“Hey, Raven,” River greeted her, “or is it Viola now?”
“Raven,” she replied.
River cast a sarcastic look at Ellis. Not much had changed since she last saw him. “You’re okay calling her that?”
She wasn’t. Ellis hated the name. But the young woman who had come back to her after sixteen years wasn’t Viola Bauhammer. Ellis had no right to dictate her name. She’d conceded that after the first day.
“I guess not,” River said when she didn’t answer.
“Is everything all right?” Jasper asked.
“Yes.” She looked down at her muddy clothes. “We must look pretty bad.”
“I thought all Floridians looked like that,” River said.
Jasper gave him a look.
“We were in the marsh,” Raven said.
“In the marsh?” River said incredulously. “What, Friday night gator wrestling? Is that a thing around here?”
“We were hiking,” Ellis said.
River snorted. For good reason. Why would Raven hike without her pants on?
“We need to clean up,” Ellis said. “Do you want to come inside?”
What was she doing inviting them inside as if they were new neighbors come to introduce themselves? The civility of it all felt so off. But what else could she do?
“Our car is blocking the driveway by the gate,” Jasper said.
“It’s no problem,” she said. She had no reason to believe Keith would return, now or ever.
The boys declined her offer of water or iced tea. They waited in the living room while Ellis and Raven cleaned up. Ellis rushed, too manic to compose herself.
She got to the living room before Raven, though she wasn’t sure Raven would come out at all. She mostly kept to herself, especially in the evening. And she’d said she didn’t like her New York relatives.
“I’m sorry about how you were greeted,” she said. “You caught us at an odd moment.”
“That’s okay,” River said. “Who won the match—you two or the alligator?”
“Thankfully, we won. Raven didn’t know she shouldn’t swim in the marsh. I sort of had to haul her out.”
“You’re kidding?” he said.
“She’s from the north. She didn’t understand the danger—or the unpleasantness.”
The boys smiled.
Ellis was surprised when she opened her arms, inviting an embrace. “May I?”
Jasper went to her immediately and squeezed her tight. A man’s embrace. The tears came when she thought of all the little-boy hugs she’d missed.
His eyes were wet when they released.
She looked at River. The last time she’d seen him, he’d refused to hug her goodbye.
“I’m not feelin’ it,” he said.
“River, what the hell?” Jasper said.
“It’s okay. I understand,” Ellis said.
“This is a cool place,” River said. “I’d ask if you like it here, but I assume you do if you never came back.”
“Yes, I like it, but I ended up here by accident, really.” She thought of the stabbing, Keith driving her to Florida while she slept, the panic attacks that had held her captive in Gainesville for more than a year. The edge of it had been dulled by the whittle of years.
“Are you married?” River asked.
“No. What about your father?”
“Nope.”
A strained silence.
“Do you have anything to drink around here?” River asked.
Jasper gave his brother a critical look.
“You mean an alcoholic drink?”
“Yeah.”
“There might be a few beers out in the barn refrigerator.”
“What, for the cows?”
“They’re my boyfriend’s.”
“Will he mind if I hit his stash?”
“He doesn’t live here anymore.” She hadn’t yet said that out loud. It was sinking in.
She got a flashlight and took them down the footpath that led to the barn.
“My business partner is a carpenter,” Ellis said as she pushed open the barn door. “She made the barn into a guesthouse with a full kitchen and bath.”
“This is great!” Jasper said.
“There’s another bedroom up in the loft,” she said. “But the only bathroom is down here.”
“What do you use it for?” River asked.
“My boyfriend’s sister, husband, and three kids came here at least once a year. They’d use this as their home base while visiting beaches or the Orlando theme parks.”
“How long were you with him?” Jasper asked.
“He lived here for ten years.”
“How long ago did you break up?”
“About six weeks ago.”
River figured it out right away. “That was when Raven came.”
“Yes.”
“Why would he leave at a time like that?” Jasper asked.
She wanted to walk away from the question. The truth would hurt them. But she knew walking away caused a different kind of damage. Every time she looked in their eyes, she saw it.
“I never told him I had children,” she said.
Yes, it hurt. A fresh glaze of pain spread into their gazes.
“So . . . you’d basically deleted us like files on your computer,” River said.
“I guess I can see why he left,” Jasper said.
“So can I,” she said. She opened the refrigerator and motioned for River to look at the selection, a six-pack and three bottles of another brand. He grabbed the six-pack.
“You can’t drink all of that if you plan to drive tonight,” she said.
“I’m driving,” Jasper said.
“But why drive?” River said. “Let’s stay here.”
“River . . . ,” Jasper said.
“What?”
“She hasn’t invited us.”
“It’s okay, isn’t it?” River said. “We were going to find a hotel in Gainesville.”
“Sit down,” she said. “We need to talk.”
River opened a beer and put the rest back in the refrigerator. The boys sat on the couch, and Ellis faced them on Keith’s lounge chair, the one he used to watch football on the TV he’d bought for himself but pretended was a gift for her.
