Maya waited once more for her mom to fall asleep before taking her keys and driving her car to Frank’s cabin. Nighttime wasn’t ideal, but Brenda never would have let Maya borrow the car, not in her current state, all feverish, fidgety, and seized by an urgency she refused to explain. She just hoped Frank was at his usual bar tonight rather than at his cabin. Her plan was to go there, look around, peer in through the windows if it seemed no one was home. If nothing else, she imagined just being there would bring her closer to the truth, seeing as how the painting, a single image, had triggered memories she thought she had lost.
She drove faster as she left downtown, with its traffic lights and other cars. Two hours had passed since her second martini at Patrick’s Pub—she’d made sure of this before driving, and had even forced down a bowl of leftover chili while assuring her mom, between bites, that it was just as delicious as it had always been. She just wasn’t hungry.
Seven years ago, Maya had almost missed her turn onto Cascade Street, but this time her phone made it easy, stating the directions from the passenger seat—for now, anyway, while she still had service. The trees crowded in. The state forest, so green in summer, was skeletal this time of year, and Maya had no problem spotting the mailbox as she approached it on her left. She seemed to remember more than she knew.
She parked at the end of the long, winding drive and walked the rest of the way to what once was Frank’s father’s house. Someone else must have bought it by now, although she supposed it was possible, if Frank had, in fact, collected a large inheritance, that he’d kept it. Her heart sped up as she approached the house and saw a light on in one of the upstairs windows. It wasn’t as nice as she remembered, or maybe it had gone downhill in the last seven years. The porch sagged, the paint peeled, and two of its shutters were missing.
She slowed her steps and walked lightly, as if whoever was inside might hear her sneakers crunching over snow. In summer, she might have stayed low as she crossed the wide yard, hidden in the tall grass, but if anyone were to look out the window right now, they’d see her starkly against a white sheet. The moon brought out its arctic blue. An ancient poplar loomed at the entrance to the abandoned road, its rounded mass of huddled gray limbs reminding her of a brain.
She passed beneath its lobes, twigs branching like arteries overhead as she entered the forest. This time she had a flashlight, one she’d borrowed from her mom, but Maya found that she didn’t need it. The snow glittered, and if it was cold, she couldn’t tell. Adrenaline kept her warm. She thought of all the effort she’d put into repressing her memories of the last time she was here, all the pills she’d taken, only for the truth to go on simmering beneath that fake comfort that never quite fit. She should have been terrified right now, and she was, but there was also relief in feeling that she was finally getting to the root of Frank’s secret—and she sensed that she was close, that she could almost reach out and brush it with her fingers.
This time she didn’t hear the stream as she neared the bridge—it must have frozen—but it didn’t matter. The road, though clearly abandoned, was easy enough to follow. A straightforward path through the woods.
Although now that she was on it again, there was something so off about this road—about the very idea of it. Suddenly she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner. How could she have been so dense at seventeen?
It was obvious—both then and now—that no one had driven on this road in years.
You’d have to walk there, Frank’s father had said.
And all at once she understood the cruelty of his smile. He really had been laughing at her. There’s no way Frank could have carried the supplies needed to build a cabin—the lumber, the stove, two sinks, every one of those chimney stones—all this way on foot.
But then Maya hadn’t been so dense back then, had she?
She had figured this out before—she remembered this now. It all came back to her the moment she saw the bridge.