Two oars lay next to a rope coiled on the bottom. Plenty of dings, but no holes. A perfect vessel. As if it had drifted to her, for her. Someone meant for her to find this boat. She would explore the whole lake on her own, discover a place no one knew existed.
Cadie surveyed her house, and, seeing no sign of her parents, she dragged the boat fifty yards around the shoreline and tied it to the drooping birch branches behind the rocks where she used to play pirates. She ducked as a ribbon of starlings curled above her head, their wings murmuring secrets she couldn’t understand. The arc of green-black wings swooped toward the water where she stood, wet and naked. She hugged her arms around her waist and hurried through the shallows to get her pajamas from the pier.
Cadie’s knees shook as she eased the screen door shut behind her. She snuck back over the creaky kitchen floor, the nighttime chill held firmly in the peg nails securing the warped planks. She pressed her back against the door. Water dripped off the ends of her red ringlets, forming puddles on the floor.
Cadie slipped into the shower to hide her morning swim. She wanted to keep the boat. But even if no one claimed it, her parents would never let her take it out alone. She would be too scared to disobey them. She imagined her boat with no captain and slammed the shower door.
The smell of coffee greeted her as she reentered the kitchen. Her mother blotted a tangle of bacon with a paper towel and offered the plate to Cadie. The salty, chewy bacon exploded in her mouth, filling her nostrils with the bold smell of hickory.
Through the window she spied a glint of gold peeking between the rocks where branches left a sliver of the bow exposed. It glowed, singing a come-hither song only she heard. She squeezed her knees together and prayed her parents wouldn’t notice the blaze of anxious yellow.
She would take her boat out. No one would ever know.
After breakfast, Cadie wandered around the cottage, bumping into chairs, rereading the titles of books she had read again and again. She fingered the roughly hewn frame around a photo of her parents working on a farm in Canada before Cadie was born. Now her parents painted landscapes and made pottery in the woods of New Hampshire. They canned vegetables and chopped wood. Cadie had never even been outside of New England.
She flopped down on a small rug in front of the fireplace, stroking the woven fibers of dark red and burnt orange set off by flecks of turquoise and fuchsia—colors that did not exist in New Hampshire. She closed her eyes and willed the carpet to soar through the clouds, to take her back to Persia where it came from. Anywhere but the woods that framed her entire life.
“You’re making me crazy,” her mother said. “Do you want to throw a pot?”
The slip of clay moving through her hands, the sensation of art flowing from the tips of her fingers teased Cadie with possibility every time she sat at her mother’s pottery wheel. But Cadie’s vessels usually flopped. Despite having two working artists as parents, Cadie had inherited no artistic skills.
“I don’t feel like it.”
“You could go pick some berries. Then we can make something.”
Cadie knew the berries would sit in the fridge and rot, but she grabbed a plastic container from under the counter and slipped on her mud-crusted sneakers.
“Come, Friar,” she called to her border collie, and they ducked into the woods. Soggy twigs bent under her weight instead of snapping against the spongy forest floor. Shafts of sunlight broke through the canopy of maple, oak, and pine.
The closest neighbors lived so far through the forest, Cadie imagined herself alone in the world. Mud sucked at her shoes as she approached the swollen creek. According to her father, their creek came from an underground source. The water, filtered through the minerals on its way to the surface, was the purest water anywhere, her dad had told her over and over. She scooped up a mouthful.
Instead of heading toward the blueberries, Cadie followed the creek deeper into the forest in search of the spring she half believed existed. The property along the creek belonged to the state, a wide swath of conservation land dividing her property from that of the neighbors she had never met.
Cloven moose prints and the delicate handprints of raccoons marred the soft mud. Some days she found evidence bears had stopped for a drink. Large trees never took root on the soft banks. The saplings that tried, tipped and fell as soon as they reached adolescence because the soil turned to soggy cake during the spring thaw and couldn’t support their roots. A wide, treeless corridor on either side of the creek let the light pour in.
