by Nina Siegal
She glanced over at Martijn to see if he had somehow picked up on Karin’s emotional frequencies, but she doubted it. He was a good-enough stepdad but not really empathic in those kinds of ways. Still, she was pleased he had volunteered to go along on the trip as a parental supervisor. It wasn’t his kid who was heading off into the forest, and his own children had done their droppings elsewhere. But it showed initiative that he’d taken the time to go along. She read it as an attempt to show that he cared about bonding with Karin. She liked that. Maybe, eventually, their families would blend.
“Thanks for your concern, but I don’t have any doubt she’ll be fine,” Grace said to the Scout leader, and then wondered if she had sounded overly officious. But she couldn’t tell her that she doubted Karin had even an ounce of nervousness. “I mean, I’m sure you’re right,” she added. “She’ll love it.”
Would she love it? Karin wasn’t exactly a novice camper, since she’d had a lot of outdoor adventures with her father. The idea of the dropping was that she’d be out there with her peers, kids as uncertain and wobbly about the world and themselves as she was, and they’d have to rely on one another to find their way to the finish. Grace liked that aspect of this Dutch rite of passage; it was so unlike the American culture in which she’d grown up. The Americans talked a lot about self-reliance, but the Dutch put it into practice at an early age, by basically leaving their children alone and letting them figure things out.
Of course, the parents and the Scouts would never be far away. They would be there at the front end and at the back end. And if something went awry, they’d never be out of shouting distance.
The Scout Clubhouse was just outside Ede proper, in a low-lying white brick building built a half-century ago that looked like a vintage schoolhouse. It was surrounded by tall, thin birches, resembling high fence posts, that made it all seem very orderly. There was some playground equipment and a small pebbly beach that bordered a sizable lake, now deserted because the season was over.
Karin had lurched out of their car as soon as they pulled into the parking lot, running over to the other kids, her fellow Scouts, obviously pleased to escape the vehicle, where there had been a low hum of tension between Grace and Martijn throughout the ride down. They’d had a fight earlier that day. Grace, watching her go, had felt the guilt of not resolving the fight before getting into the car, and making her daughter stew in it. She and Martijn still had to learn how to let go and move on, not to carry around an argument after it was basically over. This was part of the challenge of trying to build a new marriage, to blend two wholly different families, while she also felt the tug of losing her daughter to the world.
That loss was happening now—not little by little, as it had when she was a small child waddling off with uncertain giggles into the freedom of the untethered world, but in leaps and bounds as Karin found greater satisfaction in places outside the home than she did in the loving arms of her mother. Grace had tried to prepare herself mentally for this transition, since like all parents she knew it was the way with adolescents, but somehow all that internalized mental coaching didn’t make it hurt any less. Could it be that her stress about that loss was actually making her testy with Martijn? Was that it? And nothing to do with him at all?
Karin’s group was not the only group at the Scout Clubhouse. There were a few other droppings scheduled to begin this evening, in different parks in the region. None of the kids were supposed to know where they were headed—they had all been told it could be in one of the three nature reserves, the Hoge Veluwe National Park or the adjacent Veluwezoom National Park or the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, to the west of Ede. But Karin had specifically requested the Hoge Veluwe, because of her history with her father there, much to Grace’s chagrin. What made a twelve-year-old kid think they had to go off and face their personal demons in the dark like that? Grace would never really know. But she did respect it, and was just a little bit proud of Karin.
Martijn ambled up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, startling her out of her thoughts. She turned to him and looked at his dour face, his unsmiling look, and his still so beautiful pale green eyes. The expression they held was not entirely devoid of love, but one might have to get out a miner’s pickaxe and headlamp to find it. She noticed now how deep the wrinkles near his temples had become, how the grooves of his crow’s feet appeared like rivulets descending from the furrows of his brow. Had she done this to him? Made his eyes this sad and his skin so ashen?
