We ran. And I’ve never understood why.
I’ve searched what few memories I still own from my youth, and I’ve combed through moments and images and snippets of conversation. I’ve wondered why it took me so long to question it all. Why didn’t I beg for answers when I had the chance—as a teenager, a young adult?
And would Mom, would Dad have even answered if I’d tried?
I remember it was summer and I was eight years old. The window in my bedroom—the room Mara chose her first night at the Everwood—was open. I remember the low hum of the cicadas the night before we ran and the reach of a full moon ringing all the edges in my room—my bed and dresser and closet door—with thin light.
I remember that I forgot to brush my teeth. That I could still taste on my lips the salt of popcorn from our weekly family movie night in the den. Another black-and-white film to which I’d fallen asleep. Only to awaken an hour later, or maybe two, nestled against Dad as he carried me upstairs.
I remember the happiness.
And then the shock. Awakening in the morning to Mom flinging open my dresser drawer and Dad calling my name in a frenzy as he shook my shoulders.
I remember clothes stuffed into an old leather suitcase and toys left behind.
They argued, Mom and Dad, as we piled into our 1952 Crosley station wagon. There was something Mom didn’t want to leave, though Dad insisted. But there, my recollection fades.
But I know we ran.
Away from the Everwood.
Away from Maple Valley.
Away from home.
Enchanting.
It’s the word I breathed upon my return to the house in the grove. I’d forgotten the smell of summer and soil, the tiny sounds that formed the great choir of nature—the chirp of birds, the far-off chortle of frogs and crickets, the hypnotizing hum of cicadas. I’d forgotten how far the fields stretched, how they reached into a golden horizon.
The same word came to Mara’s lips months later. It was Thanksgiving and there was just enough autumn left in the air to justify a morning walk through the grove. But winter had begun to awaken too—its hovering presence draping tree branches in ribbons of frost and glistening over the hard ground.
“If you think the countryside is enchanting now,” I said, “wait until it snows.”
“I can’t wait. I love snow.
Sunlight glimmered in Mara’s eyes that morning. It reminded me of a Bible verse somewhere in the Psalms. “Restore the sparkle to my eyes . . .”
I would wonder, later, if she’d still say the same about snow considering it was a blizzard that kept me from making it back to the Everwood by Christmas. I’d left a few days earlier—chasing my first lead, hoping to gift myself with answers to questions that grew with intensity the longer I lived at the Everwood, fruitlessly searching decades’ worth of items abandoned by past owners.
It’d killed me, waiting out that snowstorm in a Minneapolis Marriott, knowing Mara was spending Christmas alone in that drafty house.
But Thanksgiving.
“You know what, Lenora?” Mara’s tone matched her jaunty steps. She’d seemed to age backward while living with me. Her freckles had deepened in the last month of summer and hair that’d barely skimmed her chin now brushed past her shoulders. Gone was the anxiety that’d too often turned her knuckles white and shown itself in bruise-colored circles around her eyes.
Maybe she no longer fears Garrett showing up.
Though I knew by then that Garrett wasn’t the only tender spot in her past. Her parents had left their own indelible marks on her life.
“What?” I finally answered.
“This is my first holiday in a decade spent exactly where I want to be.”
If not for a crisp wind drying my eyes, the remark might’ve drawn tears. Joyful tears at the contentment I heard in her voice. But also tears of sadness for all her lonely years.
“I liked being a nanny. I really did. But I hated holidays. The families always assumed I had a place to go. Or, almost worse, if they knew I didn’t, they’d give me a pity invite.” Mara had wiggled on her gloves. “That’s not fair, I guess. They were well-intentioned invitations. But the couple times I took up my employers on spending holidays with their family, I felt awkward and out of place.”
“Well, you’re not out of place here, Mara.”
“And I’m grateful for it.”
My limbs were tired and my breath tight, but the hallowed set to Mara’s profile kept me from complaining. “You know, I think maybe God led you here, Mara.”
“Actually, it was a random brochure in a rest stop.”
“Don’t underestimate God’s ability to use even the things we label as ‘random.’”
“Maybe. But I always got the feeling I wasn’t quite impressive enough to warrant that much notice from Him.” She bit her lip in that way of hers.
“Far be it from me to speak for the Almighty, but I feel fairly confident saying God isn’t looking for impressive people. He’s looking for people who are willing to be impressed by Him.”
Mara took a long, deep breath and looked around. We’d reached the far end of the grove, where the space between trees widened and the countryside unrolled into hilly meadows and farmland. “I don’t know if I have the kind of faith you do, Lenora. But I know God created all this—and that’s impressive. I can’t get over how beautiful it is out here. I don’t know if it’s the quiet or the frost or what but it almost seems . . . sacred. Like church or something.”
And surely it was.
For months I searched the attic, hoping to find clues, hoping the boxes I dug through might spark memories or return to me forgotten snatches of conversation. We left something behind the day we fled the Everwood. If I could only find it, remember it . . .
This is why I bought the old house, after all. Though, as time passed, I started to think maybe God brought me here not to expose my past but to pave the way for Mara’s future.
George’s brother—one of my few relatives left—is an accountant. Wise with money but not always with a widow’s heart.
On the day I bought the Everwood, he scoffed. And can I blame him, really? To use what little was left of his brother’s life insurance on a ramshackle house in a grove on the edge of a tiny town. He called it foolish and I suppose he wasn’t all wrong.
For if I hadn’t bought the Everwood, I might not be here now. Without sight and sound. Other than a beeping that every now and then severs the quiet.
And maybe, strangely, a voice I once knew.