FROM THE SHADOW of the trees, Lin watched her house, not with an assessing eye, but with a wary one. A woman sat on her porch, and she’d been sitting or standing or pacing there for three hours now. Lin hadn’t seen her arrive, she’d been in the woods. From the trees, across a small meadow she’d carefully cultivated to look wild, beyond the vegetable patch where weeds needed pulling and tomatoes harvesting, she had a clear view to the porch and the stranger.
A veery called, high and flutelike. If the sound reached the stranger, she didn’t appear to care. But Lin paused in her wary watching to enjoy the birdsong. August woods tend more toward quiet than the cacophony of spring, with all the shouts and posturing of courtship. By August, most of the chores of raising a family are done, as they were for Lin, who was well beyond her own August.
Cicadas buzzed while a soft breeze rustled the oak leaves and whispered through the pines, cooling the sweat of sitting still. A small, stifled sound reminded Lin of why she was sitting on a log, her legs falling asleep. A sneeze. The woman, the stranger, had sneezed. Lin watched her get up from the steps where she must have grown hot in the sun. Her details were indistinct at this distance. Long limbs, dark hair, jeans, white T-shirt. She dug a tissue from a pocket and wiped her nose. Then she moved onto the porch, under the shading roof. Lin’s roof.
Why won’t she give up and leave? This had happened before. A reporter had once camped out on Lin’s porch, forcing her back into the woods to spend the night in her blind. For a time, the newspapers had been all over her story, and she had been willing to tell it. But it hadn’t done any good, so now she shut up about it. Eventually the reporters had stopped coming around, except on certain anniversaries—one year, five years. Ten had been the last. After that, they’d moved on to the next headline. So why now? Quick mental math calculated out to sixteen years. No significance to that. Sure, the child would be twenty-one now. Lin squinted at the stranger, wishing she had her binoculars with her. That would have solved this easily. She could hope that was Emma waiting there for her, but knew that was unlikely. She hadn’t shown up when she’d turned sixteen and could drive, nor at eighteen when she was emancipated. Why would she now?
She’s probably not even called Emma anymore. Emma had been Lin’s idea. They hadn’t been able to settle on a name. During labor, the deadline loomed. “She needs a name,” Jan had panted between contractions.
Lin ran down the list again, but neither felt comfortable with any of them. “She’ll have it her whole life,” Lin said. “It has to be something we’ll like forever, not some trendy, latest starlet name.”
Jan nodded then squeezed Lin’s arm as another contraction hit. Nothing got your attention quite like deadlines and the risk of your arm being broken. “How about Emma?” Lin asked tentatively.
Jan finished her breaths and sank back on the pillow, her dark curls plastered to her neck by sweat. “Huh,” she said. A few more pants. “Maybe.”
Further debate was interrupted by a command from the doctor at the other end of the bed. “Time to push, Janice.”
Later, when things had calmed down, after Lin had held her new, wrinkled daughter, had kissed Jan who slept from exhaustion, and returned from taking a break to get something to eat, they learned that “Emma” had been entered on the birth certificate. Neither was sure they’d given the authorization, but amid the confusion it was certainly possible, so it seemed fated and, besides, would make an interesting story. Jan never asked, and Lin never bothered to say how she came up with it. To name their child after a TV character, however obscure Mrs. Peel might be, seemed too much in line with the whole starlet theme. Best to let it go. Instead, she gently drew her calloused finger down the baby’s butter-soft cheek and introduced herself. “Hi, Emma,” she said softly. “I’m Linda. Everyone calls me Lin, but you’ll call me Mama.”
Lin stood and stretched, letting the memories drop away like the pine needles from her shirt. She stared across the bright meadow to the figure now in shadow. She debated whether to go forward or retreat back into the woods. She hadn’t always been like this, shy as a deer, wary and watchful. It had happened slowly, bit by bit, as her life had been exposed, cross-examined, counter-charged, fund-raised for, and eventually blasted into such small bits that she wasn’t sure who she was by the end. Not that there was an end. Closure, her therapist of a few weeks had intoned. That’s what she needed but, she was convinced, could never have.
