I begin retracing my steps, looking for places my heel has left imprints in the mud, scanning for signs of trampled underbrush. I force all thoughts of Alex out of my head. It’s too easy to get lost in the wilderness; if you are not careful, you will be swallowed up in it forever.
I see a flash of sunlight between the trees: the stream. I drew water just yesterday, and should be able to navigate back from here. But first, a quick wash. By this point, I’m sweating.
I push through the last bit of undergrowth, onto a wide bank of sun-bleached grass and flat stone.
I stop.
Someone else is already here: a woman, crouching, forty feet down from me on the opposite bank, her hands submerged in the water. Her head is down, and all I can see is a tangle of gray hair, streaked with white. For a second I think she might be a regulator, or a soldier, but even from a distance I can tell her clothes are not standard-issue. The backpack next to her is patched and old, her tank top is stained with yellow rings of sweat.
A man hidden from view calls out something unintelligible, and she responds, without looking up, “Just another minute.”
My body goes tight and still. I know that voice.
She draws a bit of fabric out of the water, a piece of clothing she has been washing, and straightens up. As she does, my breath stops. She holds the cloth taut between two hands and winds it rapidly around itself, then unwinds it just as quickly, sending a pinwheel of water arching across the bank.
And I am suddenly five years old again, standing in our laundry room in Portland, listening to the throaty gurgle of soapy water draining slowly from the sink, watching her do the same thing with our shirts, our underwear; watching the stippling of water across the tile walls; watching her turn and clip, clip, our clothing to the lines crisscrossing our ceiling, and then turn again, smiling at me, humming to herself. . . .
Lavender soap. Bleach. T-shirts dripping onto the floor. It is now. I am there.
She is here.
She spots me and freezes. For a second she doesn’t say anything, and I have time to notice how different she is than in my memory of her. She is so much harder now, her face so sharp with angles and lines. But underneath it I detect another face, like an image hovering just underneath the surface of water: the laughing mouth and round, high cheeks, the sparkling eyes.
Finally she says, “Lena.”
I inhale. I open my mouth.
I say, “Mom.”
For an interminable minute we just stand there, staring at each other, as the past and present continue to converge and then separate: my mother now, my mother then.
She starts to say something. Just then two men come crashing out of the woods, mid-conversation. As soon as they spot me, they raise their rifles.
“Wait,” my mother says sharply, raising a hand. “She’s with us.”
I’m not breathing. I exhale as the men lower their guns. My mother continues to stare at me—silent, amazed, and something else. Afraid?
“Who are you?” one of the men says. He has brilliant red hair, streaked with white. He looks like an enormous marmalade cat. “Who are you with?”
“My name is Lena.” Miraculously, my voice doesn’t tremble. My mother flinches. She always used to call me Magdalena, and hated the abbreviation. I wonder whether it still bothers her after all this time. “I came from Waterbury with some others.”
I wait for my mother to give some indication that we know each other—that I’m her daughter—but she doesn’t. She exchanges a look with her two companions. “Are you with Pippa?”
I shake my head. “Pippa stayed,” I say. “She directed us to come here, to the safe house. She told us the resistance would be coming”
The other man, who is brown and wiry, laughs shortly and shoulders his rifle. “You’re looking at it,” he says. “I’m Cap. This is Max”—he jerks his thumb toward the marmalade-cat man—“and this is Bee.” He inclines his head toward my mother.
Bee. My mother’s name is Annabel. This woman’s name is Bee. My mother is always moving. My mother had soft hands that smelled like soap, and a smile like the first bit of sunlight creeping over a trimmed lawn.
I do not know who this woman is.
“Are you heading back to the safe house?” Cap asks.
“Yes,” I manage to say.
“We’ll follow you,” he says with a half bow that, given our surroundings, seems more than a little ironic. I can feel my mother watching me again, but as soon as I look at her, she averts her eyes.
We walk in near silence back to the safe house, although Max and Cap exchange a few scattered words of conversation, mostly coded talk I don’t understand. My mother—Annabel, Bee—is quiet. As we near the safe house, I find myself unconsciously slowing, desperate to extend the walk, willing my mother to say something, to acknowledge me.
But all too soon we have reached the splintered over-structure, and the stairway leading underground. I hang back, allowing Max and Cap to pass down the stairs first. I’m hoping my mother will take the hint too and delay for a moment, but she just follows Cap underground.
“Thanks,” she says softly as she passes me.