Raising Wrecker

CHAPTER THIRTEEN





The evening air was damp with a warm fog when Willow picked her way along the path that led from her yurt to the farmhouse. She’d stayed to herself, mostly, the past few days. The night Meg got sick Willow had caught a ride to the hospital, and she’d spent forty-eight anxious hours there, trying to comfort that inconsolable man. Meg’s system had been so thoroughly compromised by her illness, the doctors said, that even if she recovered from this bout of pneumonia she might not have enough strength to fight off the next bad bug that came her way. Len closed his ears to them. He focused his attention in a narrow beam at Meg, willing her back to health, and made Willow feel like an obstacle to his aim. She escaped as soon as she could.

Whatever Len did, though, seemed to have worked. They were home, now. The doctors released Meg a scant week after she’d entered through emergency, her breathing shallow and a fever raging through her system; she’d still need special care, they said, but they were amazed to see her recover so quickly. Willow shared in the relief, but she kept her distance. She turned her back to the meadow and to the strip of woods that separated her home from theirs, and counted on Ruth for updates. It wasn’t pride that made her stay away. It was grief. Len was the sole reason she’d stayed so long at Bow Farm, and she was leaving, now. Leaving Bow Farm, and leaving him.

A car door slammed shut on the knoll above the farmhouse, and Willow looked up to see Melody, her arms loaded with groceries, stumble down the path in her direction. Lugging the bags was Wrecker’s job. Willow shook her head. Everything had fallen apart at once. When Wrecker arrived at Meg’s bedside midway through the week, reeling from the news about his mother, Len had been as brusque and dismissive with him as he’d been with the rest of them. The boy had stormed off in anger, Ruth reported, and hitchhiked his way down to San Francisco. Good for him, Willow thought. She felt a pang of guilt as Melody drew closer. Ruth said Melody grew daily more frantic with worry. But what did she think, waiting so long to tell him? Willow figured there was a good chance Lisa Fay would soon be set free. Was that what Wrecker was doing, down there in the city? Looking for his mother?

The thought made her heart skip a beat.

The setting sun put an odd pink shine on the glossy leaves of Ruth’s kitchen garden. There was no place in the world like the Mattole Valley at the peak of summer, and Willow knew how sharply she’d miss it. Without speaking, she eased a bag from Melody’s arms. Together they entered the dooryard. Melody bumped open the front door with her hip, crossed to the counter, and set down the sacks. She handed Ruth a packet of the ginger candies she liked. “Heard anything from him?” she asked softly.

Ruth shook her head. She was simmering something on the stove and her shoulders hunched protectively over the pot. She caught Willow’s eye and then glanced back toward Melody. A look passed between them. “What,” Melody said, squinting suspiciously. Ruth gazed again at Willow, and looked away.

Melody turned to stare closely. Willow watched as her eyes widened. “Jesus, Willow,” she sputtered. “What’s the matter with you?”

Willow stiffened slightly and angled her body away from Melody. She had combed her hair, put herself together, but she knew her eyes were lined with red and the creases in her face cut deeper than they ever had. It had been a while since she’d slept through the night. She took off her jacket, hung it on the seat back, and rubbed her bony wrists. So she’d lost some weight. These weeks had been hard on them all. Willow set her jaw and tried to sound resolute. “We need to talk.”

Melody gave her hands a quick shake, and then smoothed them through her hair. “When people need to talk, they just talk. You mean there’s bad news.” She leaned forward, her face tense. “Tell me. What happened to him?”

“Wrecker’s fine,” Ruth said brusquely, tapping the spoon on the rim of the pot for emphasis.

Melody spun to face her. “Did he call here?”

“He’s traveling,” Ruth said, exasperated. “When he’s ready to come home, you’ll know it. He doesn’t need to report his every little move.” She lifted the spoon and wagged it toward Willow. “Stop thinking of yourself, for once. Willow has something to tell you.”

Melody’s eyes widened at Ruth’s tone. She sat reluctantly at the table.

Willow was annoyed to find that she couldn’t stop trembling. She crossed her arms in front of herself and tucked her hands against her sides. She could get her lips to move, but couldn’t count on her voice to power the words.

