True Places

by Sonja Yoerg

  Suzanne checked her watch. Just past noon. She left the plans as they were and went in search of Brynn. Not finding her in the living room, Suzanne walked out the front door and along the walk that led to the barn. She paused at the sign that had been installed last week: MARY COLTON SMITH CENTER FOR MEDICINAL BOTANY . Suzanne pulled a few weeds from the flower bed at the base of the sign, then continued toward the barn. The heat of the sun seeped into her skin, and she left the path for the shade of the walnut trees. There, between the barn and the pond, was Brynn, adjusting a camera on a tripod. Suzanne stopped to watch her.

  Not surprisingly, Brynn hadn’t been eager to spend time at the Buchanan house, especially not before the basic renovations had been completed and the Wi-Fi installed.

  “I don’t do rustic,” she had said.

  In mid-July she twisted her ankle during a game of Frisbee with her friends, tearing tendons and requiring her to use crutches for six weeks. Brynn found sitting with her foot elevated in Charlottesville no more exciting than doing so in Buchanan, especially when Tinsley enlisted her granddaughter’s help during decorating trips. One weekend, Brynn brought her friend Lisa to the center. While Suzanne made breakfast, Brynn and Lisa laughed at a pair of bluebirds being pursued by begging fledglings. They called the adults Mom and Dad and named the fledglings after their friends, dubbing in teen dialogue. After the girls finished eating, Suzanne handed them binoculars. Brynn hobbled outside and Lisa followed. To Suzanne’s surprise, they spent the morning sneaking up on birds.

  “Don’t tell anyone we were doing this,” Brynn warned Lisa when they retreated inside from the heat. “Social suicide.”

  Brynn tried to photograph the birds with her phone but became frustrated. Suzanne consulted with Whit, and together they chose a camera and zoom lens that they presented to Brynn on August 1, her sixteenth birthday. Since then, she had been eager to accompany Suzanne to the center, waking early to catch the birds and butterflies during the height of their activity. She had even entered one of her photos in a local contest and received an honorable mention, which seemed to legitimize her interest and render it less dorky.

  Now, as Suzanne observed Brynn moving stealthily behind the camera, she understood how quiet work—observing, waiting, listening—had been a boon to Suzanne herself as a young woman, offering the chance to become immersed without the risk of being overwhelmed, and how Suzanne, unlike her daughter, had not had to suffer the crush of social media during her adolescence. Brynn still drew her energy from her friends and their cultish obsession with posing, rather than being. But her new hobby—this quiet work—might become her daughter’s salvation, Suzanne believed, providing a neutral space into which to withdraw, a space without mirrors, or even glass.

  Brynn turned and waved. “Lunchtime?”

  “If you’re ready.”

  Brynn collapsed the tripod with the camera still attached and carried it over to where Suzanne waited.

  “Show me the photos later?” Suzanne said.

  “Sure. Is Iris back?”

  Iris’s room was upstairs in the farmhouse next to Brynn’s, but she stayed at the cabin, too. “I wouldn’t expect her until tomorrow at the earliest.” Suzanne’s phone beeped. She pulled it from her pocket and checked the screen. “It’s Dad. I’ll be five minutes.”

  Brynn started off. “Tell him hi.”

  Suzanne accepted the call. “Hey. How’s everything?”

  “Great. Just checking to see if tomorrow’s still good.”

  She smiled. Call it politeness or walking on eggshells—or dating. “Tomorrow’s very good. I’ll even cook.”

  “Best news yet. Reid’s been trying. He’s better than me by a long shot, but, you know.”

  “It’s okay to say you miss my cooking.”

  “I miss your cooking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And many other things.”

  “Best not to mention cleaning or laundry.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. I know what probation means.” He paused. “Yesterday in the car I heard that Elton John song on the radio.”

  “What song?”

  “The karaoke one.” His voice grew thick. “I took it as a sign.”

  About a year after they started seeing each other, they’d spent a weekend in Virginia Beach and landed in a bar. Karaoke duets were the featured entertainment. Whit had convinced Suzanne they should give it a shot.

  “You know I’m not much of a singer,” she said.

  “Same.” He grinned at her. “Let’s do it anyway.”

  Whit chose Elton John’s duet with Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” Suzanne’s microphone shook in her hand as the intro played. What was she doing up here? Whit sang the opening line—badly. She missed her first line and looked at him in apology.

  He held her gaze and sang the title line again. Suzanne croaked hers in response. After the first chorus, she began to relax. She forgot the audience. She forgot she couldn’t sing because together they could, perhaps not beautifully, not even competently, but the joy and the promise in the song was theirs.

  Remembering that night, Suzanne realized Whit had given her more than a safe place to hide. He had given her belief in them, in what would become their marriage. He wasn’t afraid to love.

  “Oh, Whit,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re coming down.” She hadn’t been sure at all when she launched this project how Whit would react, or how she would feel about him and their marriage. Now that she was choosing him not out of fear, but out of desire, her love for him felt genuine in a way it never had before.

  “I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to. Sounds like it’s coming along great. Did Reid tell you he was skipping this trip?”

  “He texted me yesterday. He said it was his job, but I’m guessing that’s mostly cover.”

