Too Close To Home - By Maureen Tan Page 0,15

National Forest—was remote and only occasionally used by backpackers making the days-long river-to-river trek between the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was the kind of place where a murder could easily go unwitnessed.

I’d visited Camp Cadiz. Once. Eight years earlier. And I hadn’t been hiking. I’d been driving Gran, Katie and the woman we had just rescued to the safety of the Cherokee Rose. The detour to Camp Cadiz had been brief and unexpected, but the events of that night had seared the campground’s layout into my memory.

I cuddled Tina closer—comfort for her, comfort for me—as I remembered.

Gran had to pee.

Like many such urges, it presented itself at a most inconvenient moment. We were about thirty minutes away from Maryville. And that, as Gran was fond of saying, put us exactly at the hind end of nowhere. Certainly, we were an uncomfortably long way from the nearest public restroom.

The road, lit only by the headlights of the boxy, blue passenger van I drove, cut through a densely wooded and virtually unpopulated section of the Shawnee National Forest. As we slowed to round curves, our lights skimmed undergrowth that, from the van, looked impenetrable. Given Gran’s poor night vision and the city suit she was wearing, it probably was.

Gran was as outdoorsy as I was. Lean and athletic, she was an amateur naturalist who had spent most of her life exploring the forest, hiking alone for hours. But no matter that she’d willingly spend hours in a bog or scramble up a rocky slope in search of a medicinal plant or climb high into the branches of a tree to glimpse some endangered species, Gran wasn’t the kind of person who would relieve herself in public. And—no matter how unlikely it was that anyone would see her—she considered the side of the road as definitely public.

I mulled over the problem, but before I could come up with an alternative, Gran offered one.

“The turnoff for Camp Cadiz should be close,” she said.

We’d gone less than a quarter of a mile when I spotted the small, reflective green sign pointing the way to Camp Cadiz with white letters. A quick turn down a gravel road and we were there.

Seven decades earlier, when F.D.R. had been president and long before southern Illinois bothered itself with concerns about tourism, Camp Cadiz had been a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The shadowy remains of half a dozen old barracks still dotted the campground. River-stone foundations and clumps of trees and brush provided privacy between a dozen primitive campsites. Along the camp’s perimeter, thick foliage joined with the night to create a wall of darkness beneath a starry sky.

The outhouse was at the far edge of the campground.

Missy was curled up sleeping on the bench seat at the very rear of the van. She straightened when I turned into the rutted lot and shifted into Park. I looked over my shoulder in time to see her confused and panicked look as her eyes darted around the interior.

Gran, who sat just behind me, turned her head and spoke before I could.

“It’s all right, honey,” she said, her tone as soothing as the slow, soft syllables that marked her speech and belied her energetic personality. “You’re safe. We’re just stopping so that I can use the facilities.”

“We’ll be at the Cherokee Rose in under an hour,” I added. “Where there’s a nice, clean bathroom. With a toilet that flushes. But if you can’t wait…”

Missy shook her head and managed a weak, exhausted smile. Then she turned to rest her forehead against the side window and stared out at the darkness.

Katie was beside me in the front seat, still snoring softly.

Even half-asleep, my sister was beautiful—petite and curvy with pale yellow hair, hazel eyes flecked with gold and a peaches-and-cream complexion. An angel, people were always saying. And I agreed, not only because she was pretty but because she’d been my guardian angel during the earliest years of our childhood. Maybe that’s why I’d stood up for her that morning when she’d stripped off her apron, come running from the kitchen and unexpectedly climbed into the van.

“I’m going, too,” she’d announced breathlessly.

Gran shook her head.

“You and I have talked about this before, Katie. You have to accept that there are things that you simply can’t manage.”

I hated it when Gran used that tone with Katie. Katie’s asthma, according to Aunt Lucy, was the only reason her involvement with the Underground was limited to playing hostess and cooking—something she already did for