she said finally.
“Of course,” he said. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “The guy who abducted and murdered three boys over a five-year period in Massachusetts.”
“And walked free.”
Greg’s fork hovered between plate and mouth. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he watched her, remembering. “And then was found murdered in his home about a year later. Just like Markham. Just like—”
He let the sentence trail. Neither one of them liked to say his name, as if it was a spell, a conjuring. Greg frowned instead, and she watched his gears spin, making all the connections, seeing the possibilities, the size and scope of the story. A newsman through and through. His shoulders straightened a bit.
He took a bite of kale. “You think there’s a connection?”
“I think the Feds think there’s a connection.”
He had big brown eyes, with girlishly long lashes. His gaze could be sweet, loving. It could also pin you to the wall with its intensity.
“So, Markham’s not the story.”
“He’s a piece of a much bigger one. Like you said. That story’s over.”
“So, what are you telling me?” he said, chewing slowly. “That you want to go back to work?”
She peered down into her wineglass. Did she? Was that what she wanted?
She was about to answer and ask for his help. But then Lily issued a wail through the monitor that startled them both. She moved toward the stairs, grateful to break away from the conversation, started to climb.
“Hey, Rain,” he said, coming to stand at the bottom of the stairs. “Just one question. Is this about the story? Or is this about—what happened?”
The question sent a jolt through her body, caused heat to come to her cheeks. She froze on the stairs.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said, bowing his head and resting a hand on the banister. His tone was gentle. “Just think about it.”
She kept moving up to the nursery.
In the dim of the nursery, Rain rocked Lily, who was sound asleep again in her arms. She could have exited a while ago, but she hadn’t. She needed that warm body next to her heart. She wanted to stay in the pretty quiet of the baby’s room, just for a while.
She rubbed at the deep scar on her right calf, which had been aching since her run. But maybe it wasn’t the exercise that caused it to throb.
What happened.
It was buried so deep that she never even thought about it anymore. Almost. Sometimes it surfaced in dreams when she was especially stressed or overtired. Sometimes it came back to her at odd moments—maybe it was a song from that time, or the smell of wet leaves, that certain pitch of a child shrieking in that way that could be delight or terror. Then it came back. Just this clutch in her throat, a hollow that opened in her middle. It was a hundred years ago, a million. But it wasn’t. It was yesterday.
Back then they played. Out on the streets riding bikes with her friends, they had the run of the neighborhood. She walked through the acres of woods between developments, thick green above, ground sun-dappled and littered with leaves, and waded in the cool water of clean creeks. With her best friends, Tess and Hank, she rode to the corner store in the summer heat for ice cream, cicadas singing, heat rising off the blacktop in waves. Quiet afternoons leaked into evenings, the light turning that certain kind of golden orange reserved for summer. She’d arrive home dirty and hungry, with bruises and scrapes, tired just because they’d been in motion all day, running and falling, wrestling, riding, climbing. Her body used to ache, tingle with fatigue when she crashed into bed. And wasn’t there a kind of bliss in physical fatigue?
She’d eat at the table with her mother, sometimes her father on the rare night when he stopped work at a decent time. Summer-night dinners were burgers, or steak, or chicken on the grill, and fresh corn on the cob, fluffy green salads, buttery baked potatoes. Tess and Hank were at her place a lot for supper. Both of Hank’s parents worked big jobs in the city; they were never around. Tess’s father had left when Tess was small, and her mother was an ER nurse at the big hospital in town. She was often around during the day, leaving Tess alone in the evenings or for the late shift. Sometimes Tess stayed with Rain’s family. Only Rain’s mother stayed home, cooking, cleaning, driving them around.
After dinner, maybe they went out again, played with the other neighborhood kids. Flashlight tag. Fireflies in jars. Shrieks rang through the night, squeals of laughter. Eventually, always, someone started to cry. Then moms were on the porches, hands on hips. Time to go inside. Do it again tomorrow.
That’s how Rain grew up, anyway. Most people seemed to think that kids had lost something, that freedom to roam, to play unfettered. But Rain knew better. Kids lost their freedom for a reason. Because it wasn’t safe to roam.
But they didn’t know that then. They didn’t know anything.
“My mom doesn’t want me to cut through the woods anymore,” said Rain that day, twelve. “She wants us to take the long way around if we’re going to meet Hank.”
She stood on the edge of the road. Here it turned off onto a dirt path that ran between two neighborhoods. The dirt path would carry them over a stone bridge, through a stand of trees, until it let them out by a field. From there it was another five minutes to Hank’s house.
“The street is more dangerous, don’t you think?” said Tess with a shrug. “More cars lately.”
That was true. There was a hairpin turn with one of those mirrors mounted up in the tree so you could see who was coming from the other direction. But there were lots of teenagers driving. They drove too fast, were looking at the radio or at each other, anything but the road ahead. A kid had been struck on his bicycle last summer. He was okay, walked around with a cast for a few weeks. They all signed it.
It wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, as Rain saw it. More like a mention over breakfast.
Stay out of the woods, okay?
Why?
Mom paused like she did when she didn’t want to answer, looked over to Rain’s father, who was hidden behind the newspaper.
Just listen to your mother, darling. Her father rarely had rules, or chimed in on her mother’s. In fact, if her father ever told her to do anything, it was to question the rules, ask anything, push the boundaries. Believe half of what you see, he was famous for saying. And nothing of what you hear.
“Besides,” said Tess. “It will take forever.”
She was right. It was a long way around, two big hills, an extra fifteen minutes, maybe more. And it was hot. Just before ten in the morning and it was already blazing. They didn’t have their bikes. Tess had a flat and her mom said she’d fix it over the weekend. So they were on foot. The sun was bright, and the creek was babbling. She saw the red flash of a northern cardinal, heard its cry of alarm. It was a fairy-tale forest, a place they knew as well as they knew
