Beneath the Trees

by Laurel Saville

  “Sounds like maybe you want to make friends of your enemies.”

  “I do. And that’s where I was hoping you could come in. Local girl. Maybe with local connections. Maybe could do some asking around. Quietly. In a nonthreatening, nonconfrontational way.”

  “That’s not the way most downstaters approach problems within the boundaries of the Adirondack Park’s blue line,” Colden said.

  “Right,” Drew said. “Well, I guess I’m not your typical downstater. I’m looking for another way.”

  The waiter appeared and set a tiny glass in front of her. It was filled with three distinct bands of color, red, white, and green. He set another one in front of Drew.

  “Italian flag,” the waiter announced, quite formally, addressing Colden. “There are two rules with this drink. You can’t ask what’s in it, and you must drink it all at once.”

  He nodded to Drew and walked away. Drew lifted his glass and gestured to her to do the same.

  “To the local girl and to the other way,” Drew said, gently clinking his glass against hers.

  Colden swallowed. The drink was like liquid jewels slipping down her throat. The meal was done. Drew rose and helped pull out her seat. She asked about the check, and he just shook his head. They danced their way past the other tables and stepped outside. Colden promised to look into things. She thanked him for the dinner. He asked her where her car was, took her elbow, and walked with her there. He didn’t leave until she was seated in her truck. She watched his retreating back in the rearview mirror. She was both relieved and just a tad disappointed he hadn’t tried to kiss her. On the cheek even. It was a signal that their relationship was that of friends. Perhaps colleagues. He was polite and professional. Probably that way with everyone. Probably had a girlfriend. Guy like that? Likely. He wasn’t her type, but she could see he’d make a great catch for someone. Someone who had shiny pumps and an array of matching purses in her closet, not muddy hiking boots, well-worn Carhartts, and several backpacks.

  11.

  Brayden never made a clear or conscious decision to stay in the woods. He just never made the choice to leave. When he thought about it, about what was next, where he might go, he didn’t see any clear path out, any destination that would give him a safe landing spot. It was so peaceful where he was. No trying to fall asleep as adults drank in the next room and then jerking suddenly awake to the sound of voices raised in anger, a glass crashing into a wall, someone slamming the thin metal door so hard when they fled that it rattled the entire trailer, as if an earthquake had just passed through. No other kids whispering, arguing, making out, sneaking around, trying to steal your stuff, and all the other things they did in his foster homes. No need to try to watch out for your little sister. Although he missed that part. He missed her. He just didn’t miss any other humans he’d known.

  He watched the moments pass. The sun was in the sky for so few hours and so often obscured by clouds, it was hard to tell where one day ended and the next began. He had his few chores, setting and checking his rabbit snares, setting and checking his ice-fishing poles, keeping food strung up, away from the bears, keeping his bedding aired out, keeping himself warm. He slept when he could no longer see a few feet in front of his face and rose when the darkness lifted. He had no idea and little interest in how much time had passed. It was still winter. That much he knew.

  When he ran from what had been his home for the last five years—that’s what they’d called it, all those smiling adults from social services when they brought him to that imposing, complicated house, that he was now “home,” “home forever”—he’d had no plan other than to try to find his sister. He’d gone first to the home of a mutual friend from high school. She was not there. They hadn’t seen her. Then he went to another’s. No sign of her.

  Neither he nor she had many friends. They always felt like outsiders. Their swarthy skin and black hair set them apart from the other kids in school. People thought they might be French Canadian, but they had no accent, so people figured they were at least some part native. Which caused an immediate bias. He didn’t know, and there was no one to ask. Their body types, too, set them apart. Both broad in the shoulders, which they carried slightly slumped. He always knew why he did that. Now he understood why his sister did, too. They wanted to curl in on themselves and show only a protected side to a hostile world. Like oversize pill bugs.

  Their dad was not a popular man in town. This didn’t help. And their mother didn’t go out much. She tended to keep the shades drawn. Seemed to spend her days cleaning. Did she know? Was she trying to wash away what was going on in her own home? Maybe so, maybe not. He would not blame her. It was an unfathomable thing. The mind rebels against it. He was experiencing it himself and still didn’t see the signs in his sister until it was too late.

  He tried another house. A friend of his sister’s, a nervous, skinny thing, with lank hair and gray teeth, who had told him Belinda knew someone in Montreal. Had mentioned a friend up there. No, she didn’t know if it was a guy or a girl. Some French name, so she couldn’t tell. Said Belinda had once talked about hitching up there someday. No, Brayden couldn’t stay there. Her mom’s boyfriend wouldn’t allow it.

  Brayden went to the house of a friend from back when he played football. He spent a few nights there. But this guy’s parents started to question why he hadn’t returned home for so long.

  Brayden moved to his friend Zach’s trailer. That’s where he heard that his dad, Bruce, was in the hospital. Head injury. Coma. Something. All gossip passed over hand by hand, the original information getting worn and dirty in the process.

