True Places

by Sonja Yoerg

  When he saw the Navigator in the drive, he let out the breath he’d been holding. He left his car, strode to the house, and let himself in. He didn’t call out. He closed the door softly and listened, his throat tight. Low voices came from the kitchen. Suzanne and Brynn. He stood still, squeezing the handle of his briefcase and half closing his eyes, indulging himself in the fantasy that this was just a day like countless others in which he returned to his house, to his children, to his beautiful wife, whom he cherished and who loved him back. Unable to make the fantasy last, Whit placed his briefcase by the entry table, ran his hands through his hair, and headed to the kitchen.

  Suzanne, Brynn, and Iris sat at the breakfast table surrounded by deli-wrapped sandwiches, chip packets, and drinks.

  “Hey, everyone.”

  “Hi,” Suzanne said.

  He looked away, not quite ready. Iris had her back to him. She twisted around and smiled, a bit tentatively. The girl looked exhausted and sad.

  “Hi, Daddy.” Brynn’s tone was noncommittal, her glance skittish as she returned her attention to her sandwich.

  Whit walked over and stood between his wife and his daughter. His hands moved toward them, one to each shoulder, but he hesitated, unsure, and stuck them instead into his pockets. Suzanne had been watching him, and it took him a moment to put a finger on what was unsettling about her look. He’d seen it before, in high school, maybe the winter of junior year. During lunch break he’d been searching for his friends, who weren’t at their usual hangouts. He was circling back toward the quad and came upon a group of girls sitting on a concrete wall, swinging their legs, huddled shoulder to shoulder to stay warm. The nearest was Suzanne, whom he barely knew. She wore a jacket with a fur-trimmed hood and fixed him with those intense brown eyes. There wasn’t anything friendly about it, or unfriendly, for that matter. Framed by fur, her face was that of a cat. Not a house cat, but a big one, like a mountain lion. She was stunning, but a significant portion of her beauty was quiet courage, giving her a sense of power. He had turned away from her then, intimidated, and when he encountered her years later at Mia and Malcolm’s reception and again at her parents’ house, that expression wasn’t in evidence. If she resembled a mountain lion then, it was one on the far side of a moat in a zoo.

  Confronted with a version of his wife he hadn’t married, Whit didn’t know what to do or say.

  Suzanne said, “Did you speak with Detective DeCelle?”

  “I left him a message.” He came around the table, settled into the seat between Iris and Brynn, and helped himself to some of Brynn’s potato chips with more casualness than he felt. “So where did you go? What happened?”

  Suzanne said, “The cabin is east of Buchanan, just north of Roanoke. I think it’s on private property.” She went on to explain how she and Iris used river geography and plant habitats to find it.

  “Clever,” Whit said. “Is that why you were gone so long?”

  “You know it isn’t.” Suzanne’s tone was matter-of-fact. She described the cabin itself and mentioned the note Iris’s father had left.

  “What did it say?” Whit asked.

  Beside him, Iris pulled back from the table, coiling in on herself.

  Suzanne noticed, too. “Iris, I’m so sorry. If you don’t want to listen, you can leave.”

  Brynn said, “Why are you upset, Iris? Isn’t it good news your father had been there? I mean, you didn’t expect that, right?”

  Iris kept her eyes on Suzanne as she spoke. “We’re going to try to find him.” Everyone watched as she fought to keep from crying. She was so slight and intense and strong, and here she was holding herself together with baling twine. For the first time, Whit felt intense respect, even reverence, for Iris. She folded the paper around her sandwich. “I’m going to my room, okay?”

  Suzanne nodded and the girl fled the room.

  Whit turned to Suzanne. “What happened up there?”

  She cast her eyes to the ceiling, as if consulting with Iris before continuing. “Near the cabin, we found a marker. Iris’s father made it for his son, Ash, Iris’s brother, who died in 2011. Iris didn’t know he had died, at least I don’t think she did.”

  “What do you mean?” Brynn said.

