One afternoon when she was fifteen, Betsy visited her mother’s office and stood in the dim light of the quiet lab, all the other techs gone for the day. Her dad had picked her up from school and dropped her at her mom’s office on his way to the Alys Stephens Center for a symphony performance. She and her mom would pick up Jenna at school in half an hour. Jenna had detention. Again.
Betsy stared at the wall. Faces stared back at her from photographs. Mostly young people, children, babies even. Some were photographed in light moments—laughter, a smile, or at least a hint of one. Playing, working, cooking, living life. But a few were taken toward the end—faces barely suppressing the pain that raged inside them. Eyes full of the knowledge of the truth about their lives.
She scratched the back of her leg with the laces of her tennis shoe, then reached out and touched one of the photos. A teenager wearing a backward ball cap grinned loosely, as if all was right with the world. His arm was flung around the shoulders of a tall girl whose eyes were closed in laughter. “Mom, tell me about him.”
Her mom crossed the room. Her lab took up most of the eleventh floor of the UAB Cancer Research Center. It smelled musty—like damp newspaper or old dirt—with a hard edge of Lysol mixed in. This lab was where really smart people—scientists, doctors, technicians—made groundbreaking discoveries in the field of brain cancer research, and Betsy’s mom was the head of it all. Her black orthopedic shoes padded across the floor, her rumpled white lab coat billowing behind her.
She grazed her fingers across the teenager’s face. “Brian McLaurin,” she said, her voice low and reverent. “He was only seventeen. Bone cancer that spread to his brain. He was a stand-out basketball star on his high school team before the pain started.” She moved to her right and nodded toward the next photo on her “inspiration wall,” as she called it. “Cynthia Graves. Left a young family behind. Juanita Powers, the lead in her middle school play.”
She kept going, calling out the names of each face on her wall. Her mother hadn’t always focused on cancer of the brain, but it was always something horrible and tragic. Betsy was only fifteen, the same age as some of the people on the wall, and she couldn’t imagine someone choosing to devote her life to something so depressing, even if it did save lives.
She tuned out her mom’s words but kept watching her. The way she touched each photo, a gentle smile on her face, a little laugh when she noted something funny about the person in his or her precancer life. She knew every detail about them—their hobbies, families, jobs. Where they went to school, what sport they played, what their dreams and hopes had been. Somehow that careful attention didn’t extend to remembering that Betsy didn’t like green beans. That at the age of twelve, Jenna still wanted the nightlight on in the hallway outside her bedroom. That the two girls in her own house needed a mother who paid attention to the small things.
Her mom wiped a tear away and sniffed, then strode back to her desk on the other side of the room. Betsy followed her. Her mom’s desk was empty of any personal items—no photos of her or Jenna, no calendars with puppies or exotic islands. “Why do you keep those photos up on the wall if they make you so sad?”
“They remind me why I’m doing all this.” She waved her arm around at the lab. “They inspire me to pour all I have into finding cures. Not for them—it’s too late for them—but for their families, friends, children. The ones they left behind.” She gazed back up at the wall. “They’re why I do everything.”
Her mom said plenty, but it was the unsaid words that cut the deepest. They left an empty pocket, a vacuum that sucked a hole in the center of Betsy’s chest. It was the first time she realized with utter clarity that her mom actually wished those kids had been hers. Maybe even instead of Betsy and Jenna. It was the way her constant tension slipped away for a moment, the way her smile became real, not forced and tight. She was a better mom to these poor dead kids than she was to her own fully alive children.
Betsy looked at her watch—a yellow-and-green Swatch her favorite babysitter had given her two years before. “Mom, we’ve got to go. It’s almost five.”
“Mmm?” Her mom kept her gaze on the paperwork on her desk.
“Jenna. Detention. It’s over in five minutes.”