“Grace, my Grace,” was all he said in the low, bass voice he used when he wanted to sound like a soulful radio announcer. It felt good to hear some sweetness and levity in his tone again, to be reminded of his softer side. In the ensuing pause, as he looked at her more seriously, she heard the rest of what he meant to say: We need to stop fighting, even if it means we need to quit one another. We can’t keep doing this to each other.
She nodded; he was right. Why couldn’t they just come together and sort things out? They were hurting each other too much. It wasn’t working.
“Are you ready?” she asked him. “Do you feel prepared for this adventure?”
It was meant to be a white flag. Surrender.
“They gave me the necessary information, I think,” he said, dropping his eyes to the brown earth. “I’m just supposed to follow, and keep a distance so they don’t know I’m behind them. If anything goes wrong, I’ll catch them up and help out. Simple as that.”
“And not sneak up on them like a bear? Not pretend to be a howling wolf in the distance?”
He smiled a half smile. “No Wolfman Jack.”
And now, more seriously, she added, “You’ll let me know if anything goes wrong? Or even just if Karin starts to feel strange?”
“I’m not supposed to get that close to them,” he said. But added, “Of course.”
“What time do you think you’ll be back here tomorrow?”
“I suspect around this time. We’re supposed to explore the park with the kids tomorrow, and there are some activities planned for the early afternoon, like a scavenger hunt. I’ll call you when we’re leaving base camp.”
A fantasy flashed before Grace’s eyes, a daydream or a vision, of using the time not to drive home, take a bath, and make longed-for phone calls but to make a grander escape, taking the car south and out of the Netherlands and just coasting farther on, through Europe, maybe till she hit Italy. She imagined Cinque Terre, that beautiful cluster of towns on the rugged Italian coast she’d visited once as a girl. But the daydream was as fleeting as a hummingbird, and was stopped in its tracks by the idea of Karin being left behind with Martijn and his sons. Whatever escape she made would always be with Karin.
“I’ll plan to start driving down around two just to be on the safe side,” Grace said.
She thought about how not twenty minutes ago she had stood with her daughter and watched as Karin had turned the blindfold over in her hands before putting it on, as a single tear rolled down her own cheek—unseen, she’d hoped.
“Mom, please?” Karin had whispered, irritated. “You don’t have to be so American about it. I’ll be back in, literally, twenty-four hours. You’ll thank me for this. I mean, think about the time alone, with the house totally to yourself. When do you ever have that?”
The words had been so mature, coming from Karin, that she’d had to laugh, squeezing her daughter tightly to her. Only making matters worse.
Of course she realized it was a bit stupid. Karin had already been away longer on sleepovers at friends’ houses. But Grace was vulnerable right now, in ways she couldn’t articulate. She needed her daughter to be okay because her own personal life felt like a cabin made of popsicle sticks that could topple any moment.
“It’s just…it’s just that you’re getting so big,” Grace had told Karin, making a cliché out of the moment. “You’re growing up so fast.”
All Karin said was “Seriously, Mom” and rolled her eyes. “I won’t be any older tomorrow.”
Grace
had given her daughter a tender smile. “You’ll be a day older.” Then she’d kissed her once more on the head and let her go. Karin had turned and joined the group, where she’d been told to put on her mask. She had probably been relieved to finally escape Grace’s maternal gaze.
So the groups had assembled, the parents had completed their tasks, and the kids had been guided into their cars and driven away. It was true that this dropping felt far more poignant than she had expected it to, for so many complicated reasons. She’d need a month of therapy to fully unwind all the threads. She had been relieved, at last, to hear the sound of the car with the kids in it pull out; she could let go of holding her breath.
Chapter 3
Drop Point
Karin heard the car slowing down, felt it turn off the road to the right, heard the tires come off the slick asphalt and crunch down onto an unpaved road. She could feel the automobile slip down into some kind of softer earth and then a loud rumble and vibration underneath the car. She knew that sound: they were passing over one of those metal grates that prevented deer from crossing into the Veluwe parking lot.
