After the Woods (23 page)

A snake? Really? I search the woods for the cameras. My chest pangs for Kellan; I so want to tell him this. But then I'd also have to explain the black in my belly … never mind.

“—you let go of the old people around you who don't make your life better. Maybe it's time to make some new friends? Start fresh?” he finishes.

Word-for-word Mom, without a doubt. “I disagree one hundred percent. I think this is the perfect time to keep your friends close. Besides, Liv needs me now more than ever,” I tell Erik.

“Because of the
Dateline
interview?” he says logically.

But nothing Liv-and-me is logical. Why not be open with Erik? He dropped everything, sped to Shiverton after Mom's panicked call, and now he's stuck playing nursemaid to my crazy. Over the last seventeen or so years, he's never complained about Mom's wacky arrangement with me, or her romantic push and pull with him, besides. Suddenly I feel bad for him. Or maybe I feel bad for all guys who get used by women.

I ought to open up a little.

I sigh deeply. “Liv's problems go back a lot further than that,” I say. “Like birth.”

“You mean Deborah Lapin? Gwen has told me … things,” Erik says carefully.

“It's just the two of them, but not in a good way. I have to think if there was one more person in that household, a buffer, things would be easier for Liv.” My eyes flit to Erik, wondering if he thinks I'm talking about Mom, him, and me in code.

“We can't begin to try to understand other peoples' arrangements,” Erik says gravely.

Ouch.

“Though her dad is coming,” I say brightly, taking a different track. “For February vacation. There's that.”

Erik unwinds his long legs. Like me, he likes a little legroom. “Where does he live now?”

“He and his family used to live in the Cayman Islands. Now they live in Provence, where all the lavender comes from, in France. He's a—what's the word?—ex-pat?”

“An expatriate. He works outside of the United States but was born here. You said, his family?”

“He has another whole separate family with little kids, two of them. They were all in
Vogue
last year. You couldn't see the kids' faces, just these black-and-white shots of their tiny toes and the backs of their heads. His wife is a lot younger than Deborah and has her own line of smelly luxury candles that her dad sends Liv once a year, along with other useless gifts that no kid wants, like Mont Blanc pens and personalized stationery. Deborah makes Liv display the candles. It's like Deborah wants so much to be associated with the other Lapins, when you'd think she'd hate them.”

“Display the candles for when he visits, you mean?”

“Yeah, during February vacation, for one day total, while he's in Boston doing business. Deborah is excited about it. Liv says it's tragic, since he doesn't even plan on seeing Deborah, only Liv.”

Erik frowns. “How long were they married?”

“He—his name is Leland, Liv actually
calls
him Leland—and Deborah were married for almost four years total. Liv barely knows him. But that doesn't mean she doesn't hate him.”

“Do you know why she hates him?” he asks.

“Um, yeah! For one, Deborah said her father left because Liv was unlovable. That she drove him away.”

“Liv told you this?”

“I've heard Deborah say it to her. Plenty of times.”

“That's a strange thing for a mother to say to a kid. Do you believe it's true?”

“It's a rotten thing for a mother to say to a kid. I mean, Liv was two and a half when he left! It's not true, right? Couples don't split because a kid is awful.”

Erik turns to face me. For a second, my heart stops, because I have no idea what he's going to say.
Please, God, if there is a God, please don't pair the worst time in my life with what should be the greatest time in my life. Don't mix up all the hate I'm feeling for Liv with love for Erik. No daddy confessions today.

“You know I've never married, so I don't have a lot of experience along these lines. I can tell you that couples don't fail because of some perceived personality flaw of the kid.”

I exhale a raspberry. Erik gives me an odd look, settling back in his chair.

“You know I tend to go where I'm not supposed to. Your mom will tell you that,” he says. “But tell me something. What kind of person is Mrs. Lapin?”

“For one, she creates these great big fictions about herself. Like she claims she was a catwalk model in her teens and twenties. Except it's a total lie. She was in department store ads and local pageants. Liv outed her once to me, when we were nosing around her room, looking at all her creepy dried flowers and sashes. This was back when Liv could laugh about her mother. It's different now,” I say.