Ruth left her stove to scrape a chair out from the table and settle herself noisily in it. “Look,” she said bluntly. “Let’s not make this more than it is.” She turned to Melody. “Meg’s sick, and Len won’t see Willow. She thinks it’s over between them. I think Len will come around once Meg gets better, but she won’t be persuaded.” She cast Willow an impatient glance.

A fleet look of surprise and hurt skated across Melody’s face. Willow swallowed and gazed away. It wasn’t anybody’s business but hers. Ruth was just nosy that way; she took wild guesses and then ferreted out some version of the truth. But Ruth was wrong about this. Willow knew it wasn’t over with Len. “That’s not—,” she started, but shook her head and tucked her chin.

“So Willow’s moving. Giving up on Bow Farm.” Ruth frowned. She lifted both pudgy hands and cracked the knuckles, and then she stretched forward to lay her swollen digits over Willow’s long, thin fingers. “I wish you wouldn’t, girl.”

Ruth had it all wrong. Willow’s eyes glistened with tears. She was leaving because it wasn’t over. Not for her, it wasn’t. The past week had shown Willow that she wasn’t willing to share Len with anyone. Not even with Meg, to whom he rightfully belonged, and who needed him, now. Needed him whole, not divided. Needed him—

Jesus. What kind of person had she become?

It had nothing to do with sex. Len’s desire belonged to her alone. Willow was sure of that. But his attentiveness, the direction of his thoughts and his care and his profound hope—Meg was his beloved, and her illness had not changed that. She was delicate, now, her body and her mind made weak, but Len was connected to her in a way that had nothing to do with choice or intention. He could no more leave Meg than escape the compulsion that sent him to the woods each day. He was a woodcutter and a husband. Meg’s husband.

To Willow he was—

It was not less. Willow felt a clot of emotion surge in her throat, and she shifted her gaze to stare out the window and force herself to calm. Len loved her. He knew her in a way that she had never felt known before. And when their bodies finally collided, it was explosive for her in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. The potential had always been there, the tension that stretched like high-voltage wires between them—but she hadn’t expected to fall in love. Willow looked from Ruth to Melody. There was no way to explain. “Please,” she said. “If you could help—”

“Wait.” Melody looked bewildered. Her hair had come loose from its bun and swirled around her face in disarray. “The farm payment?” She glanced anxiously at Ruth and then back. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But you aren’t saying—”

Willow forced herself to meet Melody’s frightened gaze. “I’ll need some money to get started,” she said, and hated to hear her voice crack with the strain. “You’ll have to go to the bank, Melody. You’ll have to refinance. But I’ll turn over my share in the farm to you.”

“No, Willow. Please. I can’t lose the farm. Not now.”

“You won’t lose it, Melody. Go to the bank. They’ll write a new loan.”

“They’ll laugh me out the door!”

“You can manage without me, this time.” Willow paused. She braced herself, and made her voice clear and harsh. “You have to.”

Ruth huffed with dismay. “Len will come around.” Her voice was a rheumy murmur. “Give him a little time, Willow. Len loves—”

“Yes.” Willow stood abruptly. “That’s the problem. Len loves me.” She gathered her jacket from the chair back and thrust her arms into it. “He loves me, and he loves Meg, too. But he needs to take care of Meg, now. It will kill him to divide himself, and if I’m here, he’ll try to do it.” Willow struggled with the zipper and gave up, pulled the leaves of her jacket snug around her. “Ruth, please. I need your help.” Ruth raised her head, and the wattles shook under her chin. “I need you to keep an eye on him, see him through this. But tonight, go over and take care of Meg. Tell Len I need to see him.”

“Willow. Are you sure—”

“Please, Ruth. I’m begging you. Stay with Meg until Len gets back.”

Ruth crossed the floor and gripped Willow hard. “Don’t beg me,” she said, pulling her close. “I won’t know it’s you.”

