Zell nodded. “That she is.” She picked up the shovel and scooped out another bit of dirt, carefully depositing it on top of the small mound they’d created. “So what brings you this way today?”
“Just out taking a walk.” She held up Rigby’s leash, though the dog had flopped down beside her. “I walk Myrtle Honeycutt’s dog every day. My mom used to do it, but then she got plantar fasciitis and couldn’t do it anymore. So I said I would.” She shrugged. “It makes me get out.”
“Well, it sounds like I’m not the only do-gooder around here.” Zell gave her a wink and scooped out more dirt. Bryte felt like she should grab a shovel and help.
“Gonna have any more, ya think?” Zell asked. Her face was turned toward the hole, and for that Bryte was grateful. It was amazing how people could toss that question off so casually. People had been doing it with some regularity since Christopher turned two, as if it were up to them to determine when it was time for Bryte and Everett to add to their family.
“Well, we had a bit of trouble even having him, so I’m not sure there’ll be any more.” She gave her standard response and looked around, wishing Cailey would bring Christopher back so she could go. The silence between the women lengthened, and Bryte searched for words to fill it.
“Do you ever think about coming back to book club?” She thought she saw Zell’s shoulders tense at the question, but it could’ve just been from the shoveling. “I just joined a few months ago, and they told me you used to be part of it. I know they’d love to have you back.”
Zell leaned on the shovel and studied her for a moment. “I’ll give it some thought.” She winked. “Since you asked.”
“OK,” Bryte answered. “I can send you the list of titles for the fall. We’ve only decided on books till the end of the year. Your e-mail’s in the directory, right?”
Zell nodded. “That it is.” On the ground the dog made a whimpering noise and rested his head on his paws, looking mournful.
“I guess I’d better get going,” Bryte said.
“Cailey!” Zell called. “Bring Christopher back here! His mama’s ready to go!”
Bryte wondered if she was actually ready, then realized it didn’t matter whether she was or not. She was on her way.
She tried steering Christopher’s stroller over the roots and branches and piles of dead leaves in the woods, but the overgrown path was just too precarious. One miscalculation of a root and she could accidentally topple the stroller. And negotiating both the dog and the child wasn’t the easiest thing. She stood still for a moment, determining just how to get back here. She’d come far enough to be able to make out the clearing where the hideaway had been. She was too close not to lay eyes on it, to see if it matched what lived in her memory. Though this was a fool’s errand, she didn’t want to abandon it.
She unlatched Christopher and pulled him up into her arms, much as Cailey had done earlier. She held him close as they moved deeper into the woods and clung tightly to Rigby’s leash. Without the stroller to manage, she made it to the clearing quickly, Christopher heavy in her arms. He did not ask to get down, didn’t protest being carried. He was quite calm and docile, taking in the cooler, dark surroundings with a kind of acceptance, as if this were an everyday activity for the two of them. He did not ask questions as he normally would have, did not point to the squirrels and birds they passed. He just looked around with those knit, curious brows. She kissed his cheek, and he rewarded her with a grin. His breath, so close to her face, smelled of the cookie Zell had given to him before they’d left her house.
Bryte looked around, trying to remember what the place used to look like, ascertaining whether it had changed. The trees were a bit taller, the vegetation perhaps denser, but otherwise she knew exactly where she was. She heard a branch snap, and a rustling noise, and she took a step back in the direction they’d come from. These woods had creeped her out as kid, and they didn’t seem less foreboding now that she was an adult.
She thought of the news reports of Hannah Sumner, gone missing from a neighborhood nearby, one very much like this one. They’d discussed her at the pool just recently, swapping bits of information they’d gleaned from various news reports and rumors, their voices low and out of earshot of the kids. She thought of the madness that would ensue if Christopher ever went missing. Losing him would be the end of her—this she knew more certainly than anything. She pulled him tighter still, and he squirmed in protest. He pointed at the copse of trees ahead. They’d reached Everett and Jencey’s hideaway.
“Go in there?” he asked. She set him down but kept hold of his hand, scanning the area as she did, just to make sure. There was talk of coyotes in these woods as well.
She looked down at him, willed herself to relax. “You want to?”
He nodded vigorously, his brows unknotting, his face open. They moved closer to the hideaway. She took exaggerated tiptoe steps forward like Elmer Fudd hunting “wabbits,” and Christopher laughed. They were on an adventure, nothing more, nothing less. But how would she explain to Everett if he mentioned it that night at the dinner table? She would have to say they were somewhere else; that was all. She could lie to Everett.
“I just want to be friends” was the first lie she ever told him, just after that make-out session in ninth grade. Jencey had been away with her family, and Bryte had made a good stand-in, a practice dummy. This was before Everett and Jencey had officially coupled off, but everyone knew it was coming. Bryte’s lie had been a preemptive strike, an attempt to save face before he chose Jencey. What happened between them that one night, she told herself—and him—meant nothing. She stuck to that particular story for a long, long time, right up until the night she admitted her real feelings for him, the night everything changed between them and he became hers for real.
But there’d always been that nagging doubt that it wasn’t real.
Pushing the branches back, she held her breath and stepped inside the hideaway, hoping that she didn’t find that same blow-up mattress, and evidence that her husband and Jencey had resumed their meetings somehow. She exhaled as she stepped inside, finding nothing at all save a little clearing, the trees encircling them and blocking all visibility except the small patch of sky just over their heads. She looked up at it, the neat round bit of blue the only thing she could see that wasn’t green.
She pointed at the natural skylight so Christopher would look up, too, thinking as she did of how Jencey and Everett would lie on that blow-up mattress and wish on whatever stars they could find in that circle, their arms folded behind their heads, their eyes intent on what lay in front of them. The scene was almost like her own memory, even though she’d never witnessed it, only heard about it from Jencey. Bryte knew full well what Jencey’s wishes were, even if she wasn’t privy to Everett’s back then. She wondered if those old wishes depressed Jencey now. She could only guess at what her husband’s wishes had been, and if the life they’d built together looked anything like whatever he’d thought of when he watched the stars twinkle in that small circle of sky.
EVERETT