Erik nods. “I think I get the picture. I need to ask you a question. Has Liv ever complained about her mother abusing her?”

“As in hitting?”

“There are other forms.”

“If Liv was being abused, why wouldn't she talk to me about it?” I ask.

“I have no experience in psychology beyond college intro courses. But from what I remember, Liv's mother's abusiveness may be part of a lifelong campaign of control. And because people with narcissistic personality disorders are careful to rationalize their abuse, it's tough to explain to other people what's so bad about them.” He rushes to add, “That is not to say I'm diagnosing a woman I've never met.”

I smile. “I like when you ‘go there,' Erik. You should go there more often.”

The slider behind us grates open and Mom pops her head out. “Something warm to drink?” Erik checks his technical-looking watch and says he's due to call the lab.

I crank my head around to watch him angle through the door. “So it's never really about the kid? When couples don't make it, I mean?” I call to him.

He freezes in place and looks at my mother, then me. “No. It's always about the parents. And anyone who says otherwise is not telling the truth.”

Erik disappears upstairs and Mom steps onto the deck holding out a steaming mug of ginseng tea. I cradle it in my hands, and she slips into Erik's chair with a mug for herself.

“People are forever offering me something warm to drink. Why is that?” I ask.

“I don't know.” She presses her own mug to her nose. “Maybe because you always used to seem cold.”

A breeze rustles the tree line and dips low, swirling the crisp leaves at our feet. I pull the blanket up from my legs and stand, wrapping it around my shoulders. “Thanks for the tea. It was nice of you. But I'm taking a walk.”

She puts her mug down fast on the deck plank and stiffens, probably preparing to tent-hug, inject me with a sedative, or both. Then I realize: she's upset. I just talked to Erik three times as much as I've spoken with her in the past week.

“It's not you,” I say softly. “I just want to be alone.”

Her shoulders relax and she sinks back into her chair. “For the best, probably. There are things I should be better about doing, now that we have a guest.” She lifts her mug and draws it close to her chest. “Dinner, and such.”

I descend the deck stairs and cross the lawn, taking long, glidy steps. I must look dramatic to Mom from behind, I think, my hair blowing straight back like a cape at my shoulders, a heroine crossing the dark moor. At the edge of the tree line, I inhale deeply. Though Mom is still a pindot on the deck, it feels good to be mostly alone. It even feels good to be outside. I wonder about the serpent in my belly, if it went away, slipped out of me when it was no longer needed. Or did it keep rising after I left WFYT, to enervate my whole being? That feels more likely.

chat, play, more

I step more deeply into the swath of wooded land that abuts our yard. I like to be alone with my screams. Branches scatter the ground, snapped off by the heavy rain. I pick one up and walk in deeper. Another, then another, gathering twigs as I go. I don't know why. The sky is the color of eggplant, and the November air smells of early snow. I come upon a patch of ice needles pushing through the soil in a half horseshoe, short, beautiful shards. Deeper still, on a log, a frost flower blooms, long petals of ice extruding from some plant. Frost flowers are rarely seen; I know this from freshman geology. Am I really seeing these things at all?

chat, play, more

I grip my belly and scream then, leaning back and shaking my head, a howl that could bring police sirens. It still might, given Mom is on the deck, and the Mincuses' backyard is twenty feet away. When I scream, I imagine a black lava flowing from my mouth, every kind of deadly animal riding inside: lions, tigers, sharks, cobras. When I'm done, a cold sweat runs down my shirt, and my back heaves, hands on thighs. The exhaustion that follows brings peace. Sticks lie scattered at my feet like bones, but for two bunches in my hands. I am Shakespeare's Lavinia in
Titus Andronicus
, trimmed and given bundled branches for hands, her tongue cut out, all so she couldn't bring justice to her violators. But she found a way. She took a stick in her mouth and scribbled their names in the sand. She had her revenge.

Like Lavinia, I will figure out a way to make my greatest offender known. It won't be public, but it will count. I will create my own kind of justice.