Willow let herself huddle against Ruth’s warm bulk for a little while. She could hear her friend’s heart beat slow and steady, wrapped deep in that soft flesh. Then she pried herself away and escaped through the kitchen door, letting it slam behind her. Willow turned once to see Ruth’s troubled face shining in the window. She knew Melody was too furious to turn toward her. And terrified. Melody might never forgive her.

That stubborn woman. If she saw what she had—

Willow tucked her chin and sloped forward across the yard.

Her yurt was a mess. As disheveled as the inside of her mind, Willow thought, as she paced the single room, dropping books and papers into half-filled boxes and turning out cabinets and drawers. She was a neat person, a meticulous person, but she had crossed a line somewhere and now her thoughts and her things alike lay scattered about her like the aftermath of a disaster. She lowered herself to the side of her bed. It was no disaster. She’d been forced to see what had been there for a long time: she was in love with a man who was married to someone else, and her children were light-years from her, living a life from which she had excised herself. Neatly. Irrevocably, maybe. Willow pushed herself up and moved stiffly, forcing herself to clear her shelves of books, stacking them in random boxes and hastily sealing them up. She needed to have as much done as she could before Len arrived. That way there would be no question. He would understand she was leaving, and he would have to agree. It was the right thing. It was the only thing.

Willow paused with her hand around a clutch of books. It was possible that Len wouldn’t come. If Meg needed him—if he thought that she needed him—he’d stay and tend to her. He would send a message through Ruth that said, I’ll come later. Another day. When Meg is better.

Or send no message at all.

She shook her head. She couldn’t concern herself with that. She would fill boxes and protect furniture and pad the framed artwork that hung from her walls. She would disassemble the loom, stuff away the skeins of spun yarn, gather her weavings heedlessly into bags. She would ignore the vivid colors and novel patterns, her efforts to tame the wild into something that made sense. To tame herself, her own unruly heart.

Maybe he wouldn’t come. Her knees softened and she sank gently to the floor.

These things, what did they matter? The tools and materials of her trade, the spun yarn and pigments of her passion, the books, the memories and small keepsakes collected from her travels, least of all the lovely, utilitarian items of her daily life—

He would come.

The cedar box lay tucked in back of a locked drawer in her writing desk. Willow got up and searched for the key. She unlocked the drawer and felt behind the boxes of envelopes and stationery for its smooth polished shape. It took some effort to tug it out, and she placed in at the center of the desk and stood for some time with her hands on its lid.

He would come. He would come, and still she would go.

Willow heard a sound outside. It was dark, and the yurt would be glowing like a lantern at the edge of the meadow. It would guide whoever had come—Len or Ruth—along the worn trail from his cabin.

The door opened, and there he stood.

“Oh,” Len said.

She couldn’t take her eyes from him. She had planned to be crisp, expeditious, dispassionate. That would make it easier for them both, she thought. But the fact of him interfered with her intentions.

“Oh,” he said again, this time with neither surprise nor confusion.

“It’s the only way, Len.”

When she saw his face change, she wanted to call back the stupid words. She would recant. She would unpack the boxes and return the books to the shelves and replace the artwork on the walls and try to believe again in the patterns of the weavings.

But then his face changed once more. It darkened into an expression she’d never seen him wear before, and he stepped toward her.

Willow stepped back.

“No,” he said, his voice a guttural snarl that rose from his belly.

Len caught himself, though. It took some time. Twice he turned to leave, but he didn’t follow through. He waited long enough for his face to change entirely and for them both to weary of standing there, such a distance between them. And then the only solution appeared to be to reduce that distance. Cautiously, deliberately, Len took one measured step forward. And against one part of her will but in accord with the rest of it she stepped forward to meet him there, in the middle, and together they sidestepped—it wasn’t a waltz, but it might have looked that way, to a stranger—to Willow’s bed.

At first they were overcome with a rank urgency, their clothes still on and their bodies exacting the penalty of their anger from each other.

And then they rested, not touching, not talking, not looking at each other.

