzanne ended the call and turned to watch Iris inside the café. The girl ate fruit with her fingers and gazed out the window at the sky. Suzanne wished she were as detached from other people as Iris plainly was. Suzanne knew she should be sad that the girl had no family and was wary of people, but at the moment Iris’s autonomy seemed like the greatest gift imaginable. To be free of the needs and expectations of others; to enjoy self-determination; to take a course of action—or even a single step—without weighing the impact on those around her. To be selfish.
She wasn’t sure if she knew how to begin, unless she already had.
CHAPTER 35
Brynn was on her sixth episode of Cake Wars and was about to lose her mind. She’d already binge-watched the entire first season of The Crown and started on Orange Is the New Black but couldn’t handle it. Prison was too gross and depressing. Being suspended was too gross and depressing. Her friends hardly even talked to her. Ophelia’s parents had taken her phone away, and the rest of them were “busy with school stuff.” Since when? Brynn was royally pissed at her mother for telling the school that she got caught drinking. Sure, all the kids in sports—and their parents—had to sign a pledge to report alcohol and drug use, but only her mom was lame enough to actually do it. “Integrity,” said the mom who ran away from her family.
Brynn was flipping through old shows, ones not normally on her radar, when her father came home. It was only three o’clock, so clearly he thought she might be spending the afternoon doing shots and starring in her own porn video. It was a thought. At least she’d get some exercise. If she kept vegging out on the couch and snacking all day, she’d be covered in puppy fat before her suspension was over. They wouldn’t even let her swim with the team.
Her father walked in, looking frazzled. “Hey.”
“Hi. Can we go to the Melting Pot for dinner? I’m feeling fondue.”
“Sure. I mean no.” He scraped his hand through his hair. “You’re not supposed to be enjoying yourself.”
She gave him a sweet smile. “If I promise to be miserable, can we?”
He frowned. This wasn’t going well. “Have you heard from your mother?”
“No.” Her mother had been gone almost two whole days and had sent two texts, both saying she was fine. As if Brynn had asked. Her mother wasn’t the one who’d been abandoned. Thank God no one at school knew she’d run away. And she had taken Iris, which should’ve made Brynn happy but didn’t. She’d actually been feeling pretty shitty about getting Iris mixed up in Promgate. If Iris were around, Brynn could’ve told her that.
Her father plunked himself into a chair. “Brynn, I’d really like to know what went on at that party. In fact, I’d like to know exactly how you met Robby and how it all happened.”
He sounded like he’d been thinking carefully about how to put this. It was totally a script. And his face said he hoped she wouldn’t tell him anything too disturbing.
“Don’t worry about it, Daddy.”
“I do worry about it, sweetheart. You know I do.”
Brynn had been fiddling with the remote. She set it aside. “What do you worry about?”
“You.” He bent forward, elbows on his knees. “I worry about you. About what you do, about what might happen to you. And Reid, too, of course.”
His expression was eager, like he was determined for her to see how much he meant what he said. She wondered if he did. Maybe she doubted him because she’d been home alone with too much time for thinking. Did her father really worry about her? Right now, his forehead was scrunched up, and he looked like he’d pulled an all-nighter. He was jiggling his legs up and down, which meant he was nervous. Maybe he was just upset about what had happened. What dad wouldn’t feel that way about his darling daughter passed out on a lawn and getting hauled home by the police? That shitshow was history, though. Too late to worry about that. Worry was for the future, for the stuff you could maybe do something about.
Brynn had been working through this all day while the shows rolled and hundred-calorie packs of cookies became litter on the couch. Now that her father had confirmed what she suspected—that he was mostly full of crap—she was seriously annoyed.
“You didn’t talk to Robby’s father, did you?” She wasn’t sure she wanted him to. She’d rather the incident be erased from everyone’s mind. It was embarrassing, for starters. She would feel differently, maybe, if Robby had texted her, gotten in touch with her at all, after the party. But he hadn’t. No way was she texting him; she wouldn’t grovel. If she’d really been played
and thrown out like the trash, then she’d prefer the whole mess be dropped.