The Granite State was famous for its thin, rocky topsoil. Farmers pulled stones out of the fields when they cleared the land, but new rocks surfaced every year. The rain came, the freeze, the thaw, shifting the soil so the smaller particles slipped below the stones and pushed rocks up, the way Brazil nuts always rise to the top of a bowl of mixed nuts. The soil shuddered and moaned, heaving new stones up each spring.
But not around Silas Creek, where Cadie could sink up to her ankles in the brownie-batter mud and never hit a rock. The silty mud dried like a dusting of cocoa powder on her ankles whenever she tromped through it.
Countless times, she had tracked the windy waterway deep into the woods where a rusty barbed-wire fence cut through the forest, spanning the creek before she could get to the underground source. The fence created a barrier between her property and protected marshlands on the interior of the peninsula where she lived. She had tried to shimmy under the wire, but dead vines clinging to the fence gave her the creeps. A single rusty scratch could give her lockjaw, according to her mother. She always chickened out.
As she turned a bend in the creek, Cadie halted. A birch tree, reckless enough to take root on the bank, had lost its footing and fallen, buckling part of the fence to expose an opening barely big enough for Cadie to slither under.
She splashed through the icy water and dropped to all fours. First one shoulder, then the other under the treacherous wires. Stones shifted under the slick soles of her sneakers. Friar huffed his disapproval.
The forest on the other side looked similar to hers, but the forbidden woods seemed thicker, denser. She cocked her head to see if the sky looked different from the other side. A stone shifted and she fell to her elbows, her chin hitting the water. Sharp rocks dug into her knees, distracting her so she didn’t feel the stabbing in her shoulder at first. An inch-long gash on her upper arm beaded with blood droplets where a rusty barb had torn through her flesh. She crawled backward out from under the fence.
Friar whined and wriggled himself next to Cadie in the water.
“It’s okay, boy.” The smell of wet dog comforted her.
She splashed the wound, rubbing the cut. If she could have bent her neck only two inches more, she would have sucked the poison out like snake venom. Cadie moved her jaw from left to right and straightened her back as she stood knee-high in the water.
Instead of trying to squeeze under the fence again, she picked up a stone and hurled it at the opening between the wires. The rock passed through without touching a single mangled wire. Kids made fun of Cadie’s knobby knees and her clumsiness, but she had perfect aim.
She turned her back to the fence.
The best berries grew on the far bank, flush with a water source, rich soil, and unobstructed morning light. Friar stopped as they approached the clearing where the blueberries grew and growled a low, deep warning. He stiffened his back and pricked his ears up. Cadie froze. She turned the plastic container over and beat on the bottom like a drum.
Bears.
“Come on, Friar. Home.” She edged backward. “‘Oh, I went down south for to see my Sal, singing Polly Wolly Doodle all the day,’” she sang and backed up, maintaining the steady, hollow rhythm on the plastic tub.
Friar darted toward the noise.
“Friar!” She inched backward. The bushes rustled and parted. “Friar!”
She curled her toes inside her sneakers and fought the urge to run. Never run from a bear. “‘For my Sal she is a spun
ky gal, singing Polly Wolly Doodle all the day.’” She matched her drum to every other beat of her pounding heart.
“Don’t stop singing because of me,” a voice called.
From behind the bushes stepped Daniela Garcia, a grade ahead of Cadie. They lived in the same small town, went to the same school, but they didn’t really know each other.
Daniela wasn’t a Girl Scout.
A hot blush slithered up Cadie’s neck, her ears, her face.
“You thought I was a bear, didn’t you?” Daniela said.
“No.” Cadie didn’t need another reason for the kids outside the 7-Eleven to laugh at her. Her flaming hair and giant freckles gave them invitation enough. Now she would be the girl who sang to bears in the woods.
Friar ran over to Daniela and jumped up on her, leaving muddy splotches on her shorts. Cadie’s stomach lurched.
“Down, Friar.” Cadie tried to pull him off Daniela. “Sorry.”
“Fryer? Like a fryer hen?”
“His real name is Friar Tuck, from Robin Hood.”
“You shouldn’t yell for him like that.”