Her mom looked up, her eyes hazy, faraway. “Detention,” she said, as if it were a foreign language. Which it kind of was. If it wasn’t related to cancer or her lab or grant money, it was an unknown concept. She straightened the papers on her desk and clipped them with a black binder clip, then gave Betsy a sad smile. “What would we do without you?”
ten
Jenna
Google told her the drive from Elinore would take six and a half hours, but she figured if she pushed it, she could make it in less than six. Singer Creek Nature Preserve. Halcyon Artist Retreat. Two weeks of solitude, a chance to stretch creative muscles that had once been brimming with promise.
It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get away to chase her dreams. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if her parents had said yes to the artist’s residency the summer after her freshman year of college. If they’d believed in her art, trusted that she had something to say through her camera, something she couldn’t find a way to say with words, or even a paintbrush or pencil. Could attending that summer program in Seattle have changed her whole life? Set her on a straight path toward creative fulfillment? Toward good decisions, respectable boyfriends, satisfying jobs? Maybe not. But maybe.
Instead, that spring night when she had driven back home to Birmingham from Tuscaloosa to talk to her parents about it, they’d glanced at each other and shared one of those quick looks that meant, “What in the world are we going to do about Jenna?” Part of her thought they might be happy she’d not only found something she was good at but was pursuing it. Pushing for it, asking for it.
“I think it’s great,” Betsy, who was home from Auburn for the weekend, had said when Jenna explained that the opportunity was offered to only a handful of students in her photography class and she was one of them. It was expensive, but it would offer her a furnished apartment for the summer, daily workshops with professional photographers, and priceless instruction from the famed but elusive Theodore Griffs.
“Photography as a hobby is great—something to do with your extra time.” Her mom set her fork down next to her plate. “But it’s just not something you can pursue as a regular, dependable job. It’s not something that will make you any money.”
“Who’s talking about money? Maybe she just wants to have fun with it,” Betsy said.
“Fun? Fun is taking photography as an elective. Using it as a creative outlet outside your regular classes. Maybe you could even set up a side business taking photos at birthday parties or events. That’d be fun. Going clear across the country to work with a man who looks like a serial killer is not my idea of fun.”
Nothing is your idea of fun, Jenna thought. And she regretted her decision to pull up the photographer on Google earlier to show her parents that he was a real, well-known—if a little scary-looking—photographer.
“So you’re going to let this guy’s looks scare you off? He’s a big deal—did you read what it said about him? Spending a summer learning from him could be huge for Jenna. Why can’t she go?” Betsy always stuck up for Jenna—it was part of the unspoken code of their sisterhood, as ingrained as their hair or eye color.
“Betsy, it’s fine.” Jenna wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed back from the table. “You don’t have to—”
“No, wait a minute. Y’all let me go clear across the globe for my semester in England two years ago. This isn’t half as far or nearly as expensive. I don’t get it.”
“That was different. It was—”
“Girls.” Their father was known for his silence and calm demeanor, so when he spoke, and with force as he did this time, they listened. “That’s enough. Your mother has given her answer.” He turned to Jenna. “If you want to pursue your photography on your own, tha
t’s fine. Anything in the arts is a worthy endeavor, as far as I’m concerned. But you spending a summer across the country with no supervision is out of the question.”
Jenna’s cheeks flamed. His voice had been steady, but she heard the emphasis on you anyway. It was as clear to her as the roof over her head or the hard chair she sat on—if it had been the other sister asking, the answer would have been different. But she was Jenna, ever dependable if solely as the disappointment. She’d proven that with lackluster grades, unsuitable boyfriends, and questionable after-school activities. Disappearing behind the camera was the only thing she was good at.
She left the dining room but paused unseen in the kitchen when she heard their conversation pick back up.
“I get that I don’t have any sway here,” Betsy said. “I just think you could give her a shot. She never asks to do anything and this one thing, you won’t let her do.”