  Whit was confused, too. Either you know someone is dead or you don’t, but he kept quiet.

  “She’d blocked out the memory, I think. While we were at the cabin, it came back. Iris remembered her brother became very ill six years ago, and their father carried him away, presumably to a hospital. The note her father left said he took responsibility for what happened to Ash, which had to mean his death.”

  “Jesus,” Whit said.

  Brynn pushed her chair back, startling both Whit and Suzanne. “I’m going up to see Iris.”

  Whit put out a hand. “Maybe she wants to be alone.”

  Brynn was halfway out of the room.

  “Let her go,” Suzanne said. “Let her go.”

  Whit leaned back in the chair and let out a long breath. “What a mess, huh?”

  “Iris’s family, you mean?”

  “Yeah. The cabin, the brother dying, the father going back.” Something occurred to him. “Any idea how long he was there?”

  “June to September. It said in the letter.”

  “Wow, that’s a long time to wait.”

  Suzanne took a long sip of her iced tea, then stared out the window over his shoulder. “Is it? It was his home, remember.”

  Whit imagined a man in a small dark cabin deep in the wilderness, waiting for his family to return, judging each day whether the wait had been long enough.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  Brynn climbed the stairs and turned along the hallway, her mind swarming with thoughts. She’d been so relieved to see her mom, more relieved than she should have been, considering it had only been a few days. It felt more like they’d been apart a lot longer, and, in the ways that mattered, they had. But it wasn’t as if Brynn had suddenly decided her mom was her BFF—Brynn totally expected to be pissed off with her mom any moment now—but somehow things had changed. Her mom leaving had shaken up the whole family and left them spaced differently. Probably they wouldn’t stay that way, but no matter what, things would never be the same. Maybe it wasn’t because her mom had run away. Maybe it was what happened at prom. Maybe, she thought as she reached Iris’s room, it had all started with Iris.

  She knocked lightly on Iris’s door, then went in without waiting for an answer. Iris was sitting on the floor with her back against the bed and her knees pulled to her chest. She looked weird, like always, and also incredibly sad.

  Brynn sat on the edge of the bed. “Hey, Iris. I wanted you to know I’m sorry about the party, about the whole thing with Sam.” She paused, waiting for Iris to say it was okay, then figured she had to go further. “It wasn’t very nice of me.”

  Iris gave her a quick look and went back to staring at the floor. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Brynn ran her fingers through the ends of her hair. That wasn’t exactly the response she’d expected. Having had so little practice, she wasn’t very good at apologies. She did honestly feel bad about it. Iris hadn’t done anything to deserve it other than moving in with them. Brynn rubbed her itchy eyes. Getting suspended, her mom running away, her dad being a wimp—it all added up to mega-stress, and she hadn’t been sleeping.

  She scooted up to the head of the bed and lay down. “I’m so tired, Iris. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Brynn patted the spot beside her. Iris twisted around and looked at her with bloodshot eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Brynn said. “I won’t bite.”

  Iris climbed onto the bed and lay down facing the other way. Her hair looked like squirrels had been chasing each other through it. Brynn began untangling it with her fingers. She yawned and Iris did, too.

  “One day, Iris, when you feel up to it, you’ll have to tell me about your brother.” As Brynn smoothed Iris’s hair, the girl nodded. “I�
�d like to hear about him. One thing I already know, though, is that he couldn’t possibly have been as big a freak as mine.”

  Brynn couldn’t see, but she would’ve bet Iris had smiled, if only a little.

  CHAPTER 43

  During midmorning break at school, Reid got a text from his dad saying his mom and Iris were on their way home. Isn’t that great? his dad wrote.

  “Fantastic,” Reid muttered.

  Alex was sitting next to him, eating a banana, and overheard. “Your blowup doll back from the shop?”

