by Megan Hart
“Hey, you! Hey, girl! What are you doing?”
Kendra turned. “Hi, it’s me. Kendra Calder. I’m staying—”
“Oh, you.” The old woman, Rosie, frowned. “What are you doing lurking around? If your mother wants me to come do cleaning for her, she’ll have to wait. My fibromyalgia’s acting up.”
Kendra shook her head. “No, sorry, I just got a little turned around when I was hiking. I ended up here, I didn’t mean to. Sorry.”
“Hiking around? What were you doing hiking around? Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the woods?”
Another apology rose to Kendra’s lips, but she bit it back. Her parents had taught her to be respectful to strangers and older people. But her mom had also taught her to stand up for herself, especially when she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“I didn’t see anything dangerous,” Kendra said and took a few backward steps, trying to escape.
Rosie came onto her front porch, moving pretty fast for a woman who was supposed to be suffering. “It’s what you don’t see that’s the most dangerous, girlie. Don’t you know that?”
Tightness squeezed Kendra’s throat. “I’m just gonna get out of here, okay? I’m sorry I bothered you. I didn’t mean to come in your yard and stuff. Sorry.”
Rosie stopped, breathing heavily, leaning on her porch railing. “You see anything up there? In the woods, on the top of the mountain?”
“No.”
Rosie snorted. “Didn’t your mama teach you better? City girl like you should be more careful. People can hurt you.”
“I thought you said I had to worry about bears and coyotes,” Kendra said smartly.
“Them, too. But they’re not the only dangers in the woods.”
“Well,” Kendra said, feeling bold. “What is?”
From behind her, the crunch of tires on the gravel turned both of their attention to the car. Her mother behind the wheel, Ethan in the backseat. Mom looked surprised.
“Kiki?”
“Mom!” Kendra hurried toward the car. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the library and the grocery store.”
Kendra got in. “Can I come along?”
“Hi, Rosie,” Mom called, but Rosie had already gone back inside the house. She looked over at Kendra, brows raised. “What’s that all about?”
“Nothing.”
Mom gave her a long, silent look that cut right through her, but Kendra didn’t say anything, and finally, her mother started to drive.
TWENTY-ONE
RYAN HAD MEANT to get up early, start working on the book, but hell. He’d been getting up early every day for years. Out here in the fresh country air, with no alarm to wake him or commute to make, Ryan had slept in to the glorious hour of...ten o’clock.
He stretched and rolled in the bed, feeling without opening his eyes but already knowing Mari was up. She was always up. Sometimes he liked to joke to her that she went to bed when it got dark and got up when it got light. Like a pioneer woman. Old habits, he guessed.
He heard the rattle of plates from the kitchen downstairs. Voices. Ethan and Mari, singing one of their silly songs. Ryan stretched again and scrubbed at his face, then swung his legs over the side of the bed.
He padded down the hall past Kendra’s half-closed door, then down the creaking wooden stairs to the kitchen. The door at the bottom of the stairs had been propped open, and he paused in the doorway to look at his wife, who was up to her wrists in soapy water and staring out the window over the sink.
He opened his mouth to say good morning, but stopped. Covered in a thin sheen of soapsuds, her hand lifted. Pointed. Then the other. Both hands went up in front of her face, palms upward, pinkies touching. Then, twisting at the wrists, she pushed outward, toward the glass. His stomach twisted.
“Babe?”
Mari startled and turned so fast she splashed water all over herself and the floor. She didn’t scream, but instead gave a low, hissing gasp he didn’t have to try too hard to interpret as terror. She blinked rapidly, her gaze unfocused, not seeing him, until she swiped a soapy hand across her forehead and burst into laughter.
“You scared me.”
“Sorry.” He hopped down the last two steps that stuck out beyond the enclosed staircase and into the kitchen. “What were you doing?”
“Hmm? Washing dishes.”
He poured a cup of coffee and turned with it cupped in two hands to lean against the counter. “What were you doing before, though. With your hands?”
