51

Sylvia

I left the police station shaking, my hands trembling with my keys, my breath jagged. I drove straight home and tried to clear my head. I walked through the door and chucked the rest of the donuts in the trash—my stomach was in knots and I knew I couldn’t finish them. I paced the house, trying to figure out what to do. I thought about calling the police in Fayetteville, to see if they by chance had any information, but I knew she wasn’t there. I thought about calling Hattie, but I knew she’d be sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her. I tried to lie down on the couch and fall asleep, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing, so after a few minutes I got up and tried to busy myself with tidying up.

Finally, the house itself became unbearable to me. I changed into a pair of jeans and an old, faded button-down—my gardening clothes, really—and put on a head scarf and some oversized sunglasses and got back in the station wagon. Once inside, I unfolded the map and pressed it over my steering wheel, then started the engine and backed out of the drive.

I drove to the south side of town and picked up the interstate and headed west toward Dallas. Once I crossed the river at the edge of town, I started counting the miles. Delia had told me it would be about fifteen until the exit. The interstate was quiet in the middle of the day, except for a few eighteen-wheelers zipping past. I got to the exit before long, the green sign that read Starrville/Omen Road. The road in the map hooked right just off the feeder road and I had to slam on my brakes to make the turn, the blacktop road appearing before I had anticipated it.

I could picture Delia making it to the highway half naked and flagging down that trucker who drove her near the hospital before she jumped out of his truck at a red light.

The night she had escaped, she told me that they had untied her from the stone first. She had performed sex acts with them as compliantly as she could, and after the sheriff was finished with her, she looked up at his sweaty face with sheepish eyes and asked if she could go into the woods to relieve herself. The second she got behind the first wide tree, she peered around to make sure no one was looking, then she ran and ran and ran and ran with no feeling at all in her bare feet, just a white hot desire to escape. She told me she kept picturing herself making it to the main road, and that’s what gave her the courage to keep running even though her legs were getting scratched up and her feet were bleeding. She kept running until her feet found the smooth tar of the black road.

The road dipped down and to my left there was a thick line of pine trees, their fat waists cinched back by barbed wire. The road plunged down even farther, exposing a wide belly of pasture before being swallowed back up by more trees.

About three miles in, I started scanning for the unmarked red dirt road. I slowed the car and turned right onto the road, which was just a rust-colored lane, really, with thick weeds growing between muddy tire tracks. The bottom of my station wagon chewed on the weeds but I kept idling forward, slowly. I wasn’t even sure I was on the right road—it looked like I was driving across somebody’s pasture—but then, after climbing a steep incline, I saw the stand of trees that gave way to the dense pack of woods that Delia had drawn on the map. When I got closer to the row of trees, I eased the car into the pasture and parked.

I killed the engine and opened the door, which creaked loudly, but I stepped out and looked around. It seemed like there was nobody else out there.

In the open field, the wind had picked up and the willowy tops of pine trees contracted like clouds. Wild wisteria vines hung from the trees, their lilac clumps swinging in the breeze like clusters of grapes. It was midday and the sun was radiant on my face, but as I walked deeper into the woods the sunlight became watered down, chilling the air and making everything look muted. I walked a little farther until I found the clearing for the little cemetery. Delia was right: you would never know this place existed if someone didn’t tell you.

It was tiny—just a handful of graves, maybe thirty at the most—tucked inside a black iron gate with a sign that read, Forsythe Memorial. From the looks of it, it seemed to be an old family graveyard or a cemetery of a forgotten township, and in the green pasture adjacent to it, I saw the large circle of stones, just as Delia had described.

Sunlight filtered through the trees, lighting up the faces of the stones and I thought I could see the rust splatter of dried blood on one of them. I kept listening for sounds to make sure I was still alone, but the wind kept gusting and shushing through the woods so that it made everything feel disorienting. I could smell the charred embers from the fire ring that was in the center of the stone circle, exactly like Delia had drawn on the map, and I stood out there in the howling wind and said just loud enough for the wind to hear: “So this is where these horrible things happened to you.”

Just then, something scurried along in the woods behind me. I whipped around to look but saw that it was just a squirrel shimmying up the trunk of a tree. I turned back around and then heard a louder snap of a branch and what sounded like heavier footfalls. I looked over my shoulder and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a dark figure pass behind a tree and stop.

My heart chiseled in my chest and I found myself walking over to a gravesite and kneeling down and praying before it, as if I were visiting a lost loved one. I made a big show of crossing myself and prostrating in front of the grave, and even went as far to sweep pine straw off the headstone. My knees became saturated with the clean damp of wet grass, but I stayed planted there, not wanting to move.

After a while, I stood up and turned in the direction of my car and walked slowly toward it, not looking back but having the strongest feeling I was being watched.