  Normally he’d give some smart-ass retort, but nothing was normal anymore. “My mom’s coming home.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  Reid nodded and slid the message up and down on the screen with his thumb. If it was good news, then why did he feel so pissed off? He’d been annoyed and off-kilter since his mom left, getting more wound up as each day went by, wound up so tight he couldn’t meditate, which made him stress out more. He was mad at his mom for leaving and at his dad for being the idiot who could’ve avoided the dumpster fire with Brynn and Robby. Sure, he felt sorry for his dad when he was crying his eyes out. Who wouldn’t? But Reid didn’t see how things were going to get better unless his parents got real.

  What were the chances of that?

  Reid couldn’t decide how to respond to his father’s text, so he didn’t. He got up, tossed the wrapper from his energy bar into the trash, and called to Alex over his shoulder as he headed off. “See you later, okay?” Alex would think about following him to ask what was wrong, but would decide against it, which was one of the reasons Alex was his best friend.

  After school, Reid walked home at twice his usual pace, trying to burn off some anger, and practically ran up the walkway to the front door. He pushed it open and went straight upstairs even though he was hungry. If his mother wanted to talk to him, she could find him. He closed himself in his room, tossed his backpack on the floor, and spread-eagled on the bed. What now? It was Friday, so no need to think about homework. He didn’t feel like reading, knowing he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. He should have gone to Alex’s and avoided the whole situation. His neck was stiff, and a headache was starting at his temples. What he needed to do was relax. He jumped up and riffled through the pile of clothes on the floor of the closet, remembering Whitney had given him a joint yesterday and he’d stashed it in his sweatshirt. Whitney. The girl definitely wanted to hook up. If things weren’t such a mess, he’d be up for that, but not now. Girls never made anything simpler.

  A knock on the door. “Reid? It’s Mom.”

  Like he might have forgotten her voice. “Yeah.”

  “Can I come in?”

  He found the joint and pocketed it. “Yeah.”

  She walked in and moved toward him like she wanted to hug him, but he had his hands crammed in his pockets, so she just stood there and smiled. “How are you doing?”

  He shrugged.

  She perched on the bed and started to tell him everything she and Iris had found out, as if he had been throwing questions at her. He was curious about Iris’s family and her house, so he let his mother talk.

  “Detective DeCelle is coming by this evening. He should be able to give us an idea of how hard it will be find Iris’s father.”

  Reid finally spoke. “And she wants to find him?”

  His mother frowned. “Well, I’m not sure she knows. She’s pretty devastated.”

  “He did disappear for six years, then came back to say he’d messed up everything.”

  She looked at him more closely. “Are you sure you’re all right, Reid? You seem—”

  “Pissed off?”

  She pressed her lips together and sighed. “I’m sorry I had to go away.”

  “Well, you didn’t have to. You chose to.”

  “It felt like ‘had to’ to me.”

  “And it felt like ‘See ya sometime, maybe never’ to me.”

  She got up and came toward him, looking like she might cry.

  He backed away, pulled out his desk chair, and sat backward on it facing her. “I talked with Dad while you were gone. He gets that he should’ve listened to me about Brynn. He admits he wasn’t doing his job.”

  “So why didn’t you come to me?”

  “He asked me not to. You were flipping out over Brynn’s Beauty and the Beast stunt, remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing, Mom! You let things slide almost as much as Dad does. You’re just like Alex’s parents. They don’t care what he does as long as he’s not a sociopath like his brother. Like that’s a valid goal. He takes a bunch of pills and their answer is more pills and a therapist. They don’t do anything different. They never even asked him why he did it.”

  “I don’t see what all that has to do with you. Or with me.”

  “I know you don’t.” He took a deep breath, wondering if he shouldn’t just stop talking. Too late for that, he concluded. “Look, Dad thinks I’m a loser, or at least he doesn’t hide how disappointed he is that I’m not, I don’t know, more like Brynn.” His mother started to disagree but he kept going. “But you make it worse. You try to run interference, but while you’re doing it, you’re secretly agreeing with him, wishing I’d be different to make things easier for you.” His mother’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. “What kind of message is that?”