“Jenna asks to do plenty, it’s just not often for very smart reasons. We’re thinking of her future, Betsy,” her dad said. “She needs to concentrate on her grades, not some summer getaway with a bunch of friends in Seattle.”
“Dad, I think it’s more—”
“Her grades are already hanging by a thin thread,” her mom broke in, “and that’s without the distraction of this summer fling. She needs to focus, maybe even take some summer classes—on campus, real courses—and think about what she wants to do with her life.” Jenna peeked around the edge of the door just in time to see her mom smooth her hair and brush imaginary crumbs off the front of her blouse. “Anyway, no telling what kind of trouble she’d get into in Seattle, of all places. Isn’t that where those grunge people are? She’d probably end up on drugs. Or pregnant.”
Jenna pulled back to avoid being seen, her stomach clenched as if her mother’s words had been a physical blow.
“Jenna’s a little wild, but she’s not like that.” Jenna heard the exasperation in Betsy’s voice. “Why can’t this be a way for her to figure out what she wants to do in the future? You let me do it, and it’s not even like someone would hire me just because I worked at a marketing firm in England for a semester.”
“Maybe not, but it shows that you challenged yourself, that you’re determined to succeed, that you value hard work and dedication.”
“Really? I think it shows I found the one semester-abroad program that let me combine my major with quaint English pubs and British guys with cute accents.”
Dad scoffed. “That’s not why you went and you know it.”
“Why do you always think it’s Jenna who does things for the wrong reason? Why do you automatically expect me to do the right thing? The good thing?”
“That’s just the way you are, Betsy.” Their mother’s voice was maddeningly calm. “It’s what you do. Jenna, on the other hand . . .” She cleared her throat.
I what? Jenna screamed in her mind. What am I?
Betsy stood, her chair scraping against the floor. “I think you’re making a big mistake by not letting her go.”
Alone now in her car, driving toward a mysterious destination that promised similar space and time to pursue her art and sharpen her skills, Jenna wondered at the prophetic nature of Betsy’s comment. It was sort of true, wasn’t it? Her parents’ refusal to allow her to go to Seattle almost ten years ago had been the beginning of a downward spiral that dumped her out with two kids, a job filling recycled cardboard cups with fancy coffee, and a handful of abandoned dreams. Part of her wanted to blame it all on her parents, but she was old enough to know that was a weak excuse. She’d made her own choices.
Instead of the interstate, she stayed on small highways and two-lanes. Signs with happy names like Seaside, Rosemary Beach, and Sunnyside slid past her windows. Panama City, Port St. Joe, and Apalachicola, then national forests and wildlife management areas. Everything green and lush, full of life. As she drove she twisted the bracelet on her wrist until her skin grew sore. The bracelet—purple and blue pipe cleaners twisted together—was a gift from Addie the night before.
“Here, Mommy,” Addie had said. “You can wear this on your trip.”
Jenna slipped it over her hand and onto her wrist. “I’ll keep it on the whole time.”
“To remind you of me?”
“I don’t need something like this to make me think of you. You’re in here.” She tapped her chest, over her heart.
Addie beamed, then frowned. “Wait. How am I in there if I’m right here?”
Jenna rolled down the windows and inhaled the warm, salty air. When she felt the magnitude of what she was attempting—going fourteen days without seeing her kids, resurrecting a long-dormant passion—she pushed the anxiety back and focused on the road. In her little blue car hurtling east, then south, she smiled as the air through the windows whipped her curls. She rolled up the window and cranked the AC. Freedom, light and elusive, won out over the panic and set her fingers tapping on the steering wheel.
The woman Jenna had spoken to on the phone warned her not to use GPS to get to Halcyon. Those instructions would send her to Chopper’s Alligator Farm, the owner of which would not be amused by another misguided artist showing up at his front gate and asking for directions. So when Jenna saw the first sign for Singer Creek Nature Preserve, she took the woman’s advice and ignored the blue dot, trusting that the signs would point her to her destination.