The second time Willow let Len draw her clothes from her slowly, sliding her silk shirt through the thin gap between their bodies. She let him lay his face in the crease of her neck and against the swell of her belly, felt his desire rise with the scent of her skin. When he reached for her she climbed onto him and held his wrists against the sheets and dragged the sway of her breasts across his lips; and when he couldn’t—would not—wait any longer she let go of him so he could grasp her hips and slide himself inside her. He watched her move above him, watched his own work-hardened hands run up her sides to lay dark on her pale breasts, and then he turned and carried her beneath him, drawing out the sweetness for as long as he could last.

The third time, she took him in that other way and he came again so suddenly and violently she thought that he would shake apart.

The fourth time was no time at all. They had slept for hours. Len woke first when the faintest light glimmered through the east windows, and he gazed at Willow for a long time. She opened her eyes to find him like that. Willow reached a hand to stroke the stubbled line of his jaw. She felt him stir against her thigh. But her face changed, softer still, and she moved away from him and slowly eased herself from the bed.

Wearily, Len rose.

She threaded his arms through his shirt. She snapped the buttons together with tenderness and care. He pulled on his jeans and Willow fastened the buckle of his belt. Then she sat him in the armchair and she gently eased on each sock, fit each boot to each foot, and wept.

“Go,” she said, pointing to the door.

And Len did.

Willow slept then, for some time. She was pretty sure a day had elapsed—a whole day of sun and heat and brilliance and the night that followed it, lost to her—and that when she woke it was not the same dawn but a new one. It helped her to believe that. It seemed to lend a kind of hope to the prospect that she might make it through.

She finished packing, and then there was one final thing to do.

She sat at her desk and opened the box. Slowly, thoughtfully, Willow gazed at each of the photographs. She spread them across her desk so that no one obscured another. Her son Teddy at nine, the lead in the school play. David at thirteen, stiff in a suit and tie, going off to a debate tournament. Emily before she could walk. All three of them holding a large carved pumpkin the year she left, grinning their goofiest grins, the black patch covering Teddy’s eye. Dozens of photographs, her children caught posed or candid by the camera lens, alone, with each other, with Ross, with herself, all together as a family, without the slightest thought that harm would come, that something—a small thing, really, what did it matter?—would rise up to split them from one another, send them to live separate lives.

And the one that didn’t match. The little blond boy in the baseball jersey and cap, eating an ice cream cone on a set of cement stairs, his mother beside him.

Willow shuffled the others gently back into the box and closed the lid. The last one she left before her on the desk. She drew a sheet of paper from the desk drawer and lifted a pen from the cup. Dear Wrecker, she began.

It seemed important to me to leave you this photograph. I think you can guess who the people are, in it.

She didn’t know how, exactly, to speak to him of this. But she was leaving, now. She had to do this. For him. For Lisa Fay. For Melody, she hoped; and not against her. Willow dipped her head and continued, trusting to what would come.

By now you may have already met your mother. If so, she will tell you the story herself. If not? I hope that one day you will meet her, and that you’ll give her the chance to explain to you what happened, and why, and what it meant to her. It’s not for me to do that. I can only tell you my story.

Willow leaned back in the chair. She wasn’t sure why she needed to tell him this. It didn’t concern him, really. He didn’t know these people. It was possible that he would never meet them. But if she showed him this—that she had made a mistake, and that she knew it, and that it had nothing and everything to do with love—maybe he would understand that there were things that happened that could not be helped, and that all they could do was go on.

And so she went on.

When I was not very much older than you are now, I met a man. We got married, and after a little while our son David was born. After David came Teddy, two years later. And then, four years after Teddy, Emily was born. Ross was a good father. I was a good mother. Our kids were good kids. Ross and I had our disagreements but we never let them get in the way of being parents.

And then one day (a Sunday, I remember, because I was driving the children home from church), something happened. The car hit a patch of ice and spun out of my control and went over an embankment. And the kids were fine. Miraculously, the kids were fine. Except Teddy, who was 12, and it was just that a piece of shattered glass from a Coke bottle he’d held in his hands found its way to his face. It lodged itself in the fold beneath his eye. And even though I got them all out of the car and up the embankment to the road and flagged down help and got Teddy to the hospital, my son lost his vision in that eye.

Willow lifted the pen from the paper. Her hand was shaking slightly and she placed the pen carefully on the desk. She hadn’t told this story to anyone for so long. Not since all those times of repeating it in the courtroom, to the evaluator, to her lawyer.