 

THIRTEEN

366 Days After the Woods

The skate park should be the perfect place to perform an extreme stunt. Where else to explain my seeming alliance with the person bent on taking down the Shiverton police department? To make amends for being Paula's instrument? To stoke my courage, I catch snowflakes on my tongue. In the half hour that I've been waiting for Kellan, I've tested my resolve by exposing different parts of my body to the cold. Ankles, wrists, earlobes, lower back, tongue.

I let the snow dissolve. Granular, tolerable, gone. In the distance, steps approach, boots crunching in the cold dust.

“You came,” I say.

“I came.” Kellan shambles to me, shoulders hiked to his ears. The light poles cast a pewter glare. His eyes are coated with mistrust. Am I too late? Has disappointment calcified into hate?

“I suppose you think I'm a traitor,” I say.

He cocks his chin and stares at the sky, which is worse than an answer. This is the opposite of the skate park where we celebrated before, dark and upside-down. I clear my throat, starting over. “I asked you here so I could explain why I agreed to an interview with Paula Papademetriou.”

He jams his hands into his pockets. “Don't think you can.”

I wasn't expecting such an absolute shutdown. Flummoxed, I stall. “How did you get out so late?”

“Snuck.”

“Me? I used the front door. I'd planned something more dramatic, but it turned out to be overkill.” I wait for a smile, but his mouth is set. Around us, the first snowflakes of the year fall sparsely. Everything is blurring, the seasons overlapping. It's a wavy-mirror world that suits things perfectly. “Please sit with me.”

“No thanks.” He says it with an edge, breath swirling from the side of his mouth. “So you said yes when Paula asked to interview you?”

“I had no choice,” I reply.

He winces at the sky. “Did she hold you hostage?”

It would be easy to give him the story I gave Mom, to lie, say I was ambushed. But I have to make him understand that Paula is my last resort. “We're working together. Paula's helping to make things right.”

His eyes flare with disbelief, which is awful, but better than the dull veil of before. “How can screwing the police department be right? Don't you get it? If my father loses his job, it's bad, for him and for my family. Why do you think I left St. John's? Things are tight. If you haven't noticed, we don't live on your side of Shiverton.”

“Paula is trying to change a broken system,” I say.

“That broken system saved you,” he says.

“A guy riding his bicycle by the watchtower saved me. That broken system got me abducted. Donald Jessup's ankle bracelet told the police he was lurking around the high school, the track, and Liv's house, and still he slipped through the cracks.” I say it steadily, without emotion or inflection. Just the facts.

“My father didn't create the system. He's a good guy. He cared about your case, not only for the two days they were searching for you and Jessup—and he was out there, on the ground, in the woods—I'm talking months and months after. Your case might have been officially closed, but my father always believed there was more to it.”

“Your father isn't the one who looks bad. Chief Pantano is taking the fall,” I point out.

“Is that what Paula says? Your new BFF?” he spits.

“Paula is the only one who can help me. There's a lot you don't understand. Ever since the woods, something's not right with Liv.”

“Somehow the fact that this is about Liv Lapin makes it so much worse.”

Kellan angles his body away from me. Beyond us, traffic thrums and beeps, and the cheesy gym next door leaks riffs of music. But inside the cement bowl it's just us and the patter of snow. The air smells metallic, lustrous and charged. I wonder how I can do this, remain seated and totally still, while Kellan twists and turns to stay warm, beating at his sides and shifting from foot to foot.

I stick out my tongue to test a snowflake again.

He squats, forearms resting on his thighs, and for the first time looks me full in the face. “You once said what happened in the woods made you morbidly fascinating, a freak-show oddity. But you don't get it. I never looked at you
until
the woods.”

If the woods could create a snake in my belly, why couldn't it make me irresistible to Kellan? Maybe the cold forced my body to burn fat, turning me into a lean, hard fighter. Perhaps learning to hide my footfalls in the crunch of telltale leaves gave me agility and grace. Seeing through rain sharpened my vision, let me see people for who they are.