“She said that?”
“Yes. Your dad couldn’t understand how you girls could ever be homesick, especially after the way you were living. But I could. We make attachments to what’s familiar. We find the beauty, even in the lack. That’s human. We make the best of what we’re given.”
I think over her words. It’s true.
“And all of this”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“isn’t what you’re used to. We even thought it might be best if we homeschooled you, but Mrs. Haskell was right. Better to face your fears and make a new normal, instead of sitting around worrying about it.”
She stands up and smoothes down her apron. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. If you let it.”
Like she knows for sure. Could she?
“Your dad’s waiting for you.”
I let her tug me to my feet.
“This is yours, too, Carey. I know it’s different. But it’s yours.”
I take back my hand, like a leaf letting go. It hurts too much to hang on. So why does it hurt so much to let go?
“Thank you, ma’am.” I look at her, then look away. “I reckon Delaney’s not too happy, though.”
If they make me leave, I’m taking this new coat with me, I think as I zip up my puffer coat—that’s what Melissa called it, a “puffer coat”—and pull on my mittens. The quilted waist-long white coat sprouts a hood lined in faux ermine. Or at least in my mind it is.
Melissa stops in the doorway and turns, her face thoughtful.
“Delly was used to things being a certain way, too. Although she’d never met you, you were already a part of her life. Not an easy part, either. So, Delly needs time. We all need time. Thank goodness we have plenty of it.”
She leaves me alone. I pull on the strange cap with its interwoven threads of blue-, pink-, and yellow-speckled wool, the braided ties hanging from the earflaps. I turn and catch myself in the mirror.
I’m always unleaving.
The woods girl stares back with her grim face, eyes the color of rotting leaves. I blink, and the One I Don’t Know Yet, blinks back.
Outside, I follow the light. I can hear my father moving around in the barn as I crunch my way through the snow and slide open the door. He’s flipping down straw bedding for the four goats to sleep on, while the donkeys, one cocoa brown and the other softest gray, munch hay in their stalls with half-closed lids.
My father ducks his head in greeting.
“I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watch him use the muck rake to pick up the last of the manure, tossing it into a huge wheelbarrow.
“You can sit there,” he says, motioning toward a bale of straw. “Let me just latch the stalls.”
He locks the animals in for the night, the goats watching me with their strange keyhole irises. They’re kind of cute, actually, with their nubby horns, which instantly remind me of Pan, god of the wild, keeper of shepherds and their flocks, nature and mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. Wooded glens. Violins around campfires. Margaret’s Spring. The goats are a huge hit with Nessa, if not with Shorty, who constantly tries to herd them from one place to another. My father slides the barn door open a smitch and leans in the opening.
“I know it’s difficult to talk about . . .” He pauses to light a cigarette, the smoke curling out the door and disappearing. “But I wanted to ask about your mama.”
I fidget on the bale, plucking a piece of straw just to have something to do with my hands.
“Your mama hit you girls?”
I think of Melissa, and nod. I can’t meet his eyes, either.
“She left you on your own in the woods? More than just that time we found you?”
Again, I nod.
“I know you said your sister stopped talking last year. What I want to know is why.”
I command myself to breathe. In, out. In, out. I’ve rehearsed the words in my head so many times, it should be easy.
“She never talked a lot to begin with, sir. It wasn’t like there were lots of folks to talk to anyhow.”
I see it in his eyes, the struggle not to push.
“Ness was five,” I continue. “After a few months, when she stayed like that, Mama took her to the speech therapist in town.” “Was there a precipitating event?”
“ ‘Precipitating’?”
I know so many words. It’s perplexing to come across so many I don’t.
“Something that upset her. There must’ve been a reason.”
I look at the animals, so warm and safe. The cocoa brown donkey peers at me, waiting for an answer, too. I don’t know what to say. All the prerehearsed words aren’t as easy with my father’s eyes upon me and his forehead creased with concern.
“I don’t know,” I say, trying not to look away, because liars look away. That’s what the man in the woods had said. I tremble, trying not to remember. My father pulls a blanket from a shelf and drapes it over my shoulders.