It’s the first I’ve spoken of it to anyone. I told Henry she died but never how. I was too ashamed, too afraid he’d think less of me. I didn’t realize until this moment how desperately I need to unburden myself. How trapped my grief has been inside me these last three years, like the steel sphere in a pinball machine, ricocheting off every surface, doing more damage.
Myrtle stops and stands stock-still, the earthy, southwestern pattern of her wool robe the only reason I can see her at all. “I know,” she says quietly.
“I still don’t understand why,” I say as we start walking again. But I feel, deep in my bones, that it is because of me, because of that day.What have you done?Her voice slips around inside my skull, an echo that never ends. And now I have done it again. “I could have helped her,” I tell Myrtle. “I had money. If I’d only known she needed it. She didn’t even tell me Gerald was dead. She was so proud.”
We approach the straightforward frame of a log cabin. From the porch light I can see it’s painted dark brown with lively green trim and a red front door. It perches in the forest like something from an old folktale. Myrtle clomps up the stairs to its small porch and sets her hand on the knob. Glancing at me, she says, “Your mother was many things, Piers. But in the end, I don’t think she was proud at all.”
I swallow and follow her inside.
The interior of the cabin is like something from a movie set—glowing log walls and a stone fireplace, a rack of antlers over the door, braided rugs and handwoven baskets. I drop my backpack onto the buffalo plaid sofa and pick up a hooked pillow featuring a bear surrounded by red berries. Myrtle busies herself in the small but open kitchen where folksy twig accents mark the wood cabinetry and an old Hoosier cabinet stands against one wall, cluttered with enamel canisters. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
“I had crackers,” I say, sinking into a willow armchair with worn-in cushions. “Yesterday.”
She frowns and begins making me a sandwich—tomato, spinach, and herbed goat cheese, bread so thick with whole grains it practically sprouts. It smells divine. When she brings it to me and I start eating, her frown lines deepen. “Good God, child. When’s the last time you had a proper meal?”
Embarrassed, I set the sandwich down. “A couple days,” I tell her through a full mouth, not counting Regis’s grilled cheese, not sure if I should mention Regis or the grilled cheese I had there.
Truthfully, I quit eating much at least three days before I made the jump, nerves killing my appetite. Only when Henry was watching did I pretend to eat anything. But Henry never liked me to eat overmuch, so it was easy to fool him. It wasn’t weight that he cared about but control. “Don’t forget yourself, Piers,” he would tell me. We would have whole meals out where every bite I took was preceded by a glance in his direction, the silent but obvious look of approval on his face. When that look shifted, I set my fork down no matter how hungry I felt. The one time I didn’t, he took me home and held my face in the pillow until I wet myself. I learned after that.
Her eyes slide to my booted foot. “You’re in trouble,” she says plainly. She looks concerned but not surprised.
“Not anymore,” I tell her. Henry will never find me up here, miles from the comforts of urban living. I felt unsure until I arrived, but being tucked into the forest like a chick beneath the wing of a hen, so much unadulterated nature pooling for miles and miles—I can’t imagine it. And by now he’s found my note, knows I’m dead. Even without a body—it could have easily washed into the Atlantic—he won’t know to look at all if I did my job right. I permit myself a modicum of relief.
Myrtle leans back into a leather armchair, watching me eat. Beside her, a stack of old books glow arsenic green. “It’s been a long time, Piers,” she says quietly. “Why now?”
“I don’t go by that anymore.” My eyes meet hers. I’m not ready to talk about Henry yet, about why I came, how I got here. Andwhile she’s family, Aunt Myrtle is a stranger to me. I look down at my sandwich, appraising. “You can call me Acacia.”
“Can or should?” she asks.
I don’t say anything, and she nods. “You didn’t answer my first question.”
I swallow my bite of sandwich. “I told you. I have nowhere else to go.”
She looks at my fingers denting the bread, a few still stained maroon from the berries. Our eyes lock. She remembers. Sheknows.
“There was a man,” I say.
“He still breathing?” she asks, watching me.
“Yes.” Technically, Henry is alive. But Don is not. I’m not sure how much I can tell her. But I cannot tell her that. She cannot know it’s happened again.
“He know where you are?” she asks this time.
I shake my head as I take another bite. “I never told him about anyone but Mom.”
“Why the name change then?” she presses.
I’m so tired. I just want to eat this sandwich and pass out somewhere soft and warm. But I can’t show up on her doorstep after all these years with nothing but an empty backpack and a broken foot and not expect questions. All in all, she’s being incredibly understanding. I can’t imagine anyone else taking this half so well. Then again, I can’t imagine anyone like Aunt Myrtle. She’s a breed unto herself.
“He’s dangerous,” I tell her, my voice barely a whisper. “He thinks I’m dead. It was the only way.”
She stares at me as I finish eating, then rises to take my empty plate. “Come on,” she says, heading toward an open doorway at the far end of the room.
“I can stay in one of the cabins by the road,” I tell her, not wanting to put her out any more than I have. “Just until I get on my feet.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says ushering me into a comfortable bedroom with a simple iron bed covered in a jewel-toned quilt. Two pillows in plaid shams rest on top. A floor lamp with an old hide shade is already on in the corner as if it were waiting for me. “You’re family.”
“It might be safer,” I tell her truthfully. I don’t expect Henry to come looking for me, but two years with him has taught me to always look over my shoulder.
