When I brought her home, she was braced for a lecture.I’m sorry, Mom, she’d whispered. I pulled her into a hug and told her just to get some sleep. Her hair was still damp, carrying the smell of The Hollow, of that damp, dark, mineral cave.
It’s strange how certain scents are like direct lines to memories. How some memories tattoo themselves on your mind, become a permanent part of who you are.
After Kennedy Claire and Iggy left me swimming naked in the well, I climbed into that cave for cover, tucked myself deep into a fissure in the very back, just large enough for me to sit inside. I wrapped my bare arms around myself and waited. For hours. Listening to the wind in the trees, to water dripping from the limestone, to my breath echoing. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t walk home. And I couldn’t bear the thought of someone finding me like that, boys from school floating down the river. I’d rather die.
Then, eventually, I heard footsteps, sloshing through the water. I prayed it was the girls, coming back to laugh at me and return my clothes. The best I could hope for.
But the steps were heavy. And then I saw him, filling the mouth of the cave, blocking the light. My whole body went cold.
I try not to think of the rest. But some things stay with you, whether you want them to or not.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINEINGRID
I march across the road that leads into the trailer park just outside Anhalt, the loose gravel shifting under my feet. Late-afternoon sun slants behind me, but it carries no warmth. The air bites, and I can see my breath in faint puffs. I tug the collar of my jacket higher, but the wind cuts through. It rattles a loose sheet of tin on one of the trailers. Bare branches clatter together above, like dry bones clicking in the rising gusts. My shadow stretches ahead on the rocks, as if I am led by a darker side of myself.
I think about the time Izzy and I stood face-to-face with Ben and dared him to tell us apart, a fifty-fifty chance of creating his own doom. About all the dinners Ben had at our house, how he and Izzy would lay around on the sofa, legs tangled up together beneath a blanket on lazy Saturdays. About the time Dad helped Ben fix the transmission on his truck, Dad standing on the bumper with a dowel, muscling the serpentine belt back into place. The time I third-wheeled it to the movie theater with Ben and Izzy to watchThe Sixth Sense, how we got dipped cones at Dairy Queen afterward and teased Ben that he needed a haircut. How he plucked an eyelash off Izzy’s cheek and held it out to her on his fingertip, asked her to make a wish.
How I never heard one single word from him after she disappeared.
I spot Ben’s rusty old truck, parked in front of a trailer with a set of rotted-out wooden steps and a dirty screen door.
This wasn’t planned. After I’d helped Mom to bed so she could take a nap, I went out to find her a body pillow, something more comfortable for when she’s lying on her side and the nausea returns. But before I made it to the Target in San Marcos, that trilling of the bells radiated from my purse, my ridiculous spontaneity alarm.What do you want, Ingrid?It gave me permission to be reckless. So I jerked the wheel hard, U-turning in the middle of traffic, and slammed the accelerator. Oncoming drivers laid on their horns, but they parted all the same. What I’ve really been wanting for my entire adult life is to confront Ben Sherman. To get answers.
I see an empty Wonder Bread bag in the high grass and weeds along the edge of the trailer. I notice a white five-gallon bucket at the bottom of the stairs, filled with empty beer cans. One step wobbles, like it’s holding on by a single nail, as I make my way up. The screen door screeches as I swing it open. I make a fist and slam it against the front door. It’s more solid than I expected. I shift my keys in my other hand, wedge them like claws between my fingers. But there’s no answer. I continue to pound.
Then my own shadow is swallowed by another. One much larger than mine. The air shifts, cold against my skin. I turn. And there he is. Ben Sherman, close enough to touch.
CHAPTER FIFTYINGRID
When I see Ben, everything I meant to say dissolves in my throat like sand, because strapped to his chest, in a soft-sided carrier printed with moons and stars, is a sleeping baby. Downy haired and cute as a button.
“Iggy,” he says.
Just my name. It’s the first word I’ve heard him say in twenty-five years, and the sound of his voice hits me harder than the sight of him. When we were little, no more than six or seven, Izzy told Mom thatBen doesn’t talk much, but when he does, he has a voice like he’s standing up for someone. His voice is even deeper now, worn down at the edges. But beneath the gravel, I hear the shape of the boy I’d known. And for a dizzying second, I can hear him calling my name across the riverbank.
But then the weight of all the years between us drops back into place, heavy as a stone. Ben’s eyes flick to my keys, still wedged between my fingers like claws. He reaches past my shoulder to the door of the trailer, holding it open and gesturing for me to enter.
“Come on in,” he says. “You only waited twenty-five years for this.”
I step inside. I expected a mess. I expected the sour tang of unwashed clothes, the stagnant air of neglect. But the house is warm. Tidy. A blue quilt drapes along the back of an armchair, the end table holds only a neat stack of dog-eared paperbacks and a coaster,pale blue curtains soften the light at the windows. In the corner, there’s a rainbow-patterned baby swing. The whole space hums with domesticity, so at odds with what I’d imagined that it leaves me disoriented.
Ben unbuckles the baby, slides her free, and settles her on his hip as he hangs the carrier on a hook by the door. Then, without ceremony, he hands her to me.
I take her awkwardly, caught off guard by the gesture. By everything.
While I’m still finding my balance with her in my arms, he disappears into the kitchen.
I peek down at the baby. She blinks up at me with big brown eyes—Ben’s eyes—and inspects me curiously before her face scrunches and she squirms, making small, discontented grunts.
“Oh, no, no. There, there,” I whisper, swaying without thinking. The rhythm soothes her, her tense little body relaxing into mine.
“You stop moving, she starts crying,” Ben calls, pulling a prepared bottle from the fridge. I watch as he fumbles with a bottle warmer.
On the kitchen table, I notice a rolled-up set of survey maps. “What are those?”
“Work,” he says with a shrug. “Got a job with a land use firm out of San Marcos. Did my degree online while I was working the rigs. Want a beer?”
“No.”