Friends had gently suggested she move away, start over, at least clear out Emma’s room. But Lin loved this house, this land. They were not the guilty parties. They had done nothing wrong. She had closed Emma’s door and whenever she’d tried to open it, to deal with what lay inside—the books, the LEGOs, the absence of Barbies—she was blown back as though by a force field. One that sheared her breath from her and numbed her limbs.
After countless appeals, after she’d lost hope of reversing the decision, the court had ruled in her favor, affirmed that she had been, after all, a parent, an important part of Emma’s life, and granted her visits, but by then Jan had vanished with Emma. Only then did she enter the room. She knelt on the floor, pulling books off the shelf and piling them into boxes. Her fingers caressed the frayed spine of Emma’s favorite, the one about the duckling, separated from its family, searching among the reeds and lily pads, asking over and over to every creature it encountered, “Are you my mama?” Then Lin cried.
As soon as she had come home from the hospital, Emma was read to. At six months, she chewed through books. Literally. But still, Lin read to her, wiping drool as she turned the pages. At two, Emma pulled them off the shelf and asked in the language that only Mommy and Mama could translate, “Read this one.” But no Heather, Disney princess, honey-obsessed bear, or big red dog held her heart like that near-tragic duckling. “Mama,” she had said, pointing to the mother duck. “That’s you,” she had added, poking Lin in the chest. Then she’d giggled in her four-year-old way, astonished that there could be more than one Mama.
Lin turned back toward the house. The shadows had grown and deepened. She was getting hungry. Who was this blocking her way? This stubborn someone. Social worker? Her case had never closed, but priorities had shifted, money was tight, and Emma, everyone assumed, was at least safe. While Jan had leveled plenty of allegations at Lin, she, in turn, had never hinted that Jan was anything but loving toward Emma. Private eye? Lin’s money for that had run out years ago. No one had been able to find them. Down south somewhere, they assumed. Cop? Had something happened to Emma or to Jan? Had they been found? That alone almost urged her legs to move toward the house. But the police had long since stopped coming in person. They called occasionally to see if she had heard anything, and there was a warrant for Jan’s arrest, of course, but they looked to Lin for breaks in the case. Her answering machine was the only link she needed to law enforcement.
Maybe this was a new generation of reporter for some gay press, anxious to resurrect an old, stale story. Things had changed across the country, she might say, how do you feel about that, she probably wanted to ask. But nothing had changed for Lin. Her story was hardly unique. Had they been allowed to marry back then, it might not have changed anything. Even the Goodridges had divorced, after their eponymous groundbreaking case had etched them into the stone of history. Plenty of straight families broke up and did not make headlines.
In February, Emma had turned twenty-one. Lin blew out a quiet breath. That’s how old she had been when she’d met Jan in their last year of college. How had they missed each other over four years? What if they hadn’t met that fateful afternoon? They used to joke about that, then laugh as they made up fake lives for each other. Now it was Jan who felt fake. Nine years would be a mere blip in most people’s memories, across a span of twenty-plus years, and countless lovers, girlfriends, and, these days, wives, but a child changed everything. They didn’t decide to have a child to save the relationship, nor did the child ruin it. Having a child was the logical next step to something that had felt so perfect and so right. Having children wasn’t something Lin had thought about before Jan mentioned that it was something she’d thought about. But once the thought was in her head, Lin had no problem with it. How could she not want to raise a child with this woman she loved?
By some definition, Lin could be considered Emma’s father. Though the sperm was not hers, she did push the plunger, impregnating Jan. And while the doctor had said an orgasm was not required for a woman to become pregnant, Lin had found the whole endeavor so arousing that she didn’t think twice about including it in the plan. So they made love. Then they made a baby. Afterward, lying spent and entwined, they plotted out their family’s future. The name list began, schools were chosen, potential professions considered, and the speck that would become Emma grew inside one belly pressed against the other.
Is there a statute of limitations on parenthood? Are you still considered one if you’ve been thwarted in the effort for sixteen years, since your daughter was five? Lin never got to say goodbye, to reassure the frightened little girl that her Mama would always be there for her, even if she couldn’t live with her. Maybe that was why she never moved away. Could the memory of a five-year-old survive into adulthood and lead her back home? Doubtful.