“Why not?”
“I thought you were yelling fire,” Daniela said. “Not what you want to hear in the middle of the woods. I mean, geez. If you lived on a beach, would you name your dog Shark?”
Daniela dropped to her knees, allowing Friar to lick her face.
“You can call him Tuck if you want.”
“Nah, Friar’s cool. Why’d you sing anyway? I would’ve run if I saw a bear.”
“You don’t run from bears. You move slow and make noise. And never look them in the eyes.”
“You’re a pretty awful singer. Are you picking blueberries?”
“Yeah. My mom wants some.”
“Me too.” Daniela swept her arm toward the bushes. Cadie took it as an invitation.
Cadie wished she had braided her hair, which had dried into a red puffball. Her pink terry cloth shorts did not match her blue tank top. Daniela wore cutoff denim shorts and a button-down short-sleeved shirt made of red handkerchief fabric. Her black hair hung in a loose ponytail. Although Daniela’s parents spoke with thick accents, Daniela had no trace of an accent, unlike the other Mexican kids who transitioned in and out of her school. Other kids moved from farm to farm, there one school year, gone the next. But Daniela had always been there. Cadie often saw her on the porch of her father’s hardware store when she walked home from school.
“Why are you in my woods?” Cadie said.
Daniela raised her eyebrows in high, sweeping arches and put a hand on her hip. “Why are you in my woods?”
Cadie slapped her leg to call Friar closer.
“We just moved here,” Daniela said. “The cottage by the water off Woodside. It’s my woods.”
Although the two properties butted up against each other, their driveways connected to different streets. Cadie had never even seen the cottage, other than glimpses from out on the lake.
A slow grin spread across Daniela’s face as she looked Cadie up and down. “Did you fall in the creek?”
Cadie shrugged. Mud clung to her knees. She wiped away the blood on her arm.
“At least it’s warm out.” Daniela stepped aside to make room for Cadie. “It’s sunnier over here. You’ll dry off faster.”
Daniela paused from picking berries and pointed at the woven bracelet on Cadie’s wrist. “What’s this?”
“Paracord. The knots unwind to seven feet of rope for, you know, emergencies.”
“Are you guys survivalists or something?” Daniela asked.
“No. I just like it.”
“Cool.”
They picked berries quietly for ten minutes. Daniela surveyed each cluster before picking it, occasionally stepping away, tilting her head up, and swaying her back to look at the sky. She whistled a mournful song Cadie did not recognize. The soft edges of each note rose above the bushes as if they came from a perfectly tuned flute, not Daniela’s chapped lips. The drawn-out notes whispered of melancholy, but as Daniela swayed in rhythm with her own music, the corners of her mouth curled up and her eyebrows arched, convincing Cadie the song wasn’t meant to be sad.
Cadie paused several times to look through the bushes toward the lake, hoping to catch a flicker of yellow between the branches. Daniela turned and followed Cadie’s gaze. Her song drifted into a final note that left Cadie feeling unsatisfied, as if the melody asked a question Cadie could not answer.
“Are you still looking for bears?” Daniela said.
“No.” The warm flush crept up her neck as she twisted the bottom edge of her shirt around her finger. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course.”
“Follow me.” Cadie sprinted into the woods, Friar close at her heels.
“If it’s the patch of berries down by the water, I already found it,” Daniela called.
She heard Daniela running to catch up, but she didn’t slow down. The smell of damp pine and stagnant water intensified as they got closer to the lake. Water bugs skittered over pools of still rainwater. Chunks of granite, dropped by glaciers during the Ice Age, ranging in size from a softball to a pickup truck, littered the forest floor, forming crevices that could snap her ankle if she lost focus. She leapt from rock to moss-covered rock, to leaf-strewn patches of forest floor, holding her breath to duck through clouds of mosquitoes. The cheerful trill of a Bicknell’s thrush encouraged her to run faster.
As she approached the edge of the lake, she wriggled under a few low-hanging hemlock branches, dripping with the previous night’s rain, and stepped out onto a large slab of granite erupting from the woods toward the lake.