“Not yet,” her dad said. “I’m not sure how to approach Robert.” He was looking at her like she might know. That pissed her off.
“How about: ‘Your son is a dick’?”
Her father half smiled, uneasy. “I’m not sure what that achieves.”
He was protecting his deal. Why else? Ruthless, but not so anyone would notice. But now that she had noticed it, she couldn’t unnotice it. Her father liked to believe that he worried about her. He liked to tell himself that he was doing the right thing, but like pretty much everyone Brynn knew, he was actually doing what was easiest, what got him closer to what he wanted most, and it made her sad to realize that what he wanted most didn’t have to do with her. He didn’t see it, but she could, because she was the same. And because of that, she couldn’t let him see how angry she was. Instead she pushed the anger down, like dunking a hot frying pan into a sink of water. One sizzle and then nothing.
She shrugged. “Yeah, he probably knows Robby’s a dick. Maybe he’s proud of what a dick his kid is.”
“It’s possible. I don’t like Robert much.” Her father leaned back in his chair, slumping down.
Brynn felt a wave of sympathy for her dad for having to deal with people he didn’t like while he chased after money. But she was irritated, too. Wasn’t she supposed to come first? She thought of her mom, absolutely furious that her dad hadn’t stopped the whole Robby thing from happening. On prom night, she had blown right through all her mother’s defenses. Her mother was lame—but she did worry and nag and insist on checking in. Pathetic flailing done with good intention ought to count for something, right?
A steel band tightened across Brynn’s chest. Both her parents had failed her for their own stupid reasons. And her mother had made everything worse by leaving. How could she just leave?
Brynn struggled to hold back her tears. She should be rejoicing that her ridiculous mother was out of the way and hated herself for caring that she wasn’t here to talk to. To hold her.
Her father said, “You okay, pumpkin?”
“Sure.” She dug deep and gave him a big smile, looking him in the eye. And there, below his concern for her, Brynn spied his self-pity. Somehow all this—his asshole business partner, Robby the dick who lured his little girl to the party, Reid the son who ratted him out, his wife who walked out—was all about him. Sure, her father worried about Brynn, about his kids, about all of them, but only when it was convenient, when he had time, when it was easy, when it was too late. Even now, after Robby was finished with her, had thrown her away, made a fool of her, even now her father wouldn’t stand up for her because it was too fucking hard.
Brynn’s anger lit up inside her. She swung her feet to the floor and crushed the tears on her face with her knuckles. She stood.
“Call him.”
Her dad sat up. “Call who?”
“Robert.”
“I don’t think that will help.”
“It won’t help you.”
He frowned, confused. “Brynn, sit down. Let’s talk.”
She clenched her fists at her sides to stop herself from attacking him. “Call him! Tell him his son is a dangerous asshole! Tell him his son would’ve raped me if the fire alarm hadn’t gone off!”
Her dad jumped up and took her by the shoulders.
Brynn threw him off. “Don’t touch me!”
He held his hands up. “Okay, take it easy. I just don’t see the point of talking to Robert.”
“The point, Dad? The point is for you to stand up for me!” Her head was about to explode, so she stomped off toward the front door and back again. Brynn stood in front of her father, hanging on to the shreds of her self-control. Pain leaked from her; anger held it in. Her father watched with a lost expression that made her even more furious. Her throat squeezed shut and her voice came out as a thin scream. “Don’t you care?”
“Brynn.” He lifted his arms to hold her. She pulled back. She didn’t need one of his pathetic hugs. “I said don’t touch me!”
Brynn spun away and flew from the room. She ran half stumbling up the stairs, blinded by her tears, and locked herself in her bedroom. She flung open her closet door and yanked a bag off the shelf. She couldn’t stay in this house with him one more second. She just couldn’t.
CHAPTER 36
Suzanne held the door for Iris as they entered the Rockbridge County Library. They passed the circulation desk, magazine racks, and book displays, and found seats side by side at an empty table. Suzanne started her laptop and opened Google Earth in map view. She dropped a pin at the Yankee Horse Ridge parking area.