  “I doubt it. That’s not like him.”

  “True.”

  After she placed an offer on the farmhouse, Suzanne had lived at home in Charlottesville, with Whit bunking on an air mattress in his office. The atmosphere had been civil but awkward. The sale went through in June, and Suzanne announced her plans to spend the majority of the summer in Buchanan. Reid had surprised her by opting to stay with his father. “We’ve got stuff to figure out,” he had said. Whit and Reid had taken up karate together and seemed to be getting along so much better that Suzanne was ashamed to admit she felt left out. Reid had taken a job at a nonprofit promoting climate-change awareness and was absolutely dedicated to it, as he was with everything he did, but his schedule meant Suzanne didn’t seen him often. Practice for fledging, she supposed. Maybe if she invited Mia and her son Alex for the following weekend, Reid would be more likely to accept.

  She said goodbye to Whit and ended the call. While she had been talking, she had wandered and now found herself on the far side of the barn and close to the margin of the woods. Surrounded by a low picket fence were the graves of Iris’s mother and brother. Iris had spent more time choosing the flowers and shrubs for the site than the markers themselves, small pale granite rectangles flush with the ground, engraved only with their names and the years Mary and Ash had been born and had died. It was a beautiful spot, nestled against the protective wall of trees and overlooking the rolling fields now dotted with black-eyed Susans, ironweed, and golden aster.

  Iris hadn’t been sure about creating the grave site. The police had retrieved Iris’s mother’s remains from the cave into which she had fallen and, days later, had located Ash, who had been buried in a municipal plot in Roanoke. Suzanne had insisted on a creating a proper site for the burials. The girl had had no experience of memorials, or family tradition, or indeed of any of heritage extending behind her and stretching in front, to become part of her future and the future of the children she might have. But once Ash and Iris’s mother had been laid to rest, Iris gradually came to accept the site, and to rely on it. After each visit with her father, Iris came to sit by the graves, no matter the weather, and afterward wa
lked into the woods to stay at the cabin by herself for a time. She was there now.

  Suzanne turned from the graves and the trees standing tall above them and headed back to the house. She hoped Iris would return soon, not because she worried about her, but because she missed her. Suzanne had her family, her project, her dream, all of it a work in progress, including herself. Iris was a bonus—a messenger of the gods, so the myth went. Sun breaking through clouds and illuminating a mist-filled sky was wondrous. A rainbow was a godsend.

  CHAPTER 47

  Iris worked her way among the blackberry bushes. It was late in the season, so she had to hunt for the few berries that were still plump and sweet. Suzanne had packed too much food for her already, but Iris could not pass up them up, because once the last berries were gone, Iris would have to acknowledge that summer was winding down. The signs of it were everywhere. The trees sighed under the weight of their limbs, and the goldenrod and asters had appeared in the meadows. Even the birds had grown quiet, carelessly leaving molted feathers behind like sleepy people shedding clothes on their way to bed, except for the blue jays, who only got noisier, and the doves, who mourned each dawn as plaintively as the last.

  When the berries ran out, Iris started back to the cabin, taking the higher route. She walked through the forest and across the streams using memories that didn’t benefit from her direct attention. Her mind was somewhere else, with her father, not that she could think about her family too long or too deeply. It hurt: Ash’s tragedy, their mother’s, both Daddy’s pain and hers. Suzanne said time would ease the pain, like working through a sore muscle. Iris hoped Suzanne was right, but sometimes Daddy reminded her only of what she no longer had, and as guilty as it made her feel, she wished he had stayed lost. At least then she could attach whatever she wanted to the mystery of his disappearance, or forget him altogether. But she didn’t have that option, because once he had been found, she couldn’t lose him again even if she wanted to. He was locked inside her heart.

  Iris had questions for her father that she kept stacked in her mind. The last time she saw him, a little more than a week ago, she had asked about her mother’s family. He told her the Coltons had scratched out a living deep in the Ozarks. Iris’s grandmother, her mother’s mother, had died when Mary Colton was fourteen. Iris’s father had never met any of them, and Iris understood from his tone that distance had nothing to do with it.

  “Your mother didn’t like to talk about it, but your grandfather was a hard, hard man,” Iris’s father told her. “When your grandmother died, he got even harder. Your mother was the youngest of six and the only girl. Too much fell on her, and it didn’t seem anyone was looking out for her. She didn’t say exactly what went on, but as soon as she could, she left and never went back. I met her near Asheville a few years later.” He paused, shaking his head as if the memory of her were too fine to belong to him. “She was pretty and strong, just like you, but terrified of people, shied away from everyone. Everyone except me, for some reason.” He smiled at Iris. She recognized this part of the story. She had always known her parents trusted and loved each other. Whatever else had happened to her family, they always had this one true, straight, incorruptible thing.

  Iris’s reverie dissolved as she arrived at the place where the wake-robin grew in the spring. It was just an ordinary patch of woods now, except for the giant boulder and, of course, Ash’s marker. She accepted that what remained of her mother and brother was buried by the old brick house, but in her mind, Ash would always be here. Iris knelt in front of the marker and pulled at the plants crowding its edges.

