The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,70
was actually snapping it. The gentle shyness she had described was plain enough on his features—just the kind of boy Cassie had felt comfortable with back in high school. No brain, no jock, somewhat bashful, good with cars.
He wasn’t the only one in the picture. His mother had posed him on the steps, with the kitchen window to the left; on the glass Vera could make out the reflection of a woman who must be Dottie, captured in the act of taking the photo, an accidental self-portrait. Between the dullness of the reflection and what the years had done to the print, there wasn’t much visible, just a watery, lemon-colored shape distinct enough she could define it as feminine. There was a smeared half-circle that could have been her forehead and hair, a minute silver flash that could have been earrings—but at least she was looking at her, and it hit her even more powerfully than seeing Andy. Reading, she had pictured Dottie liking bright, extravagant colors. So yes—lemon made sense. It would have been her favorite summer dress.
There was no date stamped on the back, no identifying information. She brought it back to the wall, got down on her knees by the molding, made sure she tucked the edge back exactly the way she found it. Staring at it had given her an idea. She went out to the kitchen, turned on the ceiling light, propped open the door so its brightness could arc across the first twenty feet of backyard.
She had discovered the blueberry bushes on her very first walk around the house, but she hadn’t checked to see whether they still held any berries. Seeing the picture, she had immediately decided that this is what she must do—go out to the bushes Dottie had planted, the ones Andy had helped her pick for their pie, find a berry, just one berry, and hold it in her hand.
She pushed past the screen of briars to where the bushes grew thickest, forced her way into their middle, grabbed a high branch, followed it back to its woody core, then ran her hand back out again, flattening the leaves. They felt good against her skin, the oval texture with a hint of wax, but she found no berries on the first bush, none on the second, none on any of them, though she searched very hard. Did blueberry bushes have a life span? If they did, then theirs had long since expired.
Disappointed, she followed the widest beams of kitchen light around to the front, suffering the same wild restlessness she had experienced when she finished reading Beth. As before, she thought about getting in the car, but that seemed too drastic a response—she wanted space, not separation. Never in her life had she gone so long without driving. Between Jeannie stocking the house like a bunker and her absorption with the walls, it had been weeks now and she wasn’t even sure the car would start.
Other than walking back up to the deserted neighbor’s, there was only one place left to explore. Ever since she had arrived and particularly now that she no longer trusted the radio, the sound track to her days had come from the little trout stream across the road. It had sounded strong and percussive those first few nights, to the point she thought she could discern pebbles and stones clattering against each other in the current, but now that it hadn’t rained in so long it seemed more a soft neutral humming that suggested the play of molecules, not rocks.
It was mucky, the first few steps off the road, but then she came onto the hard gravel plain the stream had scoured through the swamp. The rocks were slippery with moss, she could easily break her ankle, and so she sat down on the first flat boulder she came to, pulled her sandals off, let her feet dangle in the water. Even on a moonless night the stream seemed to generate its own incandescence; finding her ankles, it covered them in frothy white. The current ran north toward Canada, and, like so many other things here, gave her the sense that the land was tipping away from America, going stubbornly off in its own direction.
She enjoyed that feeling. She enjoyed the cold velvet clutch of the water on her skin, the way the sensation was so intense and immediate and yet carried with it memories of wading barefoot when she was little on one of