The accident had changed her. It had changed the way she could mother them. She became fearful, smothering the children more than they could tolerate. The boys were growing older and needed the room to branch out on their own, needed to take chances. And she and Ross—things fell apart between them. Ross drank more. One night, when he’d had so much to drink that his speech slurred and his skin flamed an ugly rose color, Ross turned to her. His voice was thin and incisive, a hot wire laid upon her brain. It was your fault, he said.

Of course it was her fault. Whose fault could it have been? She was driving the car. She had lost control. She knew it was her fault. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d been in charge. Her children had been in her care. And one of them had been harmed in a way that could not be set right.

She did everything she could to set it right, and all it did was make things worse.

I’m leaving, Ross said.

Willow secured a lawyer. She couldn’t make Ross stay, but no judge would take custody from a mother. A good mother, who had done nothing wrong.

She’s unfit, Ross said.

Willow almost laughed. She was fitter than anyone, at anything. She was fitter than Ross.

As far as the judge could see, she was fit.

Our son was blinded as a result of her actions, Ross said.

Accidents happen, the judge said, and besides, he’s got one eye left to see through.

The children are afraid to be with her, Ross said.

Ross was lying. Wasn’t he? The judge ordered an evaluation. The children were questioned. They were old enough, the judge deemed, to choose which parent they would rather live with, and they chose their father.

Well, all right, then, the judge said, and let his gavel fall. Weekends and holidays with their mother.

We’ll fight it, Willow’s lawyer muttered. Don’t lose hope.

It wasn’t hope she lost. It was heart. No, Willow said.

What? Her lawyer was shocked.

I’m leaving, Willow said. Her limbs felt like lead but she forced them to move. They’ll be safe with him. Let them grow up normally.

No mother is not normal, he reminded her. You have weekends. You have holidays.

But she turned her back on him and left, and it had been eighteen years since she’d seen them.

She had not driven once in all that time.

Willow picked up the pen and bent over the page.

Later on, when my husband lost faith in and I were separated, our children were forced to choose between their two parents. At the time, I didn’t see the error of that. I was overwhelmed with shame and anger that they did not choose to be with me.

That was my mistake, not to see. And then I made a bigger mistake. I walked away from them. I told myself they’d be better off without me.

Wrecker. Listen to me. Don’t choose. Melody is your mother. Lisa Fay is your mother, too. It’s not fair, what happened to you as a little boy. But what happened to you after that

She stopped there. May have saved your life, she meant to write. But it hadn’t only saved him. It may have saved them all.

What happened after that was a good thing.

I’m leaving now to see if I can find my children. They’ll all be grown, now, which seems impossible. But if I can find them, and if they’ll see me, I won’t let the time we lost stop us from spending the time ahead in whatever kind of together they allow.

I hope I’ll see you again some day.

Love,

Willow

Willow set the pen aside. She ran the tip of her finger lightly along the deckled edge of the photograph, and straightened it beside the letter. Then she stood and slowly walked the perimeter of the yurt, pausing at each window to gaze at length at the view. She had been looking out these windows for eighteen years. It was time for a change.

Wrecker stood in the motorcycle showroom in downtown San Francisco and let his gaze run over the shiny chrome of the new Triumph.

The salesman approached. “Hell, yeah,” the man said, tipping his head toward the bike. “If I were a young buck like you? I’d be riding something like this.”

Wrecker glanced at him. The man was balding, gone to pot, with bland hazel eyes and a manufactured smile. Wrecker pegged him for a Honda 750, with a fairing and a sound system and maybe a little trailer he towed behind for long road trips. “I’ve been looking at that Ducati,” Wrecker said.

The salesman stepped over toward the Italian bike and laid a proprietary hand on its gas tank. “This one? Hell of a lot of motorcycle. You’d want to be sure you could handle it.”

Wrecker had a bank check big enough to buy the Triumph outright. His inheritance, compounded quarterly for ten years. He thumbed the check in the front pocket of his jeans. As if life weren’t absurd enough already. An inheritance, from grandparents he never even knew he had. “How much did you say you want for it?”