Lin would never abandon a child. Would never have abandoned Jan. That she might become one who could be abandoned had also never occurred to her. Lin had grown up sure of herself. Jan had grown up afraid—of her demanding parents, of her religion, of society. At first, Lin had found that attractive—this vulnerable, fearful girl who could be protected.
Lin sometimes wondered if it wasn’t to her credit that the relationship had fallen apart. If she had only bullied Jan, like her family had all those years, Jan might have stayed. But Lin had showed her how to be independent. She had insisted on it, and had thought Jan had thrived.
A headache formed at the back of her skull. She was thirsty and hungry. She’d spent the morning marking trees for harvesting. Some to sell, some for her woodstove. Rob would come by on the weekend with his chainsaws and they’d make quick work of it. But now, she’d wasted the afternoon watching a stranger sit on her porch, trespass on her property. Why hadn’t she just marched across the field and chased her away? Lin rubbed her temples. The past was gone, the future didn’t exist yet, all she had was this moment in time. Was this how she wanted to spend it?
Lin turned her back on the stranger and breathed deeply the scent of sun-warmed pine. Deep, cleansing breaths, as her yoga instructor had taught her. Breathe out the rage. The rage had made her turn to yoga. At first, no longer able to contain it, she had tried to run from it. But it had followed. After Jan and Emma vanished, she raged through her woods, inflicting scars still visible these many years later. With her ax and the darkness of rage, she felled a dozen small trees, completely unaware. When she awoke from a migraine-drenched stupor, some unknown number of hours or days later, she looked around at the carnage and wondered if a tornado had passed through and she’d miraculously survived. She spent the next two days building a loose definition of a cabin, her blind. A place where she could retreat from one world and observe another—track mink in winter, watch birds court and nest in spring, escape mosquitoes in summer, and listen to leaves drop in the autumn chill. Grateful not to have severed a foot, she turned to yoga to tame the rage.
Yoga, however, was no match for the guilt that to this day sat in her like bones, had become the structure of her. Because, of course, Emma didn’t know any of this, what Lin had done to hold onto her, then to find her. And that’s what bothered Lin most. That Emma grew up thinking Lin had abandoned her.
That was what she would tell the reporter. I did not abandon her. Make sure she knows that. Maybe if it were in print, it would find her. Emma could Google herself and see a news article. If she were still called Emma. If she remembered who her Mama was. Lin knew that Emma and Janice Williams no longer existed, that much her money had bought her. And Linda Johnson was too common for Google to be of much use.
Lin bent and wiped her hands on her jeans, then rested, head down, to clear her thoughts. Straightening, she turned. The low sun angled onto the porch and she could see the woman’s legs and feet, clad in sandals. The rest of her hidden in shadow. Time to face the demon. Lin stepped onto the path that led through the meadow and to the house.
She was halfway across the field before the woman stirred. Had she been dozing? Lin’s heartbeat quickened when she saw the woman stand, then move to the edge of the porch, into the sun. Passing through the goldenrod, the Queen Anne’s lace, the Joe-pye weed, Lin shoved her hands in her pockets to steady herself. On the porch, the long limbs and dark hair clarified into familiar features. Freckled forearms crossed in front of her white T-shirt, and hips tilted as she shifted her weight to one foot. Lin stopped. Jan stood like that. Jan had long limbs and dark hair that curled around her face. And freckles. It never occurred to her that Jan might be the one who would come looking for her. The woman squinted in the light. Lin was backlit, perhaps anonymous still, so she urged her feet forward.
At the edge of the field, where two stone steps dipped down to a thin ribbon of lawn, Lin shook away the notion that this could be Jan. Unless Jan had not aged in the last twenty years, it did not seem possible that she could look this young and fit. Lin herself, despite a life outdoors chopping wood and tramping up hills, had grown gray and paunchy, now well into her forties. Could this be some ghost of Jan? Was she hallucinating after so many hours of dehydration?
The woman, clearly nervous now, unfolded her arms and shoved her hands in her pockets, mimicking Lin. She stepped off the porch and raised a hand to shade her eyes. They stopped a few feet from each other. No further territory could be crossed without some acknowledgement. But who goes first? The intruder or the intruded upon?
Lin waited. The stranger coughed to clear her throat, then spoke in a soft southern drawl. “Are you my mama?”