Alarm filled me, and I had a nearly irresistible urge to run up and grab her by the arm.
I blew out my breath and forced myself to look away from her, out over the scene.
There was no single range that I could identify, no straight line of mountains like on a map. These mountains were different. They moved like ocean waves. An endless undulation of green and gray spreading out in every direction, hiding towns and houses and farms, rivers and creeks and waterfalls, between their slopes.
I turned from the view just as Mrs. Sieffert tipped up her water bottle and caught sight of me. Self-conscious, I raised my hand in greeting. She lowered the bottle and stared at me. I waited, snapping the band on my wrist nervously. She wasn’t exactly waving me over, but didn’t look annoyed either. Then, just as I’d made up my mind that I should head back down the mountain, she started toward me. I straightened, tucked my tangled hair behind my ears, but she stopped several yards away and shaded her eyes with one hand.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I called out. “You seemed like you knew where you were going, so I followed. But I’ll go, if you’d like to be alone. I know Dr. Cerny—”
“It doesn’t matter what he says,” she broke in. “We can do what we want.” Then she grinned—a bright flash of white teeth that made her look at least twenty years younger. And she was beautiful. Definitely in her midsixties, with barely lined skin and light, arresting eyes. I wondered, suddenly, what her husband could’ve done to make her so sad.
“You thirsty?” She held up her bottle. “Take it. I have another.”
I approached her, accepted the bottle, and gulped down half of it in one swig. “Thank you. That’s one hell of a hike.”
“You’re not a hiker?”
“No. I’m a runner, actually. I mean, I run around a track for exercise. But I mostly sprint. So that”—I jutted my chin in the direction of the trail—“nearly killed me.”
“Yes, up here you find the mountain challenges you in ways you’d never expect. Anyway, you can’t set out with no provisions, not under any circumstances. It may not be the Rockies, but things can still go wrong really quickly up here.”
I averted my eyes from her penetrating gaze. Things going wrong on mountains wasn’t something I liked to think about.
“So you don’t think we’ll get in trouble for talking?” I asked.
“Not if we don’t tell.” She smiled again. “Your husband’s in his first session?”
“Fiancé. And yes, he is.”
“I’m Glenys, by the way,” she said.
“Daphne.”
“Nice to meet you, Daphne.”
I studied her, trying not to think about how I’d spied on her and her husband. How I’d watched them fight and her cry and how I’d defended my eavesdropping to Heath.
“It’s Sieffert, right?” I said to shut up my mind.
“Yes.”
She looked out over the panorama. “My husband’s doing his required reading. So I thought I would come up here. Collect my thoughts. It’s very peaceful up here. Wild, but peaceful.”
She pulled off her bandana and ran her fingers through her hair, and I sent her a sidelong glance. The woman seemed so calm, so together, like she had a handle on this place. I wondered if her marriage had been a rocky one for years or if she and her husband had just recently encountered a new, insurmountable problem that could only be solved with the help of therapy. Was it an affair? Some knotty financial issue? She looked so placid now, it was hard to believe I’d seen her sobbing last night. Maybe she had that much confidence in Cerny’s ability to fix her marriage.
“I hear you’re not meeting with him,” she said.
I cocked my head. “You heard that?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but you’re a bit of a celebrity, coming up here with your fiancé but refusing the therapy. Very rock-star of you.”
“Oh, well. Truthfully, I’m not a big believer in that kind of thing. I mean, not to say I haven’t read my share of ridiculous self-help books. You know, Chicken Soup for the Perpetually Panicked. But no, I guess I prefer a quick sprint around a track to talking about . . . all that.”
Her eyes sparked. “Interesting. So you’ve never had therapy?”
There was a lump in my throat suddenly, and it was difficult to talk around it. I coughed.
“I actually did meet with someone once, after an incident at the place where I lived.” The lump in my throat felt like a boulder now. “Anyway, I think I was supposed to see her, the doctor, I mean, a few more times after that, but for some reason it never happened. The system was overloaded, and things like that seemed to fall between the cracks a lot.”