  “The wrong one.”

  “I mean, you basically ignore the way Brynn acts because standing up to her is too hard. She bites, I get it. But then because I’m not aggressive like she is, you and Dad just roll right over me, or right past me.” Frustrated, he gripped the back of the chair and rocked it hard, feeling it loosen from the seat. “I’m not saying it right.”

  “You’re saying it fine.”

  He had expected her to launch a defense, but she didn’t. He’d thought there was something different about her when she first came in, and now he thought he knew what it was. There was confidence in her posture. Sadness, too, but with some swagger.

  He remembered something he’d thought of on the way home. “Mom, think of it like this. If we lived in Portland, I’d be the most normal kid in school and Brynn would be the freak.”

  She smiled and broke into a long, loose laugh. She reached out her hand. He took it and smiled, feeling for the first time in as long as he could remember that his mom really did understand after all, and that whatever had stopped her from expressing it before probably had nothing to do with him.

  CHAPTER 44

  Whit carried two glasses of malbec into the bedroom and set them on the bedside table. Almost nine o’clock and Detective DeCelle had just left. Suzanne was changing in the closet behind the half-closed door, and all three kids were watching a movie in the living room. Whit sat on the chaise and took off his shoes. What he really wanted to do was drink a glass of wine, make love to his wife, and sleep with his arm around her the entire night. But that was fantasy. Whit didn’t know what Suzanne’s return meant, since they hadn’t had time alone to talk. He was afraid of that conversation and would do almost anything to avoid it, anything short of losing her.

  And that seemed to be precisely where they were.

  Wasn’t it only a couple of weeks ago that he felt certain everything was coming together for him? What, really, had changed? Not him. Suzanne, then. His wife had changed.

  He picked up one of the glasses and took a long sip. Suzanne emerged from the closet wearing gray pajamas and a thin darker-gray robe. He stood and passed her the wine.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  “To finding Iris’s father.”

  She nodded and drank her wine. “Seems likely they’ll find him soon. I hope that turns out to be a positive for Iris.”

  “Even just knowing what happened will help, don’t you think?”

  “I do.”

  They stood two feet apart with their glasses of wine, stalled in conversation. If he weren’t shoeless and she weren’t in pajamas, they could’ve been strang
ers at a reception, failing at small talk. But there was nothing small about the anxiety circulating like poison through Whit’s body. He was too afraid to ask Suzanne point-blank if their marriage was failing or had already failed. He reached for another topic. If they kept talking, they would stay married.

  “You gave the detective the same address you gave me over the phone,” he said. “I guess I assumed when you asked me to look into it, you were doing it to help find Iris’s father.” Suzanne moved away and sat on the chaise, concentrating on her glass. “But you didn’t give him the report I printed for you.”

  “You can email it to him. I should’ve said that.”

  “But what did you want it for?”

  She pushed her hair away from her face and held his gaze. “I have an idea about something I want to do.”

  “What sort of something?”

  “A project. A rather large one.” She smiled.

  “And this project, does it involve me?”

  The crease above her left eyebrow appeared. “No. Well, that’s up to you. Let me tell you about it.”

  The floor seemed to drop away. Keep talking. She wants to talk. “Great. How about I get the rest of the wine?” He left the room before she could answer, desperate for a moment to regroup. A project? Clearly not one of her charities, not in this context, the context of “something I want to do.” Whit descended the stairs, turning away from the sounds of the television, the presence of his children. He navigated through the near darkness of the dining room, feeling disembodied, like he was trailing a little behind himself, part of him insanely curious about what Suzanne had in store and another part wanting only to return to their normal life.

  The light was on over the cooktop. The half-dark kitchen soothed him slightly. This was their home. He could not articulate exactly what that meant, but he was certain nothing had ever meant more to him.

  He retrieved the wine bottle and returned upstairs. Suzanne sat on the chaise holding a stack of notebooks. Whit placed the bottle on the nightstand, picked up his wineglass, and took a seat on the bed.