She tilted her head for a moment. “Hmm?”
Ryan put the mug on the counter to demonstrate. He said casually, so casually, “Tai Chi?”
His wife only stared, then shrugged. She turned back to the sink and fumbled with the water. In the next moment, the drain gurgled. She ran water from the faucet to rinse her hands and then the sink. She stared outside again, through the glass.
“Are you going to write today?”
“Yeah. Gonna get right to it.”
From outside, someone screamed.
At their house in Philly, Ryan was used to the sound of kids outside. The whole damned neighborhood in the summer was full of hollering and shouting. It was easy enough to differentiate the cries of children at play and the sounds of distress.
He’d never heard anything that sounded like this.
Mari was already out of the kitchen, through the screened porch and out the back door before Ryan could even put down his mug of coffee. He was after her in a minute or two, but it was Mari who got to Ethan first.
He’d been messing around in the creek or something. Up to his knees in wet. Ryan’s first and horrifying thought was that something had bitten his son, a snake, oh shit, were there poisonous snakes in Pennsylvania? But then the scream came again. Farther away this time, and definitely not from Ethan’s mouth.
“Mom! What is that?”
“Jesus,” Ryan muttered. Running out to make sure his kid was safe, he hadn’t noticed his bare feet and pajama bottoms, but now he couldn’t ignore the fact he was squelching the swampy mud at the edge of the yard and that both his feet and pj’s were filthy.
The scream rose again, coming from the woods. It sounded like a kid screaming before the cry guttered away into a series of weird clucking noises. It didn’t sound so creepy now.
“Mama?”
Mari shook her head, but her hands moved as she spoke. The fingers of her left hand fanned out and touched the fist she made of her right. “It sounds like a bird. Just a bird, I think.”
Ethan brightened. “Could it be a peacock? Is that how they sound, Mama?”
Mari had taken a few steps in the squelching ground, toward the trees, but now she looked down at their son. “Oh, Ethan. What did I tell you about getting wet?”
“I fell in.”
“I see that.”
“Will they scream again? Hey, Mama, can we go see if we can find them?” Ethan danced in excitement, but Ryan had had enough.
“I’m going back in the house. I need to get started on work.” Ryan turned to head back to the house. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
The entire side of the house had been splashed with mud. Fist-sized splotches.
“Ethan!” Ryan turned, furious. His kid wasn’t an angel, Ryan knew that for sure, but this kind of shit just wasn’t acceptable. “Did you do this?”
“No, Dad.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Ethan gave his mom a pleading look, which only infuriated Ryan all the more. The kid was always looking to his mother to protect him. Hell, both kids were always playing him against his wife. It was like they had their own damned club, and he wasn’t allowed in.
“Ryan.”
“No, Mari, don’t give me that look.” He pointed at the house, then at their son. “If you didn’t do this, who did?”
He crossed to the boy and grabbed his hand—a guilty hand, Ryan thought, covered as it was in mud and dirt from the stream. Ethan didn’t yank it away, j
ust shrugged and looked at the house, too. Mari took a few steps toward them, one hand out.
“Ryan, don’t. Look at the house. Look at the mud. It’s dry.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So, your son is soaking wet and dripping.”
“He could’ve thrown the mud at the house an hour ago.” Ryan scowled.
“An hour ago, he was inside with me making pancakes. Ethan, did you do this?”
“No, Mom. I didn’t even know it was there. I didn’t pay attention when I came out.”
Ryan let go of Ethan’s hand with a grimace of disgust at the filth on his own fingers and turned to look at the house again. “It wasn’t like that yesterday.”
“Wasn’t it? Did you come back around here and check? I didn’t.” Mari shrugged. “Ethan. Go rinse off all that mud. I told you not to play in the stream and get wet, didn’t I?”
“Sorry, Mama.”
She turned back to Ryan. “Ethan doesn’t lie.”