“Okay, Iris. This is where I found you. The first thing we need to know for sure is that you came from the south.”
Iris bent closer. Suzanne zoomed out, then in again, switching to satellite view to show Iris an overview of the terrain.
Iris pointed to Highway 64, running east to west at the north end of the parkway between Yankee Horse Ridge and the city of Charlottesville. “I know that road now. I didn’t cross that.”
“Right. I just want to be absolutely sure.”
Suzanne zoomed out until most of Virginia was on the screen, then positioned the pin at Lexington, where they were now, roughly halfway between the north and south state borders, and near the western edge. Suzanne pointed to Roanoke, a city forty miles south of Lexington and the same distance from the North Carolina border. “This city has a hundred thousand people in it. Obviously, you didn’t go through it. But is there any way you could’ve gone past it?”
Iris ran her finger over the maze of roads north of Roanoke. “I would’ve turned around before I got anywhere near that.”
“Okay.” Suzanne checked the legend. “From Roanoke to where I found you is about sixty miles, as the crow flies.” She studied the map. “The width of the forested part varies from about seven and twenty miles across.”
“That’s big.”
“Big enough to disappear in, apparently.” She smiled at Iris, disguising the sense of futility growing inside her. She returned her attention to the screen and pointed out the east–west roads that cut across the mountains north of Roanoke. There were four, but the parkway itself didn’t obey a north–south vector. It snaked around. “Iris, can you say for sure how many times you crossed a road, a paved one?”
Sun was pouring through a clerestory window. Iris stared at the beam of light cutting across the room, sparkling with dust motes. “Not more than six times. Four times anyway.”
“That’s great. And you told the detective you mostly went north, right?”
“Yes. I’m not sure why. I guess I hoped the woods would keep on going.”
Suzanne looked at the map again. “If you never crossed a road when you backtracked, then you must have started at least four road crossings below where I found you. If you never crossed the parkway either—if you stayed west of it, where most of the forest is—then you started down here.” She indicated the area east of Buchanan. “But if you doubled back more or crossed the parkway, you might have started as far north as near Route 60, where we turned off to come here.”
Iris said, “I don’t remember exactly.”
“It’s fine. We’ve narrowed it down a lot.”
Suzanne questioned Iris about mountaintop views and showed her images from the higher peaks. One, Sharp Top, was somewhat familiar to Iris.
“It would’ve been not too long after I left. Later, I didn’t have the energy to climb hills for no reason.” The girl went quiet, probably recollecting the misery she had endured.
Suzanne waited for an elderly couple to pass behind them, then turned to Iris, who was still lost in thought. “I want to find your cabin for my own sake. But I have the feeling it’s going to be important for you, too.” Iris didn’t say anything. “Is there something wrong? Something you want to tell me?”
Iris hesitated, then tilted her head at the computer. “What about the river
?”
“The river?”
“There was a huge river. I forgot until now. I had to cross it on a bridge. I waited until dark.”
Suzanne clicked the Google Earth screen to show a map instead of satellite imagery. Her attention was drawn to a thick blue line, wriggling northeasterly above Roanoke, bending south and east at Glasgow, then wending through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The James River, an unmistakable landmark. Suzanne smiled at Iris. “You crossed it once, right?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Going north.”
“Going north.”
“About how long after you left?”
She thought for a moment. “The leaves were gone, I remember that much, so not more than a few months.”
Suzanne strove to control her excitement. They had narrowed down the area by two-thirds. She clicked back to satellite view and studied the forested land, deeply crinkled and creased where the mountains dominated. There had to be more clues. “What about the streams near your house?”
“What do you mean?”
Suzanne touched the screen, tracing a fold between hills. “This one would flow north, I think, toward the James near where you crossed.” She traced another. “But this one would flow the other way, because of the mountains.” Iris nodded. Suzanne pulled a piece of paper from her computer bag and handed Iris a pen. “Can you draw the streams you remember near your house and show me which way they flowed?”
