14

The flames lick the air with orange tongues. Adelaide sips her hot tea and watches the fireplace because it is easier than looking into her daughter’s eyes.

“I need you to answer me.”

Adelaide is silent as a burning log collapses, pitching smoldering ash into the air. It burns out before landing on the hearth.

“Goddamn it, Mother. Who is the baby food for?”

“I owe you no explanations, Catherine.”

“The hell you don’t.”

Wind howls outside the windows, throwing fistfuls of snow against the glass, and Adelaide chances a look into her bedroom. Just behind the clean, yellow-ribboned little girl playing games on a screen, two faces peer out from beneath Adelaide’s bed. She gives a small nod and promptly turns to face her daughter, hoping the children understand enough to stay quiet.

Adelaide smiles. “It’s so nice to finally see your face,” Adelaide says.

Catherine pinches her eyebrows. “Don’t start.”

“I’m only saying I miss you.”

“You’re saying more than that.”

The two women watch the fire in silence.

“What’s her name?” Adelaide motions to the little girl.

“You know her name.”

Catherine is right. She does know the girl’s name. But she’s never before met her granddaughter, and the name, heard only once and very long ago, escapes her. The girl’s skin is so fair that the light from the fireplace seems to shine right through it. She watches something on the handheld screen in rapt fascination.

“Who is the baby food for, Mother?”

Adelaide pauses a moment before responding and folds her hands in her lap. “It’s for me.”

Catherine swings her head toward Adelaide, eyes rolling so severely it’s a wonder she doesn’t fall down.

“For you,” she confirms.

“Yes, for me. It’s easier on my gums.”

“And I suppose the baby formula is for you as well. And the cloth diapers.”

Adelaide shrugs her shoulders. It’s not so out of the ordinary, she imagines. Growing old is much like becoming a child again. But she seeks to change the subject nonetheless.

“Your daughter,” Adelaide begins.

“Alice. Your granddaughter.”

“That’s right. Alice. How old—”

“Five.”

“Five. That’s a great age.”

“Was it, Mother?

Adelaide sighs. “Thank you for bringing supplies.”

“And I brought the wine you asked for.” At last, Catherine smiles.

Adelaide smiles back. “Wonderful. We can share a glass tonight. That would be lovely.”

“Actually,” Catherine says, nesting her mug between her thighs, “we’re not staying long.”

“Not even for supper?”

“No. I . . .” Catherine’s words trail away, and she seems to have lost them. She takes another sip of her tea to fill the silence. “We’re moving, actually. Derek was transferred to another branch.”

For the first time, Catherine seems hesitant to look her mother in the eyes, and instead ruffles Alice’s hair. But Adelaide is patient, and she waits for eye contact before responding.

“Where are you going?”

“Chicago.”

Adelaide pinches the bridge of her nose. “That sounds ghastly.”

“We’ll learn to love it.” She grasps Alice’s knee and gives it a little shake. “Won’t we?” Alice finds her screen more riveting than her mother and doesn’t respond.

“That’s very far away. Will you be coming back?”

Catherine leans back into the sofa and studies the rotted wood of the ceiling. Adelaide hopes she doesn’t judge her too harshly.

“No.”

Adelaide twists her knuckles, and though it hurts, it’s more pleasant than this conversation.

“What about my supplies?”

Another log in the fireplace pops and collapses, sending small plumes of soot into the cabin.

“I brought you double supplies this time.”

Adelaide doesn’t doubt this. She glances at the stockpile of groceries in her kitchen. For the children, she is grateful. But it feels like accepting blood money.

“You didn’t send a supply list last season,” Catherine states.

“No.”

“You didn’t need anything.”

“No.”

Catherine sighs heavily through her teeth, the sound like two passing planes in the distance, and says no more about it.

“Well, whatever you could possibly need until spring is in the kitchen,” Catherine says, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a piece of yellow paper. “And take this as well. A friend in town said she’d help with supply runs down the road. I left her some cash for her trouble.” Catherine stands, but Adelaide cannot look at her. “It’s the best I can do.”

Adelaide stares at the scrap of paper. A name and address scribbled in pencil. A stranger. An outsider.

Catherine plucks the screen from Alice’s lap. The girl frowns but concedes. She then stands and takes her mother’s hand, shooting Adelaide an accusatory glance from behind the safety of her mother’s thigh.