They had to be near the drop point, Karin was sure now. She felt excited and leaned forward in her seat, and then realized as a kind of weight fell over her that she was tired already. It was probably only like 5:15 now, the time when, at home, she’d be on her bed upstairs with her computer in her lap, trying to finish up her homework before dinner. She wasn’t like her friends at school who loved to stay up late doing their homework together, but really just gossiping on Snapchat. Karin really liked to go to bed early. In fact, she’d put on her supersoft teddy-bear PJs right after helping her mom load the dishwasher. She didn’t always fall asleep right away; usually, she stayed up reading magazines or books.
No one would see her in teddy-bear PJs here, no way. She had brought only sweats and a T-shirt to sleep in. She wanted to show the kids that she was a little bit like her father, the famous war adventurer. But first she would have to muster the energy to get out of this car.
Dirk started singing, “We zijn er bijna! We zijn er bijna!” in Dutch, a song little kids sang when arriving somewhere (“We’re almost there!”), and she could hear Lotte, in the front seat, laugh at this bit of self-mockery. Margot shushed Dirk, and Karin felt a movement of bodies that might have been Margot elbowing Dirk in the ribs, while Rutger took a hard tone. “As you know, no talking until we arrive at the drop point,” he said. Everyone was quiet again after that.
They rode in silence again for another fifteen minutes or so—Karin tried to time it in her head, to be able to calculate about how far they would be from the main road if they had to find it later. Maybe it was more like ten, or it could have been twenty, but honestly it was so hard to tell how long things took when you couldn’t just check your phone.
The car pulled up onto what seemed like a hill and stopped. “All right,” said Rutger. “You all stay put and I’ll come around and open the doors for you.” Like they were invalids all of a sudden. Was there really going to be sideswipe danger, as they’d been warned? Karin couldn’t hear any cars anywhere nearby. Actually, she heard only crickets. As if reading her thoughts, Rutger said, “It’s just that I don’t want you to fall because you can’t see where you’re going.”
So he grabbed them one by one, with his rough hands and hot breath, which now smelled like he’d accented it with mints, and seemed to be lining them up in a row on the dirt. Karin felt like a prisoner in a World War II movie, getting readied for the firing squad. She let a shiver of that feeling crawl up her spine before deciding that it was maybe better not to spook herself more with morbid fantasies. There were enough ghosts in this forest to do that already.
At long last, Rutger told them they could take off the blindfolds. Karin reflexively drew her hand up to cover her eyes, blinking several times to get used to seeing again. It was weird that her eyes had to adjust to the light after such a short time blindfolded, and especially because it was not very bright out anymore. The sun was already showing signs of setting. She welcomed back her primary sense and took in the view.
In front of them was a sandy park road for cars, which wound down to the right toward a grove of trees and then ended where the forest turned into heath. To the left, way down that way, the road met the paved national park road. Without turning, she knew that behind her lay a bike path that abutted a parallel hiking trail.
“We’re near the south gate,” she announced, mostly to herself. “And right there is Stag’s Wood.” She pointed at a wooden tower about the size of a treehouse, where she’d spent hours with her father waiting for red deer to emerge.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Dirk, giving her a once-over. “You already know where we are?”
Margot piped up, “Wow, that’s impressive, nature lover.”
Smiling inwardly so as not to gloat, Karin wondered if Margot’s comment was for real or kind of a sarcastic jab. Nature lover? She turned away from the two of them, took a deep breath in, and drank down the fresh, clean air of the forest. The scent of pine needles filled her nose. It was okay. This was where she’d been so many times with her dad. It couldn’t be scary; and the other kids couldn’t unsettle her. She would be okay here.
Rutger stood in front of the car they’d arrived in—a silver minivan, it turned out—like he was waiting for them to do something. He didn’t look anything like the guy from that freaky movie. He was a little pudgy, with a rust-colored beard and mustache, and a face that was both long and overly wide. What was left of the hair on top of his head he had brushed over to make it look thicker, but when the wind picked up—as it did at just that moment—there was almost nothing there, just fluffy, ruddy strands flying everywhere.
