Lovely Wild

  They’d given her other toys to replace the dirty, battered butterfly that no longer lit up. A doll with blond hair and a soft dress, a stuffed duck, a stack of blocks. Mari had kept none of them. There was very little in her life she’d ever kept for sentiment, though those same parenting magazines that had warned her about the trials of potty training had also shown her it might be important to tuck away keepsakes for the sake of her children, even if she herself felt no special connection to a blanket or a doll. She had a box for each child in her closet at home, and she did try to put things away in it she thought they might like someday.

  Suddenly, though, this book in her hands is more than a collection of words and pictures. This book is a tangible, memorable bit of her past that isn’t like the pages of notes someone else took about her, or even the videotapes she doesn’t remember being recorded.

  Like her memory of the stuffed and glow-faced butterfly, she remembers this book.

  And she remembers the boy who tried as best he could to save her.

  “Andrew,” she says aloud just to test it. She looks through the windows to the grass outside. There’s no more sign of any footprints, but she remembers those, too.

  FORTY-SIX

  “I WANT TO go home, Dad.” Kendra made sure her grandmother wasn’t around to hear this. As much as Grandma annoyed her, Kendra didn’t want to hurt her feelings. After the T-shirt incident, Grandma had bought both Kendra and Ethan a shitload of junk, and sure it was nice being given things, but...that was just stuff. Shirts and CDs and bottles of nail polish are just things. They’re not her mom.

  “I know.” Her dad hunched over his computer. He’d been typing for an hour on that book.

  “Dad!”

  He stopped with a sigh and twisted in his chair. “What, Kendra? Can’t you see I’m working?”

  “When are we going home?”

  “In a few days. You’re visiting your grandma now. Enjoy it.”

  “You don’t,” she said.

  That got his attention. “That’s a shitty thing to say.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s true. And I don’t want to stay here while you go back to Philly. Neither does Ethan.” Kendra assumed that was true, anyway—the monkeybrat hadn’t exactly said so. “Can’t you take us with you?”

  “And do what with you? I have to go back for...” Her dad paused, which meant he was thinking of a way to lie to her. “Work. And you guys can’t go back to our house because someone’s in it, and you can’t stay by yourselves in a hotel room, either. You’re staying here with Grandma. That’s the way it is.”

  Kendra groaned and scuffed at the carpet. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “I thought you liked visiting your grandmother.”

  Kendra shrugged. “For a day or two, sure. But she’s really annoying.”

  Her dad sighed. “You just have to understand, honey. That’s the way your grandma is. She loves you and Ethan.”

  “Why does she hate Mom so much?” That was the real question that had been bubbling to the tip of Kendra’s tongue. Like a burp or puke, it could no longer be held back. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” her dad said in that “this is final” tone, but Kendra was tired of that answer.

  “Is it because Mom was born in that bathroom at the Red Rabbit?”

  He winced. “Who told you that?”

  “I was there when the dumb b...rat told everyone who was in there.” Kendra scowled and went to the window overlooking Grandma’s backyard. Her dad had never lived in this house as a kid, so there was no swing set, no basketball hoop. Just an expanse of green grass perfectly trimmed by the man Grandma hired to come every week.

  “Your mom wasn’t born in a bathroom. Her mother had another child after your mom was born. That’s actually why her mother was hospitalized and why she never...” Her dad stopped again. He looked pained. “Look, Kiki, this is something we should talk about with your mom, okay? And I promise, we’ll tell you the story when I get back here from Philly and we go back to Pine Grove. But it’s not really for me to tell you.”

  “Is that why Grandma hates her, though?”

  Her dad shook his head. At least he wasn’t trying to deny his mom hated his wife. “No. Grandma thinks your grandpa was wrong to adopt your mom, that’s all.”

  “Well...why did he?”

  “Because she didn’t have anyone else to take care of her.” Her dad looked at his computer screen, which dimmed and then went to the screensaver. He looked back at her. “And then when I fell in love with your mom, Grandma didn’t like that, either.”

