by Lauren Wolk
He realized, as he stood in the middle of Rachel’s meadow, that he missed the hill where she had lived in Belle Haven. There, he had stood so much closer to the sky. But it was only now, having left it, that Joe realized fully what he’d had. What Rachel had had, and what she had relinquished.
He knew, as he walked slowly back through the early darkness, that he would wake up in the morning much as he had been before, loving the land, content with the anchors he himself had set. But he had begun to fear that these sudden bouts of discontent would continue to tug at him, to drag him from his mooring, until he foundered. He wondered if he would ever find, as Ian had, an anchor that he could truly embrace, that he had not only set but forged, and that would not give way.
Joe got his answer one mild October day when the breeze sounded like song and the ground smelled like the ages. He was outside in front of his cabin, sitting on a stump, working a piece of stubborn wood, when he heard someone driving down the lane. He heard the sound of one door slam, then, after a moment, a second. He began to breathe again. He turned back to the wood in his hands. And then there was the sound of footsteps on the path, disturbing the leaves, of someone laughing, and of someone crying.
When he looked up and saw Rachel coming toward him, her hair loose, he thought that he might die. He saw, as she came closer, that she wore the opal around her neck and carried in her arms, as she walked, laughing, a baby who was crying louder than thunder. It was waving its small arms up toward Rachel’s face, its fisted hands like the buds of new leaves, miraculous.
He did not need to think about this, in truth had no chance to temper his immediate, organic reflex toward the two of them coming through the trees. His hands emptied themselves. His eyes shed their film and saw, as long before, all the colors of the world, undiluted. He tasted his own blood, inside his speechless tongue. Then, moving toward them, his muscles clumsy with impatience, he, too, began to laugh, and to holler, and to say, without a moment’s consideration but with considerable surprise, “I always hoped it would be this way.”
And in the timbre of her laughter, and in the character of his own, he suddenly heard the echo of his mother’s lingering joy and in the air smelled a trace of oranges where there had been none before.
To my family
About the Author
LAUREN WOLK was born in Baltimore and has since lived in California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Canada, and Ohio. She now lives with her husband and their sons, Ryland and Cameron, on Cape Cod, where she is at work on her second novel.
After graduating from Brown University in 1981, Wolk worked as a writer with the Battered Women’s Project of the St. Paul American Indian Center. She later moved to Toronto, where she was a senior editor with Nelson Canada. Since the birth of her first son, Wolk has been a freelance writer and editor. She is also a contributing editor for OWL, an award-winning children’s magazine.