  Bruce was a tough bastard, everyone said. He’d make it. He was a God-fearing, churchgoing, shrewd businessman who developed cheap, contractor-grade homes, ran a bunch of low-income, Section 8 apartments, was unembarrassed to be called a slumlord, and often said that he’d been sued more times than he could remember, but no one ever got a dime from him. He bragged that he gave out a lot of shit but didn’t take any. There were plenty of stories about Bruce’s exploits when angered or crossed. He’d filled a front loader with old bricks and dumped it over the new truck of a man he suspected of cheating him out of money on a job. He had shot rounds into the air when too much booze at a backyard picnic turned what had been a pleasant afternoon into an ugly shouting match. His knuckles were scarred with what he said was the results of fights but which Brayden knew were more likely the remnants of a fist slammed into the cabinets on more than one occasion as a means of stopping an argument with his wife. This was not a guy who would go down easy.

  Zach’s mother was a meth head. Her boyfriend had a grow operation in the garage. Zach didn’t want Brayden’s father, Bruce, looking for him at their trailer. Brayden had run out of couches. He had a lot of experience in the backcountry. His adoptive father had at least given him those skills, had taught him self-sufficiency. He’d said it was preparation for when the government fell and the “towel heads, Mexicans, and blacks took over the country.” Brayden didn’t buy that racist nonsense, but he was interested in knowing how to survive outdoors. He had taken those lessons from his father, greedily. When Zach finally told him it was time to leave, Brayden went into the woods. It was the safest place he knew. It was perhaps the only safe place he knew. It was also his only option.

  Once he got there, he ran. As if something real and living, something breathing fire, was chasing him. Now, months later, he realized that creature was not something he could outrun because it lived within him.

  12.

  Colden had another task to do while she was in Albany. The morning after her dinner with Drew, she put on the same button-down shirt and pulled a pair of khakis from the back of her closet. She felt like a guy going on a job interview. Too bad, she told herself, that this was the best she could do. She drove to an office park with a 1970s-ish building, introduced herself to the receptionist, sat in a cushioned chair, and flipped through a People magazine. She didn’t recognize any of the celebriti
es. They almost all looked like high school students to her. Finally, the receptionist came from behind her desk and showed her to a conference room. The table was dark, slick wood, large enough to seat a dozen people. The chairs were high back and leather. She felt small and insignificant. The receptionist brought her a glass of water. The door opened, and a man entered the room. Middle-aged. Spreading out at the middle. Thinning hair. Getting jowly. A big smile showing crooked teeth.

  “Bill Flannery,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  Colden had never met this man before. But ever since she was twenty-one years old, envelopes had begun arriving at the house with the return address of this building in the upper-left corner, and inside, a few pages of paper with numbers on them and his name in the top corner, right after the phrase, “investment advisor.”

  “Nice to finally meet you,” he added as he sat down.

  He offered coffee. She declined. A woman came in with a plate of cookies and a folder of papers, then backed out of the room. Bill smiled and pushed the plate toward Colden. She took one and set it down on a napkin in front of her. He twirled his pen. She didn’t know how to begin.

  “How can I help you, Colden?” Bill asked.

  She cleared her throat.

  “I’d like to take some funds from my trust,” she said.

  “OK,” Bill replied, his voice going deeper and quieter. “I don’t know how much you were hoping to withdraw today, but we can look at the figures. As I think you know, your father set up the trust so that once you turned twenty-one, you could have access to a percentage of the interest that has accrued since he opened the account, and then you can access the capital itself when you are thirty. If you want to.”

  Colden nodded.

  “Do I have to tell you what the money is for?”

  Bill smiled and lowered his eyes.

  “No, Colden. It’s your money, you’re of age, and no one, not even your father, needs to know that you are taking out money or how much.”

  “OK. Thank you.”

  Colden felt childish. As if she was a nine-year-old asking for a raise in her allowance. The truth was, she had never had or handled money very much. Her needs were few, her expenses low. She’d been a student all of her adult life, making do with stipends, fellowships, and grants. Her computer and technology tools were owned by the university. Her truck and most of her outdoor gear were gifts from her parents. Her father owned her condo outright. He figured it was a good investment, and she lived there, and in the cottage, for free. She hardly knew what the raw stuff of life cost. But she had recently made a spreadsheet of several seemingly expensive items she wanted to buy. She knew her father would help her if she asked. She just didn’t want to ask. She knew this money was hers, but she’d mostly tried to forget it was here, in an account somewhere in the ether. When the monthly statements came, she usually threw them away, unopened. The money felt compromised. As if it came from illegal activities. She wondered if some of it did.

  “How much were you hoping to withdraw today?” Bill asked.

  Colden swallowed. “Eight thousand dollars.”

  Bill stared at her for a moment as if unsure he was hearing her correctly. Colden flushed. She wondered if that was too much. She didn’t know how much of what was in the account was interest and how much was capital. She wasn’t sure she even understood those terms.

  “That’s all?” Bill asked.

  Now, Colden stared back, equally confused.

  “Yes,” she said. “Is it too much? I thought I saw, when I opened the last statement, maybe I read it wrong, but . . .”