The man chuckled deep in his throat. His eyes had an unexpected gleam in them. “This one’s a honey, brother. Open her up on the highway and you’d better be hanging on. One forty, one forty-five, and the motor’s just purring like a cat.” He patted the leather seat and fixed Wrecker in his gaze. “Listen to me. You buy this baby, she’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

Wrecker looked at the bike. Then he looked out the window.

He had been where he thought he should go. When he arrived in the city he had gone to an arcade and played foosball all afternoon, let the chimes and bells of the machines and the shouts of the men and boys who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the hall cover his thoughts with white noise. He had careened like a tourist from one district to the next, wearing down his rubber soles, flashing his transfer at bus drivers and Muni men. He snuck a bike past the monitors at the rental stands and rode it fast through mud bogs in the park. He went to the top floor of an old apartment building and threw glass bottles down the trash chute just to listen to them smash. He found a place in Chinatown where he could buy M-80s; he wired them to a makeshift raft and tried to blow it up offshore. And then he turned eighteen, and found himself standing in the rain outside the big stone building that housed the records downtown.

He could go inside. Tell them his name. And they would hand him his file.

He would learn about the prison, Len had said. He could go there, ask to see her.

But Wrecker had turned away. He had walked faster, turned corners with abandon. He didn’t know if he was running away from or running toward. Or which would work out better.

Wrecker blinked, and looked again at the motorcycle salesman. All of a sudden the only place he wanted to go was home.

“Maybe,” he said, backing toward the door. It had been over a week, longer than he’d ever been away.

He would give it some thought, he told the salesman. And then he stepped out to the street, settled his cap on his head, and pointed himself toward the Mattole.

Melody had driven the hatchback to Eureka, parked it in the lot of the Piggly-Wiggly, and used the pay phone on the corner to call her brother. “Jack?” she said anxiously.

If the answer were yes the news would have leapt out the minute he recognized her voice. “Hey, Mel,” he said.

Her hopes crashed. There was no place to sit down. She leaned her weight on the small metal counter and tried hard not to cry.

“I made your case,” Jack said. “I told him it was the right thing to do. I vouched for you, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Melody nodded.

“You all right?”

She had to focus on breathing. She’d been to see the man who held the note on the farm, and the best he could manage was a two-month extension. If she didn’t come up with the balance by then, he warned, he’d have to file for foreclosure.

“I tried, Mel. He said—”

“Don’t. Jack?” Melody put a hand to her forehead and looked out the glass at the clear sky. “Probably better not to tell me.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Listen. I could cash in some paper. Get you a grand or two.”

Melody shook her head. “That won’t do it. But, thanks. I appreciate it.”

There was a longer pause, and then Jack said, “Dad respects you. That you’ve made it on your own. He says he’s confident you can make it through this too, and that it’ll—”

“Tell him f*ck you.” Her voice was sharp. “Okay, Jack? Can you remember that? F*ck you very much.”

“You’re back in the will, Melody.”

“A lot of good that’ll do me if I lose the farm.”

There was a charged moment of silence. “Okay, then,” Jack said. She could tell from the sound of his voice that someone had entered the room. “Okay. Good luck. I’ll talk to you soon.” And he hung up.

Melody pushed her way out of the phone booth, stuffed both hands in her jacket pockets, and forced back the tears she felt rise against her eyelids. How was she supposed to go about any of this? Willow was the one who held things together, who kept it all under control. She had finessed the financing all those years ago, had insisted Melody save for this day. Melody, who couldn’t keep two dimes lodged in one pocket for fear they’d talk each other into leaping out. But she had scrimped and saved and denied herself and put Wrecker’s less pressing needs on hold and squirreled away just enough to meet her end of the payment. She had worked shitty jobs when the Merc folded and got involved in complicated fruitless moneymaking schemes and had nearly killed herself and Wrecker those months they’d ventured into the soap-making business, the fumes unexpectedly overcoming them; and then she’d slowly paid those doctors’ bills, eked out enough to invest in the tie-dye equipment, found a way to turn a small profit at the end of an exhausting season of work. She had met her end of the bargain.