A vague, non-answery answer, if there ever was one. But if Glenys had questions about what the hell I was talking about, she didn’t show it. She just nodded like it all made absolute sense to her.
“Have you?” I asked. “Had therapy, I mean? If you don’t mind me asking.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh yes, I’ve seen therapists before. And you’re smart to be skeptical. A lot of them have no idea what they’re doing. Others go beyond incompetence and are actually destructive. It’s almost as if they became doctors in order to mess with people’s heads.” She ruffled her hair again. “The good ones, though”—she sighed—“the good ones are magic. It’s like, when you finally let go, release your problems to them, they take some of the pain away, and suddenly you’re lighter. Unencumbered and free to live your life.”
I considered this.
“Am I convincing you?” She laughed. I laughed too, then our eyes met.
“Is that what you’re trying to do, convince me?”
She waved her hand. “Goodness, no. You seem like a smart woman. Like someone who can certainly figure out what’s best for herself.”
Silence settled between us. Overhead, some kind of bird cried. Little did this woman, Glenys, know how far off the mark she was about me. I was not a smart woman. I was scared, floundering, terrified over the thought of losing Heath. But I liked that she said it, anyway. It reminded me of the way Barbara Silver used to talk to Lenny. That motherly tone—all at once protective and confident in her daughter’s infinite capabilities of resourcefulness. I liked the way it felt when it was directed at me.
“So you think Dr. Cerny is one of the good ones?” I said.
“I do. I saw him for the first time years ago. And I’ve never found anyone to be quite as perceptive as he is.”
I absorbed this.
“I lost my son,” she went on. “It was a long time ago, but it happened very suddenly. One day he was with me, and the next . . .” Her fingers pressed against her chest. “It was terribly difficult. It still is, if I’m being honest. Which it seems I am.” She smiled sadly at me.
I spoke before I had time to think. “I don’t mind. I’m glad you are.”
She nodded. “No one tells you that you never get over losing someone you love, do they?”
“No,” I said.
No, they didn’t.
She sobered. “So. I came here to release some of the pain. To see if there was a way forward for me.”
“And your husband.”
“Yes. That’s right.” She regarded me. “I’m sure your issues are different. But you must want the same thing for you and your fiancé.”
“I do, but it sounds like a fairy tale. Like something that can’t even be real.” I glanced away, feeling tears press against my eyes.
“It’s real.” She said the next thing in such a matter-of-fact tone that it didn’t even surprise me. “Why are you here, Daphne? It’s not just for your fiancé, is it?”
I shook my head. The tears had sprung up, in spite of my best efforts.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I sniffled and dabbed at my eyes. “Ah, well. I’m probably due.”
She seemed to want to say something else but, in the end, turned back to the overlook. Grateful to escape he
r scrutiny, I sniffed mightily and wiped my running nose on my sleeve.
“Hey,” she suddenly said. “A hawk.” She pointed, and I looked but didn’t see anything. “He just dove into the trees. He must’ve seen something tasty down there.”
We stared at the empty sky for what seemed like a very long time. I wanted to speak, to say something to break the silence, but I was afraid of what would come out of my mouth. It had become a physical sensation now, a painful cramping all the way down in the lowest part of my stomach, the way the memories pressed against my insides. I realized my hand had moved up to my neck. That I was digging my nails into it.
After a while, Glenys turned to me. “I understand why you might not want to talk to a doctor,” she said quietly. “Especially one like Cerny. But—would you consider talking to someone else?”
I stared at her, not understanding.
“What I mean is, you could talk to me. I’m not a professional, I know, but maybe that would be easier for you. To talk to a regular person first, before you go all the way with a doctor.” She smiled. “That came out wrong.”
I smiled back.
“I’m a pretty decent listener. You could consider it a practice run.”
I shook my head and thought of Heath. “I appreciate the offer. I really do. But it would be breaking the rules.”