“You want to know why we’re here,” River said.
“I do,” she said. “I also want to know why you lied to your father.”
“Second question is easier,” River said. He took a long drink. “We didn’t tell him because he would have said we couldn’t come here.”
“Then why did you come?”
River looked at Jasper.
“It was your idea?” she asked Jasper.
“It was. Dad’s lied to me all these years. He said he didn’t know where you were. When Viola came home, I found out he’d known for a long time where you live. River knew, too.”
“Internet,” River said before taking another long pull on the bottle.
Jasper aimed a hard look at her. “Why would you ask why we’re here? You’re our mother.”
Ellis hadn’t had a drink since she quit in the mountains. But she wanted one of those beers.
Jasper said, “I’m here because I thought it was bullshit that Viola got to see you and we didn’t. Dad says she’s here to hide from reporters, but I know that’s more lies. She lives with you now, doesn’t she?”
“She does, but she doesn’t want to. All she wants is to go back to Washington.”
“Do you want her here?” he asked.
“That question is way too complicated to answer.”
“Try.”
“Okay. First of all, I’ll say I’m relieved she’s okay. All these years, I’ve had every imaginable fear about what happened to her. But it’s not like this was some happy reunion. She doesn’t want anything to do with me. Being here is like a prison sentence she has to serve until she can go back to her house in Washington. So . . . do I want her here? I don’t know.”
; “I wonder what her house is like,” River said. “Dad says she’ll be really rich when she inherits.”
“Are you serious?” Ellis said.
“You didn’t know? That woman who took her is from some billionaire family in Chicago.”
No wonder Audrey Lind successfully kept Viola hidden away all those years. She’d had limitless resources. And now Ellis understood why her sister had been so eager to drop Raven into the obscurity of the Florida woods. She didn’t want the news of what her sister had done to penetrate her elite sphere.
River finished his beer quickly and got another from the refrigerator. “Can I ask a question now?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Are you still a doper?”
“Who told you that?”
“Gram, of course. And looking back, it’s pretty obvious.”
“I quit all that long ago.”
“Too bad. I was hoping to hit you up for something good.”
Ellis stood. “If you’ve come here to blame your problems on me, you can leave.”
“But I can stay if I came here like Jasper to make nice? Or if I’m a poor abducted kid who doesn’t know her ass from an alligator?”
“You know, I have a lot on my plate right now.” Even as she said it, she was disgusted with herself.
“You’ve got a lot on your plate, and I’m hungry. Mind if we mooch some food before you kick our asses out of here?”
He was there to punish her. Clearly trying to rattle her with his obnoxious behavior. Maybe he wanted her to boot him out of her house so he could justify hating her. Hatred was an addictive emotion, and it thrived best with frequent injections that kept the high going. River hadn’t had a fresh dose since he was a little boy. He didn’t want her to give him a pill to dull his pain. He wanted a slap to increase it. And the sad thing was, he also believed he deserved to be slapped.
No, she wouldn’t play into his self-hatred. “You’re welcome to anything in my kitchen. And you can stay in this guesthouse as long as you want. But you have to tell Jonah where you are. He needs to know in case there’s an emergency.”
“He can call us,” River said.
“He has the right to know where you are.”
“He doesn’t give a shit where I am. As long as I’m out of his house.”
“Why do you say things like that?” Jasper said.
“I don’t know,” River said. “Sometimes truths just come bursting out of me.”
“Let’s go find you something to eat,” Ellis said.
River gathered the remaining beers to bring with him. Ellis gave Jasper the remote to open the gate and showed him where to park and unload their luggage.
Raven was in the kitchen eating a vegetable-and-fried-seitan wrap she’d made for herself. She watched River stash his beers in the refrigerator.
“River and Jasper are staying overnight in the barn house,” Ellis said.
Raven had no response. She slid her plate of food to the middle of the table. “Do you want the rest of this?” she asked.
“You should eat it. You’ve barely had anything today.”
“I feel sick.”
She often said that. She was losing weight too fast. In the bright kitchen lights, she looked gaunt and exhausted. Being away from Washington was wearing on her. Ellis wondered if she could intervene, try to help her get back there. But to do that, she’d have to talk to her legal guardian, and Ellis didn’t want to be involved with Jonah in any way.
Jasper walked into the kitchen. “I put your bag in the guesthouse,” he told River.
She didn’t want to be involved with Jonah, yet here were the three children she’d made with him. In her kitchen. The room was suddenly small with the three young adults. Her house felt unfamiliar, like a house in a parallel world in which she’d never left Viola in the forest.
“Would you like what Raven is eating?” Ellis asked the boys.
Jasper studied the sandwich on her plate. “Is that meat?”
“Seitan. I switched from vegetarian to vegan.”
“I’m vegan, too,” Jasper said.
River drained the second bottle. “Your brainwashing worked,” he said to Ellis, opening another beer. “He never got over the guilt you made us feel for eating meat.”