  “But it’s not like you were really brother and sister.” Kendra’s nose squinched up at saying this, and her heart stepped up its beat. It was gross and seemed private to talk about this with her dad, but she couldn’t stand not knowing anymore. The entire summer had been crazy.

  “No. Not at all. But you know how people are. It’s why we don’t tell most people how we met, right?”

  She knew that without even being lectured. Not that her mom and dad had ever told her and Ethan to lie about how they’d met or anything, but after the first time a naive Kendra had told her teacher that her mom and dad had the same father, she’d learned her lesson.

  “I was already grown and out of the house when your mom came to live with my dad. But your grandma didn’t like the idea of it. And listen, honey, it’s really easy for your grandma to blame my dad for everything, but I can tell you that marriages don’t end over one issue. The reality is that my parents fought a lot. Grandma can be...difficult. And I guess my dad had his problems, too.” He sighed again. “But he was doing what he thought was right. Besides, if he hadn’t, I’d never have met your mom and fallen in love with her, right? And wouldn’t have had you guys.”

  “What happened to her?” Kendra asked then.

  “To Grandma? She divorced my dad.”

  “No. To Mom. When she was young. What happened to her in that house that you guys don’t talk about?”

  “I told you, Kendra, I don’t want to talk about it without your mom here. It’s for her to tell you, if she wants to.”

  Kendra’s frown tightened, hurting. She crossed her arms over her stomach. “Can we go back with Mom, then? If we can’t go with you to Philly. Can you take us back to Pine Grove?”

  Her dad sighed and looked sad. “Me and your mom have been having sort of a fight.”

  Everything inside her started to tumble and twist. Kendra bit down on her lower lip, hard, to keep back tears. Her voice shook, though. “Are you going to get divorced?”

  “No!” Her dad’s voice softened. “No. Remember when I said that marriages don’t end over just one thing? Most issues can be worked out. Your mom and I are going to work out those issues. I promise you. Okay? It’s all going to be all right.”

  Kendra nodded solemnly.

  “But right now, you need to leave me alone so I can get some work done.” Her dad turned back to the computer and tapped a key so the screen lit.

  Kendra knew better than to listen at doors and read over someone’s shoulder, but she couldn’t help seeing, could she? If it was right there. Her mom’s name in black and white. She didn’t say anything, just backed out of the room and went into her own to throw herself on the bed and bury her face in the too-flat pillow.

  She still had too many questions. None of this was okay. And she didn’t believe her dad when he said it would all work out.

  Most of all...what was her dad writing about her mom?

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FOR THE SECOND time in as many days, Mari climbs the mountain. It’s easier in the daytime. Shorter trip, too. The trees still close in around her and the birds still titter, but in the sunlight it’s easier to see how close the clearing really is to her house.

  Of course, not being naked probably helps, too.

  She shades her eyes when she comes out into the sun. The small house doesn’t look any bigger than it did in the dark, but it?
??s not quite as strange. She can see how it’s not as ramshackle, that the lean and tilt of it is part of the design to make it look as though it’s part of the landscape. Cleverly done, actually. A closer look reveals a propane tank tucked against the bank in the back of the house, camouflaged with a fence sort of like the box they put their garbage cans in back in Philly, though there the box is made of vinyl to match the house and this one’s made of bark.

  It’s still a sort of fairy-tale cottage, with uneven stone steps and windows hung with what looks like shredded curtains but turns out to be mosquito netting. She steps closer. She thinks she should call out, but what can she say? She can’t go around calling out a man’s name. Somehow that feels like more a violation than showing up bare naked in someone’s yard. At least then it had been dark and she could pretend he hadn’t seen her. If she shouts and he replies, there will be no more pretending.