“Technically, yes, but we already seem to be doing that.”
“I don’t know.”
She smiled. “Oh well. Just a thought.”
She moved to the edge of the cliff, then beckoned me over. “Look. He’s back.” She pointed at the hawk, wings spread, lazily looping above us.
“Oh my God. He’s gorgeous.”
“See how he’s not flapping his wings? He’s soaring. Using air currents to hold him up. He can stay up there for hours, wheeling and watching for prey, without even trying.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the sun and the dizzying height and the wind on my face. Picturing the wheeling hawk. I yearned to be like that, weightless and free, circling above the earth. Above my problems and my fear. And somehow this woman, this absolute stranger, seemed to understand that. I wasn’t fooling her. So what was I fighting against?
I snapped open my eyes. Filled my lungs with the brisk mountain air.
“My mom was a prostitute,” I said quickly, before I could change my mind. “When I was eleven, the state of Georgia transferred custody of me to a girls’ ranch.”
Chapter Eight
Aside from Chantal, no one took much notice when I arrived at the brown brick house that sat at the edge of the property known as Piney Woods Girls’ Ranch. Of course, later on I figured out why Chantal was so interested in me—finally something lower than her on the food chain had shown up on the scene.
I was a chubby eleven-year-old—legs bloodied from mosquito bites, bleary from bad sleep, nerves strung tight, nails bitten raw. It was an early September evening, and for the past week, I’d known something bad was on the verge of happening. My mother had been gone seventeen days this go-round, the longest stretch yet, and I’d finally been turned in to DFCS by Mrs. Tully because, she said, her husband was tired of having me around. She told the caseworker that, by God, she’d done her damnedest, but she couldn’t find one single relative to take me in.
Mrs. Tully had sent me into her shower, but my knees and elbows were still caked with grime. My long dishwater-blonde hair desperately needed a trim, and the few clothes I’d brought were stained and ragged. Nevertheless, I was there at the brown brick house and, on the whole, glad of it. I was scared but also relieved that I wouldn’t have to wait for my mother anymore. I was also more than a little excited about a warm bed, a meal, and maybe a bathtub with bubbles. It did occur to me—in a vague way—that I might have landed myself someplace far worse than my lonely apartment, but nothing in the house seemed amiss, so I tried to ignore the way my stomach constantly went from fluttering to tight.
There were three tormenters in the brown brick house—the Super Tramps, they called themselves, and whenever Mrs. Bobbie scolded them for it (their nickname, not the tormenting, which she seemed oblivious to), they screeched in outrage: “It’s just after the rock band! Mr. Al’s favorite group!” They weren’t wrong about Mr. Al loving Supertramp. He played that album all the time on the huge stereo system he had set up in the living-room built-ins, so much that “The Logical Song” ran maddeningly on a loop through my head anytime things got a little quiet.
Mrs. Bobbie hated that the girls called themselves after the band. I also think she hated that her husband liked that music so much too. She was just that kind of woman. She didn’t appreciate anyone enjoying themselves too much outside of church and school. Which was probably why she was forced to either ignore Mr. Al or be constantly, supremely annoyed with him.
He was a shambling man with a mane of shaggy blond hair and friendly, sleepy eyes. A stoner, even though I didn’t recognize it at the time. A man who did happen to enjoy himself on a daily basis and without one ounce of guilt, earning himself Mrs. Bobbie’s displeasure, fair and square. I didn’t pick up on any of those details at the time. I just knew I liked and trusted the man. He was master of the awkward side-hug, gentle ruffler of hair, bringer of fun. The father we all quietly—unwittingly—yearned for.
Even though the Super Tramps were technically right about the origins of their nickname, Mrs. Bobbie knew they were full of shit and just trying to get her goat, so she usually banished them upstairs. It wasn’t much of a punishment. They’d sashay up to the room they shared, slam the door, and giggle themselves limp on the three twin beds that they’d arranged in the center of the room. I heard everything through the walls, and every bit of it drew me in. I especially liked the sound of that laughter. It was throaty and nasty and knowing. I got the feeling these girls always somehow had the last say with Mrs. Bobbie.