“Lay off her!” Jasper said. “It was my choice. I never liked meat.”
“That’s the point of indoctrination,” River said, “to make you think what you believe was your idea all along.”
“You’re acting like a total ass,” Jasper said.
“Why would I have to act?” River said with a grin. He asked Raven, “I suppose you’re a vegan, too?”
“No,” she said.
“You eat meat?”
She nodded.
“Well, hell, no wonder you feel sick from eating that shite-tan thing. Let’s go over to the barbecue place down the road.”
“You’re not driving,” Ellis said. “That’s your third beer in twenty minutes.”
“Seriously?” he said. “You’re going to play parent all of a sudden?”
“You’re underage, and I gave you the beer. I could get in big trouble if you had an accident.”
“Okay, that sounds like the mom I knew. It was more about you than concern for me.”
“I told you to lay off,” Jasper said, shoving his shoulder.
The blow made River stumble backward a few steps. He found his feet and threw a punch that Jasper barely dodged. Jasper grabbed him by the upper arms, shouting, “Stop it! Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you?” River yelled, shoving him back. “Why did you want to come here? We could be at the goddamn beach right now!”
They crashed into the baker’s rack, toppling one of the very few possessions Ellis cared about, an antique apothecary jar Keith had given her for her birthday their first year together. Ellis had gradually filled it with little gifts of wildflowers Keith had brought from his walks on the property.
The jar exploded as it hit the floor. Parched flowers scattered in land mines of glass shards.
5
RAVEN
Raven cut her foot trying to help.
Ellis snapped at her for walking barefoot into the glass.
Jasper cut his hand.
Blood mixed in with the broken glass and dead flowers.
River did nothing, just leaned against the refrigerator, drinking his beer.
Ellis gave Jasper a box of Band-Aids and told him to clean his cut at the kitchen sink. She took Raven into the bathroom to look at the sole of her foot. “This is a bad cut,” she said.
“I can do it myself,” Raven said.
“Hold still,” Ellis said. She cleaned and bandaged the cut and had Raven sit with her foot elevated on a couch pillow.
Ellis went to the kitchen, and Raven heard her thank Jasper for cleaning up the glass.
“I hope you don’t mind that I threw the flowers away,” Jasper said. “They were too mixed in with the glass to sort out.”
“That’s okay,” Ellis said.
It wasn’t okay. Raven rarely talked to Ellis, but she’d become familiar with her moods, and she could tell Ellis was badly stressed by the arrival of her sons. Raven wasn’t happy about it either. She and Ellis had established a fragile balance. They both knew Raven would leave soon and there was no reason to try being friends. The absence of trouble and emotion between them was necessary for Raven as she grappled with everything Mama had done. All Raven wanted from Ellis was to be on her land until she could go home. Her closest companions were the grandparent oaks opening their giant limbs down to her, meadows that let her sleep on their flowered skirts, sandhill cranes bugling sweet music to her throughout the day.
But now these fighting boys had come and ruined everything. They had broken much more than the glass jar. Raven had felt it as soon as she saw them, everything in her life coming apart again, and she didn’t think she could handle more breakage.
She heard thumping cabinet doors, River
asking if there was anything stronger than beer. Ellis saying beer was all she had. She asked them to go in the living room while she cooked.
Jasper asked Raven if she was okay as he entered the room with his brother.
“It’s nothing,” she said. She lifted her cut foot off the pillow and sat up.
“Nothing?” River said, looking at her bandaged foot. “That’s amazing. I guess you’ve already fixed it with your earth-spirit superpowers.”
In her mind, Raven jumped off the couch and punched him much harder than Jasper had. In reality, she tried not to show any reaction. The person who deserved to be punched was her bigmouthed aunt.
River saw she was upset. “Yeah, we know,” he said. “Our father told us about your kook religion.”
“Shut up,” Jasper said.
“I can say what I want, dickhead. What exactly can those earth spirits do?” he asked Raven.
“Nothing a person as lost as you could understand,” she said.
“Good answer,” Jasper said.
River was clearly angry that his brother had sided with her. He downed the rest of his beer and opened a new bottle.
“Have you figured out that the woman who stole you was insane?” he asked. “They tried to lock her up more than once, you know.”
“You’re the one who should be locked up.”
“Maybe I should,” he said. “And you’ll be in the padded room right next to mine. And why is that? Because of that piece of shit who stole you. She wrecked a lot of lives! And for you to act like she was this great person really pisses off everyone in this family! You need to get with reality! She was a total wacko!”
Raven sprang up and shoved him in the chest. “Don’t talk about her like that!”
Ellis pulled Raven away as Jasper grabbed River’s arm. The boys were about to get into another fistfight.
“Stop this!” Ellis shouted. “All of you, stop!”
“All of us?” Jasper said. “It’s River!”
“Go sit in that chair, River!” Ellis shouted.
“Oh my god,” he said with a laugh. “I’m in time-out? Have you forgotten I’m not four?”
The Light Through the Leaves Page 32