Tucked into the nook where the rock met the water, Cadie’s boat waited for her.
Daniela emerged from under the hemlock branches and joined Cadie on the rock. “Okay. It’s a boat. I don’t get it.”
“I found it floating in the lake this morning. I swam out and rescued it. My parents weren’t even awake yet.”
Three inches taller than Cadie, with a confidence Cadie longed for, Daniela turned to Cadie as if seeing her for the first time. She looked at Cadie’s muddy sneakers, her bony knees, mismatched clothes, and unruly hair.
Cadie had made a mistake. If Daniela told anyone about the boat, Cadie would lose her chance to explore the lake. Daniela might think Cadie was being childish for hiding the boat, or unethical for not trying to find its owner.
Or, like Cadie, Daniela might be looking for something more than blueberries.
“Whose is it?”
“It’s mine now.” Cadie pressed up and down on her tiptoes.
Daniela stepped closer to the boat and ran her hand across the rim. Yellow paint flaked off and she flicked it in the water.
Friar sniffed at the boat and growled.
“After my parents go to work tomorrow, I’m taking it out. You can come if you want.” Cadie rubbed Friar’s ears.
Daniela squinted at Cadie, at the boat, then back at Cadie.
With her shoe, Cadie scratched at a patch of lichen clinging to the rock.
“No one else knows about this?” Daniela said.
“No one else can ever know.”
Daniela slapped a mosquito on her arm, leaving a bloody smear. “What time should I be here?”
3
PRESENT DAY
Cadie turned down the gnarled road weaving through the woods past the Talbots’ ramshackle sugarhouse. Her mother had always called it the James Taylor Road because she liked to listen to his mellow, rolling voice on the twisting, rolling road. Cadie hummed to her mental soundtrack, but sped up the tempo. She wanted to get to the cottage before Daniela.
Her ears popped, as they always did, on the steady incline leading to the “Welcome to Maple Crest” sign. She pressed down on the gas, urging the vehicle to speed up, but the air around her pushed back on the car as if gravity, the mountains, even the road, wanted her to turn around.
A female deer lay on the side of the road, motionl
ess. Its flat eyes stared at oncoming traffic. The fires had been pushing animals out of the deep woods into neighborhoods, parks, and highways for weeks. The number of foxes, deer, and moose struck by vehicles in the past month already surpassed the previous two years combined. The deer looked as if it might peel itself off the sweltering blacktop at any moment and walk away. No blood, no visibly broken bones.
If Daniela came forward with the truth about what they had done, Cadie would never be able to drive back to Concord and reenter her life the way she’d left it. She would become the girl who had covered up a murder, the woman who had harbored the lie.
Even as she considered the ramifications, a yearning simmered in her gut. To tell the truth. The cost of redemption might be her career. Maybe she could live with that. But the New Hampshire woodlands and its inhabitants would pay a much bigger price if no one stepped in to complete her work.
Paint curled off the edges of auction and foreclosure signs slouching in dusty pastures flanked by barns leaning at severe angles. The drought had sucked this land dry, leaving behind stretches of browned cornstalks to stand guard like brittle ghosts.
Towering hemlocks and balsam firs wrapped around the road she and Daniela once soared down on their bikes, focused on the taste of the wind and their next adventure, fixated by maps and secrets. Deep secrets—not the kind that draw heads together in fluttering whispers, but the sort that move between two bodies like shared blood—bind souls closer. Or repel them. She could feel Daniela getting closer as she approached the cottage.
The spice of pine needles and forest decay flooded through the car window as Cadie crept down the driveway of her childhood home. The screen door creaked open weightlessly. Her breath hitched at the familiar scent of musty newspapers, lavender, and oil paint. The year she turned thirteen, after her parents took jobs teaching in Boston, the cottage became a summer place instead of their full-time home. She spent each spring of her teen years trying to find reasons not to join her parents at the cottage that summer. Sleep-away camps, nanny jobs, visiting friends. Anything so she didn’t have to bide time in those woods.
Waiting for the Night Song Page 2