  She’s saved by a sound. She closes her eyes for a moment, remembering the blade hitting wood; she knows this noise. Someone’s chopping with an ax. Mari picks her way across the clearing toward the sound, passes through another set of trees and up a little higher to another clearing. This one offers a lovely view out across the mountain. She can pick out the singing rock meadow and the line of what she thinks is her rooftop, and beyond that, the smudges of what must be the town.

  And she sees him.

  He’s different now, but of course, so is she. They’ve both grown older. But when he turns at the sound of her feet on the snapping twigs and smiles, Mari knows him as though no time has passed at all.

  “Andrew.”

  He’s not wearing a shirt and his jeans hang low on his hips so the bones jut out. Sweat gleams on his tanned skin, broad shoulders, tight belly. His blond hair is rumpled with sweat, too, standing up from his head in jutting spikes.

  “Mariposa.”

  Her knees go weak at the sound of the name nobody’s called her in so many years. Nobody until she came back here. She sinks to the ground in slow motion, and he’s there to take her by the elbow and lead her to a boulder where she can sit. She can smell him, the scent of hard work that isn’t at all like Ryan has ever smelled. His fingers are hotter on her skin even than the sun.

  Without a word, he passes her a drink from a metal canteen that looks like army surplus. The water inside is warm, but she gulps it gratefully. Some sloshes onto her hand. The sun is so bright it gives him a halo when he steps back to look down, making a shadow so she doesn’t have to squint.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” He tilts his head and a shaft of sun stabs at her from over his left ear. “It has to be.”

  “Yes. And you...oh...it’s you.” She shudders with warm water drying quickly on the back of her hand and gives him back the canteen. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. Or do.”

  It’s okay.

  His hands move; he speaks but not with words.

  Mari has never wept more than she has over the past few days, but now more tears come surging up and out of her. She gasps. The sobs rip out of her and she buries her face in her hands, overtaken and overwhelmed.

  She is aware that Andrew is pulling her elbows so she stands. Below the smell of dirt and wood and sweat, she breathes the smell of him—a scent she’d forgotten she ever knew. It’s more than a smell, it’s a flavor; it fills her nose and mouth, into her lungs. She shakes against him, her cheek and then her lips pressed to his skin.

  At first he’s just holding her while she weeps, but then he’s kissing her. Forehead, cheeks, her closed and tear-swollen eyes. His hands stroke over her hair, soothing.

  It’s Mari who kisses his mouth; she finds his lips with hers and opens them with her tongue. Her arms go around his neck. The kiss is desperate and longing. Lunging. She has never kissed any man other than Ryan, and never like this. This is what kisses are when the world is coming to an end and all that’s left is heat and hunger.

  This kiss is wild.

  And it breaks the way wild things do, fierce and sharp and hard. His fingers grip her upper arms, holding her at a distance. His teeth have grazed her lip, and Mari touches the tip of her tongue to the sore spot.

  Andrew links their fingers tight and takes her back to the tiny cabin, where he sits her at the minuscule table with matching seats that fold up so cleverly into the wall. He pours her a drink, cool this time, from a pitcher he pulls from a tiny fridge hidden in a cupboard. The only light is sunshine through the net-covered windows, so there are lots of shadows.

  She needs them.

  “This...house. Your house?” She looks around at the small loft where he must sleep. The cupboards, the tiny camp stove, the bookshelves. “This is where you live?”

  He stares until she has to duck her head and laugh. “What?

  “It’s just...hearing your voice,” Andrew says. “It’s not what I was expecting.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  He shakes his head, his smile rueful and sort of embarrassed. “I don’t know.”

  “Did you live here back then?”

  Andrew laughs, shakes his head. Gives her a curious look. “Oh, no. I lived close by with my parents. Don’t you remember?”

  “No.” She pauses, thinking. “There was someone who didn’t like you to spend time with me. Your...mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “You snuck off to take care of me,” she says in a small, wondering voice, bits and pieces coming back to her, but not the whole. “Even though you’d be punished for it.”