Catherine waits in silence. For a grand farewell, Adelaide imagines. But she cannot stand. Her muscles have turned to jelly, her bones to noodles. Adelaide places her hands over her kneecaps to stop them from trembling.

Catherine throws up her hands. “Okay, Mother. Enjoy the pureed carrots.”

Adelaide watches two shadows retreat as her daughter and granddaughter move toward the door. The hinge creaks as it flies open, taken by the wind, and a gust of frozen air assaults the cabin. Her pots shake. Her curtains dance.

“Wait!” Adelaide cries, tears breaking in a torrent down her cheeks. “Not yet. Not like this.”

Catherine taps her fingernails against her wineglass. Adelaide taps her fingertips, too, but her nails are whittled away, and instead of a clean, crisp sound, she leaves only smudges of dirt against her glass.

In the living room, Alice dozes on the sofa, head nestled between two pillows that have seen better days.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Adelaide says softly, watching the girl’s blonde head rise and fall with her breaths.

“Mhm.”

“It won’t delay your trip?”

Catherine spins the wineglass between her palms. “We’ll make it work.” She turns to the window. Streaks of rain are the only reprieve in the blackness outside. “It is nasty out there,” Catherine says. “Can’t argue with that.”

“I’m sure you could manage.”

Catherine glares at her mother for a small moment before laughing. Sometimes wine is the best therapy, and Adelaide is ever so grateful that she brought it.

“So, I have to ask,” Catherine says, “what’s with the fort in the living room?”

Adelaide had completely forgotten about the children’s sleep tent, now merely a pile of blankets and pillows.

“Oh, that?”

Catherine laughs. “Yes, that! Are you planning a camping trip with bedsheets and baby food?”

Adelaide nods to herself, wondering if she should confess. But Catherine would never understand.

“Something like that, I suppose.”

“Mother.”

“Daughter.”

Catherine leans back in the chair, her smile dissipating with the flicker of the fire. She pours a little more wine into each of their glasses. “I’m worried about you.”

“You insult me.” Adelaide takes a large gulp and half her glass disappears.

“You’re acting very strange,” Catherine says. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

Adelaide holds up a hand to stop her, but she continues.

“First you charge into the house like a madwoman with a stick. You’re requesting baby food and diapers. You’re making forts in your living room. If it were anyone but me, you’d be locked up right about now.”

“But it is you.”

“I’m allowed to be concerned.”

“The hell you are.”

“Goddamn it, Mother.”

“Goddamn yourself.”

Catherine nods. “Good talk.” She places her glass in the middle of the table. “I need to use your bathroom.”

“You know where it is.”

Catherine groans. “I hate that outhouse.”

“My fancy daughter needs a fancy place to piss?”

Catherine takes a deep breath and places her hands on her hips as she stands. She looks to Alice asleep on the sofa. “I suppose I should wake her. And now I have the pleasure of teaching my daughter to squat over a hole in the ground.”

“Take my coat,” Adelaide offers. “And when you come back, we’ll finish our talk.”

Catherine takes the coat hanging by the door and shrugs into it. “This is no place for children,” she mutters, rousing her daughter, and bundling her in the nearest blanket. Adelaide holds open the door, bracing against the wind before easing it quietly into place behind them.

Adelaide waits by the door for a moment, and then rushes to the paper sacks on the floor, searching for food for River and Little Bird. She finds a bag of chips, grabs them, but thinks better of it. Chips would be too loud, she thinks, and returns them to the grocery sack. She finds a soft loaf of bread and quickly rips the tie from the plastic. Adelaide burrows her fingers into the crust, pulling out four slices in one handful, and dashes to her bedroom calling their names in a rushed whisper.

“River. Little Bird. I have something for you.”

Adelaide thrusts her hands under the bed, and the children waste no time in plucking the bread from her fingers. Little Bird peers out at her, grinning, grasping his bread in one tight fist, the small gray elephant in the other. He begins to wiggle out, but Adelaide throws up her hands and shakes her head. Little Bird scowls. From beneath the bed, River’s voice chirps softly. A few syllables of their special-speak and Little Bird retreats into shadow.

Adelaide rushes back to the kitchen table, stations herself in her chair, and grabs her wineglass, swallowing a few deep gulps to still her heart. She can’t stop smiling. But she must stop smiling before Catherine sees her and calls the Crazy Police to pick her up this very night. She can’t believe she thought the children young enough to need formula and baby food. She scolds herself for being so blind. They are small, but these children are no toddlers.