  “Can’t stop things from growing, Ash. You just can’t.”

  Or from changing. Her own life was a handy example. How she had fought to keep things the same, to stay in the woods, live the only life she knew, the one that had shaped her. Her cradle and her crucible.

  Growing and changing. Iris had been afraid of both, and she still was, but Suzanne had shown her what courage could do, how you could alter the shape of a life without breaking it. Iris wasn’t sure about who she might become, what shape she might take, but she wouldn’t live her mother’s life, molded by fear. Mary Colton Smith had loved these woods as she loved her family, but she had been hiding. Iris would not hide.

  Suzanne wanted her to study and work at the center after she finished high school. Iris said she might. Plants and medicine were her legacy, after all, passed down to her from the grandmother she would never know. Suzanne knew Iris better than anyone, which gave Iris comfort. But Reid had been talking to her and sending her articles on meditation and global warming. The way Iris thought about it, her own mind was the smallest place to learn, make changes and make a difference, and the Earth was the biggest. Iris didn’t know which intrigued her more. Maybe both, or something in between. She had time to decide. She could even change her mind. Sometimes she became swamped by the possibilities and felt she had been launched into a wide-open space and could fall forever, as in a dream. Being in the woods helped her to find her feet again.

  She finished clearing the plants away and squatted on her heels with one hand on the top of the marker, listening. The wind sighed through the tops of the trees, shifting the pattern of light falling to the forest floor. A pair of dusky-blue butterflies, no bigger than her thumbnail, danced in a shifting column of light, then alighted, first one, then the other, on the damp ground, violet blue against brown, before twirling upward once more. Beyond the clearing, in the undergrowth, a bird kicked through the leaf litter. A towhee.

  Iris stood and stretched her arms to the sky, her shirt sticking to her sweaty back. The heat was lying on her. She had slept on the cabin porch last night, and, if she stayed, she’d sleep there again, putting herself in the path of whatever breeze might arrive.

  “See you later, Ash.”

  Iris rubbed a mosquito bite on the back of her neck and walked away, heading south along the curve of the hill toward the cabin. When she got there in a little while, she’d see how she felt about staying another night on her own. It might be that she’d rather just gather her things and make her way to the house. She would get there well before dark. Suzanne wouldn’t be expecting her, but she’d welcome her all the same.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am indebted to my agent, Maria Carvainis, for her wisdom, expertise, dedication, and perseverance. I rely on you and you never let me down. Thanks also to everyone at the agency, especially Martha Guzman.

  Thanks to my editor, Chris Werner, for his enthusiasm, clear direction, and keen insight, and to the astute Tiffany Yates Martin and her delightfully sharp red pen. To the entire team at Lake Union, thank you for transforming my manuscript into a book and planting it in the sunshine.

  Thanks, too, to Claire Zion and Lily Choi for guidance and comments on an earlier version, and to Steve Crowder for advice on police policy and procedure (but any flubs are mine).

  Heather Webb and Kate Moretti gave me so much: laughter, cheerleading, hand-holding, and advice of all sorts; I leaned on you both. Aimie Runyan, thank you for being my champion and my friend. Heartfelt thanks to all the Tall Poppy Writers—my sisters, my buddies, my coconspirators—and to my other author friends, Holly Robinson, Karen Lanning, and Lisa Tracy, for your patience, humor, and companionship. I’m also grateful for my faithful readers, those lovers of story whose kindnesses are too numerous to recount, and to my family—daughters Rebecca and Rachel and siblings Helga and Ricky—for listening and for caring.

  I’ve saved the best for last. Thank you to Richard Gill, my patron of the arts, my trusted friend, my walking companion, my heart.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Suzanne and Whit decided to bring Iris into their home. Was it the right decision for everyone in their family? For Iris?

  “Giving too little, giving too much. Subtracting from here, adding there. Caring for your marriage, your children, your parents, your reputation, your future, and, if you could manage it, your younger, more idealistic self. This complex
calculus was based on theories of love and motherhood, and equations of duty and self-worth. But Suzanne could not work out the solution.” What do you think of Suzanne’s thoughts here and what they say about motherhood and marriage? How does Suzanne work out this “life math”? How did her mother?

  What strengths and knowledge did Iris gain from her unusual upbringing? What do you think of Iris’s parents’ decision to raise their children in the woods?

  Suzanne’s terrifying experience in the African bush had repercussions extending to the present day. Why do you think it was such a powerful, pivotal event for her? Have you had such an experience in your life?

  Suzanne’s mother, Tinsley, is needy and self-absorbed, but Suzanne allows her in her life. Is this decision, on balance, the right one? How did you feel about Whit’s alignment with his in-laws? Was it a betrayal of his marriage or his right as an independent person?

  What did you think about Ash at the beginning of the story? How did your understanding of him evolve?

  Suzanne believes she has done everything she could for her children and yet feels like a failure as a parent. Is this the inevitable consequence of having teenagers, or are Suzanne and Whit simply poor parents?

  How did you feel about Suzanne’s decision to pursue her dreams? If she had been able to pursue that path earlier, how do you think it would have affected her life with Whit and their children?