  “No, Colden. It’s not too much. Not too much at all.” Bill leaned back in his chair. “I just thought, because you called a meeting, that there was something . . . that you wanted a bigger hunk for some reason. You know, like to buy a car or for a down payment on a house or something. Eight grand is really . . . well, of course, it’s plenty of money, but you don’t need to set up a meeting for that. You can transfer that amount to your checking account yourself.”

  Colden felt even more childish now. But why wouldn’t she? she reminded herself. This money, after all, came from a mother she’d never known. Who got it from a father who’d ruined his family and lost much, much more than he’d left behind. It felt wrong to have it, even more wrong to use it.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I talk to you about something I did?”

  Dix set down the knife he was using to chop onions, wiped his hands on the dishtowel hanging from the waistband of his pants, and turned his back to the kitchen counter, to his work. It was a familiar thing for him to do. When someone asked something of him, he set down his tools, whether it was an ax or a wrench or a whisk, and gave whoever it was his full attention. Colden had witnessed this behavior chain countless times. But before that moment, she’d never fully realized what a considerate thing it was for him to do.

  “I’m going to delay dinner,” she said, waving her hand. “We’ll talk later.”

  Dix crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “There’s no deadline on dinner,” he said.

  “Right.” Colden knew she was stalling. “So.”

  Dix was still and silent.

  “Um, when I was in Albany last week, I went and saw that banker. Bill whatever,” Colden said.

  She peeled the label off her damp beer bottle and rolled the paper remnants in her fingers. She waited for her father to comment. He didn’t.

  “I took some money out of that account. The one you set up for me. The one with, you know, Mom’s money in it.”

  As if there was more than one account that she could possibly be referring to.

  “I feel really bad about it. But there’s something I want to do, and I need money to do it.”

  Dix regarded her for a moment. Colden couldn’t read the expression on his face. She felt her lungs tighten with worry. It was an unfamiliar feeling. Especially around her father.

  “Why do you feel bad about it?” Dix asked.

  She was expecting him to ask what the money was for, and this was the answer she had prepared. The label from the beer bottle was now completely shredded into a small pile of detritus on the counter.

  “I, I guess I don’t really know why I feel bad,” she said. “It just seems like that money was—is, should be—off-limits.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Dad,” Colden said. “It all just feels kind of icky. Like dirty money. Money with a bad history.”

  Dix nodded. He seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts.

  “Honey, how much do you know about that account, where it came from? I know we’ve talked about it from time to time, but I’m honestly not sure how much of the story, the details, you know. How much I’ve shared. How much you remember.”

  Colden sketched out the basics of what she’d pieced together over the years. She knew that the money was made by her grandfather from whatever work he did on Wall Street. No one had said exactly what he’d done there. The name of the street alone seemed to convey more than enough—something unsavory, vaguely illicit, and likely exploitative. The money was also all Colden’s mother had left after her father had died, killed in a freak accident when a tree branch fell on him in a thunderstorm. Miranda had expected there would be a lot more. Apparently, they lived like there was a lot more. House in Connecticut, vacation home in the Adirondacks, private schools, country clubs, caretakers. But it turned out that Miranda’s father had lied to his family. Miranda discovered he’d made a series of bad investments and was embroiled in more than one lawsuit over advice he’d given clients and illegal deals he’d made in constructing the summer home. After his death, Miranda’s mother went into a tailspin of depression, drinking, and a series of strokes that left her incapacitated, leaving her twenty-something daughter to figure things out alone. Well, with the help of Dix, who was their handyman. A situation that led, ultimately, to her, Colden.

  Colden couldn’t meet her
father’s eyes as she spoke, but she knew he was watching her; she could see, out of the corner of her eyes, his head bobbing up and down in encouragement and acknowledgment.

  “I think she also gave a bunch of money to that commune guy, where she lived after she left you.”

  “I think she did, too,” Dix said.

  “This is all so damn embarrassing,” Colden whispered.

  “There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed.”

  “Yes, there is. Look at what I come from. A bunch of shysters and whack jobs. And yet I’m using their money. It’s all pretty gross.”

  “Your mother, Colden, was not a whack job or a shyster.”

  “Wasn’t she? Spoiled little rich girl running off to some groovy commune—what was it called, the Source, of all things? Leaving you behind, giving birth in a dank hovel, not even telling you about your own damn kid, you having to find out from a stranger named Sally what happened?”

  Then, as if in answer to Colden’s little tirade, Sally herself walked in.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” she said. “There was a problem. Police called. Some tweakers camping out at my grandmother’s old place set the trailer on fire. Again. Damn spot is cursed and doomed.”

  Dix and Colden stared, bug-eyed, at each other.

  “What?” Sally said. “What’s going on?”

  “We were just talking about the Source,” Dix said. “Doomed and cursed, indeed.”

  “Why were you guys talking about the Source?” Sally asked.

  “Tell us what happened, first,” Colden said.

  Dix turned back to his chopping block and onions.

  Sally shrugged. Said there was nothing much to tell. Cops said there was a report of some smoke; they went out to the falling-down homestead that had belonged to her grandmother and found a small fire and drug paraphernalia in an old trailer. Whoever had been hanging out there had skedaddled. They put out the fire, locked the door, and left the place to continue its slow decay back into the earth.