Catherine’s feet clatter on the front steps, and she whips open the door, Alice draped across her shoulder. The wind gusts around them like a cyclone, and Catherine struggles to close the door. She looks at Adelaide. “Worth it.”

The two women laugh, and Adelaide is glad for the excuse to smile.

Catherine lays Alice on the sofa, tucking the blanket around her, before returning to the kitchen table. She shivers and plucks her glass from the table.

“It’s cold out there,” Catherine says.

“Plenty warm in here.”

Adelaide and Catherine talk well into the night about Derek, his new promotion, the great migration to Chicago, and of course, Alice. Adelaide is grateful to have known her granddaughter, if only for a night. But the liability of River and Little Bird weighs heavily on her mind, and she chooses quiet moments in the conversation to peer over her shoulder and make sure they are still hidden.

“What are you looking for, Mom?”

Adelaide turns back to her daughter. “Just checking that the bedroom window is shut tight.”

In the living room, a sleeping Alice coughs. She sniffles and wipes her nose with her palm before falling asleep once more.

“She sounds sick. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“Just your garden-variety cold, Mom. She’s fine.”

Sometimes the conversation with Catherine flows like a warm river in the summertime. And sometimes it stalls, heavy, lumbering like a winter storm. Adelaide doesn’t mind. It’s been a long time since she’s sat and talked with her daughter.

“You could come with us, you know,” Catherine says.

“With you? Where?”

Catherine sighs. “Chicago, Mother.”

“Heavens, no.”

“We have the room.”

“Absolutely not.”

“We can help you get some things packed. I can’t leave you here like this.”

“I won’t hear another word of it.”

Catherine leans back and pushes her palms into her eyes. If there was any wine left, Adelaide would have refilled their glasses by now. With the pleasantry of alcohol long gone, real life creeps back into the conversation.

Adelaide clears her throat and corrects her tone. “My life is here. Everything I know is here.”

“Everything you chose is here. There’s a big difference. You chose this. Even if it meant losing me, you chose this.”

“You were a blessing.”

“I was an affliction.”

Adelaide leans forward, her eyes sharp, focused. “Don’t you ever say that.” Her voice is low, angry. Not angry at Catherine, but angry nonetheless.

“Don’t worry, Mother. I have no more tears. But let’s not lie to each other. Not anymore. That’s exactly what I was. I was the silver lining—at best—to the worst experience of your life.”

Adelaide feels the old man in her forest as they speak. Somewhere in these woods, he sleeps.

“I never should have told you. That was my burden, not yours.”

“Knowledge is power. Isn’t that what you said?”

“But ignorance is bliss.”

The clock ticks from Adelaide’s bedroom, filling the space between them. Tsk-tsk-tsk.

“Well,” Catherine says, “I feel neither powerful nor blissful, so where does that leave me?”

Adelaide is tired. Her eyelids droop, and her mind is heavy and slow. She no longer has the right words. Maybe she never did. Communication between the two of them has always been distorted. Words are misinterpreted, rearranged, and never in the right sequence. They may as well be speaking in chirps and grunts.

Catherine sighs. “I’m going to sleep now. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Adelaide nearly offers her bed before remembering that River and Little Bird are hidden beneath. To her relief, Catherine moves Alice to the blankets on the floor, and takes the sofa before Adelaide can come up with a solution.

Adelaide blows out the lantern on her way to the bedroom and pulls a wool blanket from the shelf of her closet, tucking it discreetly under the bed. She slips beneath her sheets, careful not to put all her weight in one spot, and dangles her arm over the side of the mattress. A small hand squeezes her fingers. Adelaide squeezes back.

Outside, the wind has grown still. It seems the storm has finally passed.

Somewhere deep in the woods, a howl.

Adelaide’s eyes snap open. The wild woman is back. The little hand holding her fingers unlatches, disappearing beneath the mattress, and Adelaide is left alone with the sound. Tonight, it is sorrowful, lonely. Adelaide hopes the wild woman found shelter from the storm. Somewhere, somehow. Her calls have become a sort of anchor for Adelaide. A segmented part of her own mind, lost and forever wandering the forest. She listens to the cry as it echoes across the landscape, and hopes Catherine is asleep. And if she isn’t, perhaps she’ll think it merely a coyote.

The girl listens to all the sleep-breathing. There is the woman above them sleep-breathing, the new woman on the sofa sleep-breathing, and much smaller sleep-breathing coming from the little girl on the floor.