A solid vein of grief ran like an unmined ore straight through the center of Melody’s heart. Bow Farm was the only place she had ever lived that felt like home. It had made a mother of her. She’d turned the corner from a wild, unhappy youth to a middle age that felt like something she could settle into, something that would let her, even, even, okay, blossom, was there a better way to put it?—late bloomer that she was, let her grow into someone she wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life with. As.

Alone, maybe. Her son gone AWOL, furious with her—and her best friend falling to pieces.

Melody stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and pictured what they stood to lose. Her ramshackle barn. Ruth’s kitchen, clean as a whistle. The little clearing upslope of them all where Wrecker had started to build himself a house. A home. His home, a home he could count on for the rest of his life. Every little patch of ground was soaked with who they were. And if they lost that?

Melody shoved her hands deeper in her pockets and kept walking.

Wrecker hitched a ride with a cement truck that got him as far as their turnoff from the Mattole Road. He hoofed it the rest of the way.

The hatchback was gone from its parking spot. He felt a little stab at its absence. He trudged down the hill and pushed his way through the farmhouse door. Ruth looked up from the lump of dough she was kneading at the kitchen table and Wrecker tried to read her expression. Something was wrong. “Meg?” he asked, his heart in his throat.

“She’s fine. She’s home with Len.”

He flashed her a tentative smile.

Ruth wiped her hands on the sides of her jeans and came around the table. “I’m glad you’re back.” She hugged him. “I missed you.” She held on to the sleeves of his shirt and stood back to look at him. “You don’t look any older. But happy birthday, anyway.”

Wrecker shrugged. “Not so happy, really. Nobody made me a cake.” The corner of his mouth tilted up in a grin. “You still could, Ruthie.”

“Maybe I will. Chocolate, with chocolate frosting. That’s what I’ll do.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll never lose weight living near you, boy.” Ruth crossed back to her dough and resumed kneading. “Did you find her?” she asked casually.

Wrecker’s face clouded. “Did Melody say something?”

“She did.”

“She shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe not. But you don’t really think she could keep a secret around me, do you?” Her eyes crinkled, and then softened into seriousness. “Listen. Why don’t you go see Willow?”

“I’ll talk to her when I’m ready.”

“I think you should go now,” Ruth said gently.

Wrecker turned sharply and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. He opened the refrigerator door and studied its contents. Ruth kept a tender eye on him.

“Leave it alone, Ruthie,” he muttered, and walked outside.

The yurt had suffered in the last few seasons. Flickers had taken a new interest in it and had hammered sizable holes in much of the cedar trim, and the waterproof top had proved no match for the rain that drenched the Mattole Valley. The deck was softening with pockets of rot. Wrecker stood outside in the meadow. There was a stillness that said no one was home. He called Willow’s name, and when no one answered Wrecker climbed the steps and ducked through the door.

Inside, a corner of the floor was stacked with moving boxes. The shelves were empty. All of the books had been packed away. Willow had broken the loom down into its composite pieces, gathered them in bundles with twine. The place smelled of lemon oil. Wrecker made a circuit of the room. It seemed smaller, so much plainer, without her. He had never noticed how shabby it had become. He had not been there in some time. He and Willow—it had never gone easy for them, but he hated the thought of her leaving. And then Wrecker paused at the old trestle table she used as a work desk. There was no way he could miss the sheet of paper addressed to him. Or the photograph beside.

Wrecker felt his anger rise. He hadn’t asked for this. If he’d wanted to know, he’d have gone to find out on his own. He looked around in a mounting fury. The yurt was a flimsy structure, never meant to last this long. He could rip it from its anchors, send it asail in a stiff wind. He could burn the place down. He could destroy the letter before he glanced at it again and never know its contents.

Wrecker waited for his anger to ebb. Then he picked up the letter and read it through to the end.

When he finished, Wrecker sat in the only chair and let his head rest in his hands. He heard soft footsteps cross the deck before Willow appeared in the doorway, and he lifted his head to meet her gaze. She was thinner than he ever remembered seeing her. Her face was pale. She had dressed for town. “You came back,” Willow said.