“Karl and Ilvy were both supposed to be your guides today, but unfortunately Ilvy wasn’t feeling very well and Karl took over Group 3, so I took Ilvy’s place,” Rutger started to explain. “Martijn, Karin’s father, will be coming along soon with Riekje, one of the Scout leaders from Group 3. They should be arriving any minute.”
“Stepfather,” Karin said, quick as a stab.
“Uh,” Rutger said, slow to the uptake.
“Martijn is not my father,” Karin said. “He’s married to my mother, but my dad was someone else. He died.”
“Oh,” said Rutger. “Yes, I see. I’m sorry.”
Karin shrugged, letting them all know it didn’t matter to her anymore.
None of the kids said anything, but Lotte glanced over at her to read her face. Karin tried to keep her expression totally neutral and wondered who here knew her family story. Her father’s death had been in the national news, after all, but who knew if they watched the news, or if they had taken the time to put the puzzle pieces together. Or if they cared anyway.
Rutger then looked away from her and explained what would happen next, even though they’d heard it a million times already. The Scouts would have to find their way to the campsite together, using only their compasses and nature itself. There would be hot chocolate and sausages waiting for them when they got there.
It didn’t matter how long it took them, and they shouldn’t feel rushed, but they were expected to arrive sometime before 8 p.m., and ideally around 7 p.m., so they could eat their hot dogs and enjoy the campfire under the night sky before tucking in for the night. If they got lost, they should just keep going, keep working together until they could find their way. The Scout leaders wouldn’t set out to find them unless they hadn’t arrived by morning. They laughed at that—it wouldn’t take them all night, obviously.
The main thing was that they needed to stay together and work as a group, be patient with one another; help each other out, stay on track, and avoid wild animals. The kids all nodded in unison: Right, right. Sure, sure.
After that, they took their backpacks out of the trunk and double-checked their supplies. They drank water and refilled their bottles with the big jug Rutger had in the back of his minivan. Then they just stood around, waiti
ng for a while at the clearing in the woods, awkwardly, not saying much, for the second car to arrive. Looking out across the hilly landscape, Karin saw lots of patches of purple heath and little tufts of grass, like beards of old men, everywhere.
After a little while, Rutger walked away from the group and fished his cell phone out of his bag—he had it only for emergency purposes, he said—and tried calling Martijn and Riekje. “Strange,” he said, coming back, his wisps of hair floating for a moment over his head. “No answer. But they’ll probably be along shortly.”
Dirk, impatient by now, said the group was losing time, and he wanted to get started. “They aren’t supposed to go with us anyway,” he said. “We can start.” Lotte and Margot were opposed. They didn’t really want to deviate from the plan. Karin was with Dirk. The point was to do it on their own, anyway, right? Rutger looked miffed. “Let’s just wait a little longer,” he said.
The kids stood around, kicking the dirt, which was dry like sand and burst into the air as dark puffs.
“Did anyone hear about the wolf?” Dirk asked.
“What wolf?” said Lotte.
“Oh, come on, don’t try to scare us,” said Margot with a flirty twitter. “There are no wolves here.”
Dirk straightened up, excited to be urged on. “There are. Haven’t you read? Wolves are back in the Netherlands after, like, more than a hundred years.”
“A hundred forty years,” Karin said, realizing too late that she was sounding really annoying. But it was true. “My mom is obsessed with the wolves,” she added with a shrug. “I get a daily play-by-play.”
The kids glanced at her warily, but Dirk seemed chuffed that his story was confirmed by the nature nerd. He nodded for her to continue, and she took the invitation.
“There used to be wolves here a long time ago, but then they, like, kind of wandered off to Germany.” Karin knew the right word for this was “migrated” but was loath to use any even mildly scientific language among her peers. “And they’ve lived there for a long time, but then one of them just showed up here by himself last year. A male. And then later somehow there was a female, and early this summer they had pups.”