Brother crawls out. The girl doesn’t want him to get hurt, but she wants to see, too, so she follows.

Long, dark hair falls over the side of the sofa, and the girl stops to stare at it. Brother stops, too. The new woman’s hair is soft and straight, like the grass that hangs down from the big trees by the water. The new woman is scary, but she is asleep, and so they are safe.

The girl is not fast enough to stop brother from touching the new woman’s hair. She whispers a stop sound to him and he pulls his hand back. He smells his fingertips and smiles. The girl smells brother’s fingertips—they smell like the small pointy flowers that grow in a big bunch. The girl doesn’t understand how hair can smell like flowers, but she wants her hair to smell like flowers, too. Mother knows everything. When they are with mother again, she will ask mother to make her hair smell like flowers.

The new woman’s face is a little bit scary, even when she sleeps. Her eyes look mad and her mouth looks mad. The girl wonders how long she will be here and hopes not very long.

The girl looks away from the new woman who is mad when she sleeps, and crouches beside the little girl on the floor. Brother sits by her so he can look, too. Her hair is the color of the tall grass that’s fun to chew on. The girl rubs her fingers on the little girl’s arm. Her skin is very light, like river sand, and even softer. Brother gasps. She shushes him, and he shushes. The girl smells her fingers. The little girl on the floor does not smell like the small pointy flowers that grow in a big bunch. She smells like berries.

Brother leans closer to the floor, and the girl whispers the not-so-close sound, but brother doesn’t listen. He gets even closer. The girl does not get as close to the little girl on the floor as brother does. Sometimes she is not as brave as brother. The little girl on the floor has long hairs on her eyes that flutter as she sleeps. Brother leans in to touch them but changes his mind. He touches her cheek, her ear, her nose.

And then the little girl on the floor opens her mouth and sneezes on brother’s face.

Brother is still, and his sister is still, and the little girl on the floor did not wake up and is still.

Brother looks at the girl, his face wet and sparkling in the firelight. Eyes big. Teeth showing. And then they are laughing and rushing back to hide beneath the bed before they wake up the new woman on the sofa and the little girl on the floor and make them mad.

Morning came too fast for Adelaide.

She boils water in a cast-iron pot over the fireplace as Catherine helps Alice from the floor.

“You won’t stay for tea?”

Catherine drops a folded blanket onto the sofa, fluffing the corners into a perfect square. “We’ve got to get back.”

“Would Alice like some breakfast?”

“We’ll get something on the way. We don’t want to use up your food. You’ll be needing it.”

Adelaide nods, glancing to the small child-shaped shadows beneath her bed.

“I suppose so.” Adelaide runs her hands up her hair, straightening her bun. “Coyotes were really carrying on last night.”

“We didn’t hear anything.”

“Oh,” Adelaide says, surprised but relieved. “That’s good.”

Catherine stands and looks at Adelaide. Neither woman seems to have the right words.

“I have something for you,” Adelaide says, walking toward her cabinet.

“I don’t need anything.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I really don’t. We’re all packed, and I don’t have room for anything else.”

“You have room for this.”

Catherine sighs loudly, but Adelaide ignores her, pulling down a stack of torn papers, tied with a length of pink yarn. The remnants of her diary.

“Take this with you.”

Catherine accepts the bundle, examining what little writing can be seen. “What is it?”

“It’s something I’ve held on to for a very long time. I almost lost it recently. This is all I could salvage.” Adelaide sighs. “But it was never mine. It was always yours.”

“Mom—”

“Just take it with you,” Adelaide says, folding Catherine’s fingers around the paper. “Once you’ve settled, make some time to look through it.”

“Are you crying, Mom?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are.”

Adelaide waves her hand in the air. “Pay no mind.” She turns to Alice. “Young lady, come give your grandmother a hug.”

The little girl tucks into Adelaide’s embrace, hesitant to uncross her arms, but Adelaide is not offended.

Catherine raises the paper bundle in the air. “I’ll look through it,” she says. “Once we’re settled.”

“I hope you will.”

Catherine smiles and steps forward to hug her mother, little Alice trapped and struggling between them. Adelaide holds on to Catherine for as long as she will allow.

“I love you, Mom.”

“You too.”

“Take care of yourself out here.”

“Always do.”

Adelaide stands in the doorway until she can no longer see the snowdrifts left by the wheels of their car. From within the fireplace, the kettle whistles. Behind her, Little Bird sneezes.