The Super Tramps had been living in the two-story brown brick house at the end of the dirt road along with Chantal, who was fourteen, for a number of years before I got there. I didn’t know exactly how many. I wasn’t allowed that level of security clearance. To me, my new roommates imparted other, more pertinent, information, like:
You have boogers in your eyes, and you smell like an asshole.
You better never, ever fucking look at me. You got that?
The Pinkeys are coming—tomorrow, probably—to adopt you.
The Pinkeys, I learned, were a family of hillbilly cannibals with bear traps for teeth who lived in the national forest behind the ranch. I was told they came around every couple of years to select a young girl to take home with them for housekeeping duties and, if things didn’t pan out, possible ritual child sacrifice.
While Mrs. Bobbie kept the daily routine of the brown brick house humming—meals served at six a.m. and p.m. on the dot, a rotation of chores for us girls when we got home from school, and mandatory family Bible study each night before bed—the Super Tramps actually ran the place. Omega, the leader, was seventeen—fiercely beautiful, with a Cleopatra haircut and pillowy woman-lips that, when coated with cheap drugstore lipstick in fuchsia, made her look like she’d just blown out of a photo shoot for one of the copies of Glamour Mrs. Bobbie hid in her bathroom cabinet. You wouldn’t want to be assigned kitchen cleanup with her, though. She talked to the knives while she washed them, like they were actual people.
“You ever stabbed someone?” she would croon to a blade, then cut her eyes at me.
Tré and Shellie were sixteen, juniors at Mount Olive Christian Academy, where the ranch girls were given scholarships to attend. Shellie was pretty but pale, with a headful of peroxided straw and a perpetual spray of acne across her jaw. Tré was a freckled wraith who wore a pair of men’s Carhartt coveralls that Mr. Al had handed down to her; muddy, oxblood-red Doc Martens (that I never figured out how she obtained); and a stack of rainbow-colored hair bands as bracelets. She told everyone she was a Wiccan high priestess, except Mrs. Bobbie and Mr. Al, who were Baptists and wouldn’t have appreci
ated it. I was eleven and had no idea what Wiccan was, but I was duly terrified by my new sisters.
Which was what Mrs. Bobbie said they were. Along with Chantal, they were my new big sisters.
That first night at the ranch, the hot night in September that the social worker dropped me at the brown brick house, I was overwhelmed, although at the time I couldn’t have said why. Part of it was that I was used to a small apartment, with a tiny cramped living room and bedrooms the size of closets. This house had walls, but to me, it felt boundaryless. It was the biggest house I’d ever been in, and I had the sensation of standing on an open field, unprotected, my flanks exposed to an unseen, lurking enemy.
Where did everyone belong?
As I stood in the tidy, Lemon Pledge–scented living room, my secondhand backpack of meager belongings hanging off my rounded shoulders, I pictured the pantry—its dimensions and how much food must be kept there and what kind. It was weighing on me, making me feel nervous, the thought that there might not be enough food for me to eat in the morning. Had they known I was coming? Where would I find breakfast way out here in the country? Hunger gnawed at my stomach. In the rush to get me to the ranch, the social worker had forgotten I hadn’t had supper.
I trembled in the center of the vast unknown as it expanded around me, and my stomach growled. After Mrs. Bobbie told me there were three older girls upstairs (sisters, she called them), she introduced Chantal, who was standing by the plaid sofa, digging her finger in a hole in the fabric. Mrs. Bobbie said Chantal was fourteen, even though she was not much bigger than me. She had long, frizzy hair, blonde with a sickly green tint to it, and when Mrs. Bobbie dragged her closer, I saw that she had different-colored eyes—one green and one blue—that reminded me of a dog that used to wander around our apartment. It was a mean, spindly mutt, and I always tried to feed it scraps when it would let me get close enough.
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