“Just like his mother?” The words shot from Ryan’s mouth before he could stop them. Not that he would’ve. He was pissed off at the mess, pissed off he was missing precious work time to deal with this shit, when she was the one who was supposed to keep the kids in line.
Her eyes narrowed just slightly. “I’m not a liar. Would you like me to be, Ryan? Would you like me not to tell you the truth?”
“No.” He made a shoving gesture at her with his hands, refusing to remember that he was the one who lied. “Forget it. Just...Christ, call the management company and have them recommend someone to take care of that. I have to get to work.”
“We can do it with the hose. Ethan will like that, anyway. And he’s already soaking. If it doesn’t come off, I’ll call.”
Ryan was already stalking toward the house. “Fine. Whatever. I’m taking a shower, then I’m getting to work, and I’d appreciate it—” he turned to give her a significant look “—if you all could give me a little peace and quiet without interruption. Okay?”
“I’m sure we can manage.”
He’d turned toward the house again, but now looked at her. Was that...sarcasm in her tone? Mari never spoke to him that way. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” she said evenly, “that you should get to work. I’ll take care of things out here. Go.”
He couldn’t argue with her. He wanted to. All of a sudden, Ryan wanted to get into it with her, force her to admit she was being shitty to him, have the chance to tell her off, put her in her place. The thought turned his guts. Even if he yelled at her, she’d just look at him with that dumb stare and answer him calmly without raising her voice, or worse, ignore him, which always left him feeling like an ass.
“Screw it,” Ryan muttered and stamped through the wet grass back into the house.
TWENTY-TWO
THERE IS A love affair that mothers have with their sons that is not duplicated with daughters.
Mari loves her daughter. When Kendra was born, Mari labored for a day and a half at home, walking off the pains and taking long, hot showers to ease the ache in her back. She’d have given birth at home, too, if Ryan hadn’t insisted she go to the hospital. But she held off as long as she could. The nurses who helped her said they’d never seen a first-time mother labor in such silence, or be so relaxed. They wondered aloud, as though Mari couldn’t hear them speaking, if her tolerance for pain was just so much higher than normal, or if she was just so committed to her breathing.
They didn’t know the pain was excruciating, or that Mari truly thought she might die from it. They didn’t know she didn’t scream not because it didn’t hurt, but because it did. So much.
Holding her daughter for the first time, Mari was overwhelmed with the scent of birth—blood and shit and fluids. Her body felt emptied and loose, her uterus still contracting though the proof of her efforts was resting, wet and warm and squalling on her naked chest. She held her baby close to her and wondered as she had every single day since learning she was pregnant if she would be able to mother this child.
By the time Ethan came along, Mari had begun to believe she could not only be a mother, but a good one. Kendra was seven when Ethan was born. There’d been a long number of years that Kendra had had her mother to herself, when it had been just the two of them. By the time Ethan was born, Kendra hadn’t needed Mari so much and still didn’t, not in the ways her younger brother did.
Sometimes, Mari wonders if she feels differently about her children because she didn’t know her own mother’s love. If somehow being unable to completely relate to Kendra is not her fault, then should she feel so... The word she wants escapes her.
Badfeeling.
No. There are more words than one to describe emotions. Mari puts her fingertips to her forehead, between her eyes.
Flashcards with faces showing emotions in front of her. If she got them right, she got a treat. A prize. Candy from Leon’s pocket, or extra time outside on the swings. She loved the swings. She loved candy, though not the brushing, brushing with the thick mint paste after.
Angry.
Sad.
Happy.
Anxious.
“Very good, Mariposa. Very good job.” Leon gave her a tiny hard candy wrapped in paper.
“Guilty,” Mari murmurs aloud.
But she doesn’t feel guilty. She understands the meaning of the word. She’s seen it in the faces of others. Leon’s, when he spoke of his ex-wife. Her children, caught with sticky fingers and lies about what they’d been sneaking to eat. And her husband, of course, when he spoke to her about his trouble at work.
