tell him for the second time today. “But please—look into the report. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. But then he sighs. “All right, let me get your information.”
Relief rushes through me. “Thank you,” I breathe.
“But Ms. Douglas?”
“Yeah?”
“Until you hear back from me,” he says, “stay out of my investigation.”
fourteen
When the woods swell into view, I feel the usual slosh of nausea. Branches lean over the road, obscure the late afternoon sky. The trees are so tightly packed that some of them look knotted together. Nature has kept them apart, though—and there’s something hauntingly human in that. How the trees have tried, but failed, to make lives inside one another. How some might split, might fall, but the ones closest won’t even flinch.
These woods are old. They’ve seen so much. They remember when Ted stopped the car, opened my door, and made me follow him, deeper and deeper into branches that scraped, leaves that loomed. They remember how loudly I screamed that day, listening to the story he told. That hungry couple. That pregnant wife. That husband with a blade. It was a story I believed simply because Ted was the one telling it—and the woods remember that too.
They probably even remember the man who took us. The man who, done with me in the basement, deposited me back on their grounds. They might have seen how, when I woke, I sprinted instinctively back home, desperate for a parent to protect me. They might have seen exactly how long I ran. How far. Might have guessed that, years later, the muscles in my legs would still be sore.
But like my memories, the trees have secrets. And they know how to keep them well.
Pulling up Ted’s driveway, I see an SUV I don’t recognize. I park behind it, study the Massachusetts plate, the green Zipcar logo on its bumper. My car ticks and settles, hot air swelling around me now that the engine is off. When a fist knocks on my window, I jump. Then I see who it is and I rip off my seat belt, burst out of the car.
“What are you doing here?” I practically squeal.
Eric engulfs me in his arms, and I close my eyes, breathe him in. His T-shirt, soft against my cheek, smells deeply, exquisitely, of home. “Didn’t you get my voice mail?” he asks.
My eyes jerk open. It didn’t even cross my mind to listen to the message he left while I drove to Rita’s. It’s only been a couple days since I left Boston, but I’ve been inexcusably out of touch to him. I don’t deserve this hug I’m absorbing. The simple comfort of his embrace.
“I did,” I say, my cheek still pressed to his chest. Arms looped around his waist. “But I forgot to listen. I’m sorry.”
He rubs his hand up and down my back, makes no move to pull away. “It’s okay,” he says. “I was just a little worried, so I took the afternoon off to come up. That’s all the voice mail said.”
I take a step back. Look up into his eyes, which peer down at me with so much love that it almost hurts to see them. “You were worried?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You were already asleep when I called last night—which seemed strange, for you—and then no one answered this morning when I tried again.” He drops his eyes to the ground. “I might have called more than a couple times. I guess I missed you, Bird.”
A mosquito lands on his arm, and I swat it away before it can bite him. “I missed you, too.”
Eric drags the toe of his shoe along the ground. Makes a letter F, for Fern. “Anyway,” he says, “I had to make sure that Ted didn’t have you hooked up to electrodes or something. Prodding at your brain for one of his Experiments.”
I laugh. “That’s not how Experiments work.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But you never know with that guy.” He glances toward the front door. “He’s been in a mood since I got here.”
I bet he has. He’s never seen me walk away from him before. Never heard me refuse a request. For a second, I feel a twinge of guilt like a stitch in my side. I picture him staring at the empty interview chair, at a loss for why I’ve left him.
But the ache quickly dissipates. Because I’m here, aren’t I? I came back. Don’t I always, always come back?