  Andrew clears his throat. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  For that he seems to have no answer, at least not one that comes easily. She knows enough to sense his discomfort. To change the subject. Perhaps for now it’s simply enough to know that he did, even if she doesn’t understand his reasons. “And you built this house later?”

  “Yes.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “It’s very small,” he says.

  Mari holds the cup in her two hands and sips the cool water. The water in Philadelphia doesn’t have the same flavor, somehow crisp and fresh. She rolls it on her tongue before swallowing.

  Andrew looks around. “It’s a green house.”

  She thinks at first he says greenhouse, the kind you plant tomatoes in for the winter, but then she understands. “Really? Like from recycled materials?”

  “Mostly, yes. Solar panels.” He points upward. “Spring water. Compost toilet. Minimalism.”

  “What do you...do?” It sounds so much like all the stupid cocktail party conversations she’s always hated because she never has anything to say, and Mari bites her lower lip in protest at her own words.

  Andrew doesn’t seem to mind. He looks at her carefully, his eyes moving over her until she flushes with heat that has nothing to do with the sunshine outside. It’s not quite shame, though she should be ashamed at what she’s done with him. When he touches her hair, she closes her eyes and leans into his touch the way Chompsky pushes his head against a palm to beg for a scratch.

  “I work for a publishing company that puts out several different magazines about minimalist and green living. I write and edit articles. That sort of thing.”

  “So, you’re a writer.”

  He smiles. “Sort of. Mostly I’m just a guy.”

  “And you live here.” Mari looks around at this small house, this tiny, incredible house.

  Andrew nods. “Yes. I rent land to a company that put up a cell phone tower. It lets me do pretty much whatever I want.”

  They share a smile.

  “But enough about me. You’ve changed so much. What do you do?” he asks softly. “What have you done? Tell me, Mariposa, what have you done for your whole life since you left?”

  It seems like too much to say, but she manages to say it. Some of it’s with words. Much of it is in other ways. Sometimes she fumbles with a gesture, but he knows what she means. She tells him of her life. Of Ryan. Their children.

  “It sounds like a good life,” A
ndrew says.

  She’d thought so.

  “But you.” Mari takes his hands. “What about you? All these long years? What else have you been doing?”

  His smile reminds her of the times he came and brought her food or helped her chop the wood that would keep her warm. His hands move.

  Waiting for you.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  ETHAN HAD BEEN watching cartoons for two hours straight while Grandma went out to get her hair done. Kendra didn’t like babysitting at the best of times, but at least when her parents went out they paid her for the hassle of being in charge of her brother. Now all she got was a headache from the constant jangle of the stupid cartoons that were way lamer than anything she’d watched when she was a kid.

  She was bored with her non-smartphone, had exhausted all the movies on her iPad and read all the magazines her grandmother kept in a series of various-sized Longaberger baskets displayed around the living room. She wasn’t hungry, not that there was anything really good to eat here, and she wasn’t interested in playing any of the ancient board games even if she could wrestle the monkeybrat away from the moron box.

  In the dining room, away from the drone of animated characters, she looked at the wall of bookcases. In their house, the shelves would’ve been filled with...well, duh, books. Her mom read everything, mostly nonfiction like biographies and books about history, but she liked novels, too. Grandma didn’t seem to like books very much. Her shelves were filled with things like plates and teacups that were meant for looking at, not eating and drinking from. She had weird porcelain figurines and a truly gross collection of glass ballerinas that looked as if they might come alive at night and suck your eyeballs out. But no books.

  Photo albums, though. At least twenty. All labeled in the same handwriting that signed birthday and Christmas cards. They had dates on them, too. Kendra picked one from when her dad was just a little boy. She settled into a chair at the dining room table and flipped through the pages, laughing at the clothes and hairstyles. There were pictures of her grandparents, Grandma looking much the same though in the pictures her hair was blond and not gray, and the lines around her eyes and mouth were deeper.