Mari knew the sight of guilt, but not the feeling. Yet was that what she ought to feel, knowing that in her secret heart of hearts, she didn’t love one child over the other, but she did prefer one? Understood one better? Should she feel guilty that Kendra has never been the same to her as Ethan, or is it beyond her control?
The desire for a snack cake rises inside her. Not a hunger in her belly, but something else entirely. Mari swallows hard to shove away the craving.
Ryan has gone to bed early, despite all of his forceful fury about needing time to work. He’d turned on the TV after dinner and watched a couple hours of inane shows while drinking too many beers, then asked her if she was ready to come to bed with a leer she recognized and didn’t have the willpower to resist. Mari has loved Ryan since she was fifteen years old. Her husband may have infuriated her earlier in the day, but that doesn’t mean she can’t get lost in his touch.
Now, though, she’s left him snoring and creeps down the hall to peek in at Kendra, who’s fallen asleep watching a movie on her iPad. Down another door to Ethan, who sighs in his sleep and murmurs whatever secrets small boys tell themselves during dreams.
She doesn’t want to wake him. She leaves him to his dreams, and on bare feet Mari creeps down the hall and down the back stairs to the kitchen.
To home.
No pantry in this house like she has in her own kitchen in Philadelphia, but there are plenty of cupboards. Fully stocked. The fridge, too. She runs her fingers over the boxes, jars, packages. She opens the carton of orange juice and sniffs, saliva pooling in her mouth until she swallows so compulsively it’s almost a gag.
She’s not hungry now, but she used to be hungry all the time.
She has to bend way down to reach the box she pushed behind the pots and pans. She slips out a plastic-wrapped treat, her fingers fumbling so that it flies from her grip and lands on the floor. She’s on her hands and knees before she knows it. Hands and knees, naked on the floor in the dark, grabbing at chocolate not because she’s hungry or she needs it, but because it is there and the next time she wants it, it might not be. Even though she knows there will always be snack cakes and cookies now, because she buys them for herself and hides them from her children and husband.
Again, she stops herself from tearing open the plastic and shoving the cake into her mouth.
Mari keeps her cupboards full because she never wants
her children to have to squabble over food or steal it from a dog’s bowl or eat it from the floor where it was dropped by someone who didn’t notice. Just as she will never lock them in a kennel for making too much noise or ignore them when they speak to her. Just as she never beat them for making a mess or having a toilet accident.
Crouched on the floor, she presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. Remembering. Not weeping, not making a sound. Keeping it twisted and tight inside her, not because it doesn’t hurt, but because it all hurts too much.
TWENTY-THREE
KENDRA WOULD NEVER admit it, but she loved the chickens, probably more than Ethan did. She loved to go into the barn and listen to their sleepy, soft cluck-clucking as they sat on their nests, and to slip a careful hand beneath them to pull out the eggs without disturbing them. She’d always hated to eat eggs, actually, and even more so since she’d started taking care of the chickens.
“So, eat oatmeal,” her mom said. “Or some cereal. Or a piece of fruit.”
Her dad stabbed a sausage with his fork. “You need some protein if you’re going to be a vegetarian, Kendra.”
“I’m not a vegetarian, Dad.” She rolled her eyes. He never listened. “I just don’t like eggs.”
“Sausage, then.”
“Gross,” Kendra said. “Sausage is made from asses and snouts.”
“Kiki,” her mom said gently.
Ethan stopped with a forkful of sausage halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“Don’t listen to her. Eat your breakfast. Some people are starving.” Her dad shoveled more food into his mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. He was starting to get fat, just the faint line of a double chin and some extra jelly in the belly.
“You’re certainly not,” Mom said.
Dad had been reaching to scrape some more eggs onto his plate, but now he looked up. “What?”
“You don’t know what starving is.” Mom sipped from her own mug. “You wouldn’t, and you never will, if you’re lucky.”