Wrecker gestured to the letter. “You’re leaving.” It jumped out of his mouth like an accusation.

She crossed her arms loosely on her chest and leaned in the doorframe. “It’s time to go.” She gestured to the boxes. “I’ve hired someone to come get my things tomorrow.”

Wrecker looked away. Why now? he thought to ask, but he didn’t think he wanted to know the answer to that. “Where to?”

She gave a little twitch of her cheek. “Eureka, temporarily. I rented an apartment there. I have some things to take care of.” Wrecker glanced down and fingered the page, and she nodded. “I was out in the meadow,” she said, and smiled softly. “I saw you come inside.”

“Were you waiting for me to read this?”

Willow gave the slightest shrug. “Some things can’t be said.” She waited for him to lift his head and slowly added, “And some things have to be. I want you to know this, Wrecker. I thought Melody was making a mistake when she took you. I thought she would grow to regret it.” She hesitated. “I was wrong about her. I was wrong about you, too.”

Wrecker struggled to keep his face impassive.

“I’m hoping to be wrong about myself, as well.” She slowly rose and crossed the room. She turned at the door. “That photograph? I know you don’t want that. I’ve kept it for you for a long time. If you’d rather, I’ll hold it until you’re ready.” She watched his face. And then she nodded and she turned and left.

Wrecker gave her time to cross the meadow and make her way toward the road, and then he stood and stepped outside and gently pulled the door shut behind him. He looked out at the evening fog beginning to wisp its way in off the ocean, and it gave him the courage he needed to look down at the object in his hand. It was a small, square black-and-white photograph. The stamp on the back read “June 30, 1968,” and there were two people in it.

One of them was him.

Wrecker walked back to his cabin. It was lonely there. It was a boy’s room, and he didn’t feel like a boy any longer. He lifted the quilt with its sails and waves from his bed, felt its familiar heft, and folded it. He set it on top of his dresser. He looked at it there and then he picked it up and shoved it onto a high shelf, out of sight.

Ruth was in the farmhouse. She watched him warily as he dragged himself up the steps and into the kitchen. “So you heard?”

“Willow’s leaving.”

Ruth nodded her head. “I guess we all are.” Wrecker looked at her sharply. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“She told me a lot of things.”

“She didn’t say anything about the farm?”

“Like what, Ruth?”

“Oh, honey.” Ruth sighed and it sounded like the end of the world. “Without Willow’s half, Melody can’t afford to make the payment. She’s trying to find a way to keep the farm out of foreclosure.” She bit her lip. “She thought she might have to sell the place.”

Wrecker paled. He would need to borrow the truck, he said.

Melody was outside, sitting on the stone steps of the savings and loan. When she saw the truck she slowly stood up. He had come back. She waited quietly while he parked and crossed the street to approach her. He was taller than he had been the week before. He was more beautiful than she remembered. He was his own man. She had not ruined him. That she had managed that— “Well, look what the cat drug home,” she said wryly, and let her happiness spread across her face.

Wrecker reached into his back pocket for the check. He unfolded it and handed it to Melody.

She shook her head. “Six thousand dollars. Where did you get this?”

“Len kept it for me.”

She looked again at the check and slowly realized what he meant. “Your mother’s money,” she said softly. She folded it in half and passed it back to him. “That’s yours, son.”

“Deedee.” His face looked pained. “If the farm is in trouble, let me help. It’s my home.” He paused, and his voice lowered, took on a grudging tone. “And you’re my mother.”

Melody searched his face. “I know that,” she said quietly. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I know, but—”

“You think I don’t know that?” She reached up and patted his cheek. She grabbed him around the middle and fake-pummeled his ribs. “You think I don’t know that, bub?”

Wrecker’s face wrinkled like he’d suddenly been exposed to too bright a light. He gave a small, asymmetrical pant. “The farm?”

“The farm is ours.” Melody shrugged, and gestured to the building behind them. “God knows why, but they gave me the loan.” She took his arm. “Come on,” she said, dragging him into the street. “You drive. Let’s get home.”