She didn’t know much more about Halcyon than what she saw on the flyer Max had shoved across the varnished coffee shop counter three months ago. She’d been too afraid to read much about it, to hear about artists who’d left there full of new ideas, determination, purpose. The way she saw it, it was better not to get her hopes up. But now it was happening. The space that had opened up for her felt too good to be real. More than she deserved.
“All art begins as a passion, an idea set deep inside the soul of a person,” the flyer had read. “Often, all that person needs is space to bring the idea to fruition. Halcyon is this space. It is a refuge to pursue the art that makes you feel alive.”
Not until now did Jenna have a spark of memory about “halcyon.” She was probably thirteen or fourteen and had walked into her father’s office on the second floor of their house without knocking. He was hunched over his desk, scratching out music notes and drawing new ones on a score. Treble clefs, bass clefs, 3/4 counts.
“What are you working on?” she’d asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the sheet music before him. “I’m writing a new piece for my summer concert series. It’s called ‘Halcyon Days.’ It’s going to be beautiful if I can just figure out this coda . . .” And with that, he retreated again to the space in his mind where no one could reach him. Later, he explained to her the story behind “Halcyon Days.” The beautiful widow. The kingfisher. The unusual calm.
When she pulled off the highway at the sign for Singer Creek, her hurriedly scrawled directions told her to drive ten miles south on a thin two-lane road, then turn off onto another road for a few miles. Her directions didn’t mention that this road was white sand instead of asphalt and just wide enough for her car. Leafy tendrils and vines encroached along the edges and tall trees lined the road, meeting above to form a canopy that blocked out the last of the daylight.
This must be wrong, she thought. But as she inched forward, just past a sprawling oak with Spanish moss drooping down to brush the top of her car, a driveway opened up. Not even a driveway really, just a blip of space carved out between trees. She pulled in. Down the path, her headlights illuminated a sign hung on a tree, suspended from a scrolled arm of iron and squeaking back and forth in the breeze. Welcome to Halcyon.
“Don’t worry,” a voice behind her said. “You’re in the right place.”
It was full dark now, and constellations of stars popped out bright against the heavy sky. Jenna had just climbed the steps to the screened porch on the front of the dining hall where the schedule—if it could even be called that, loose at it was—had told them to meet.
The woman who spoke to her was bent over at the edge of the porch in a triangle pose, legs in a V, one arm reaching down to her blue yoga mat, the other stretched up high. Despite her obvious confidence, her body was at the wrong angle over her lead knee. Jenna was tempted to tell her she needed to realign her torso to get the most benefit from the stretch, but she kept her secret to herself.
“Were you expecting a classroom?” The woman straightened up, stretching her arms over her head.
“No, I . . . Well, I don’t know what I expected. Definitely not a campground.”
On the walk from her cabin—small, clean, comfortable—to the porch of the dining hall, Jenna had passed a lake ringed by other cabins like hers, each with its own small deck extending over the water. A fire pit was situated at the edge of the lake, and before darkness fell, she spied a couple of small buildings—studios, she presumed—up the hill past the dining hall. Halcyon was like its own little world in the middle of the wild jungle of the nature preserve.
“Good guess,” the woman said. “That’s exactly what this is. Or was. It used to be a summer camp for children whose parents wanted them to be future environmentalists or something. A group of philanthropists bought it back in the nineties, dumped a bunch of money into it, and invited artists to come play. I’m Casey, by the way.” She extended her hand and Jenna took it. “You’re Jenna Sawyer from Nashville, right? Former photographer, now coffee extraordinaire?”
Jenna stared at her, unsure if she was the butt of a joke she wasn’t aware of. “How’d you know that?”
“We’re selective about who gets in. We have to be. Hundreds apply for each session. We only take ten. And anyway”—she gestured to the camera hanging around Jenna’s neck—“you’re the only photographer we have this session. I figured you’d be pretty easy to pick out.”
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