Dream Country (5 page)

“You okay?” Ben asked gingerly, from across the swaying car.

“I’m fine,” Sage called back, leaning against a crate of nuts and bolts. She twisted the plastic bag, placed it carefully inside another. There was a trapdoor in the middle of the car. She and Ben had opened it, pulling back the thick bolt, watching the tracks fly by underneath, needing to know they had an emergency escape hatch. But she felt too weak to pull it open right now.

She found a small hole in the corner of the car, where the wooden floor met two walls. The hole was ragged, as if a rat had once gnawed its way through. Careful not to tear the bag, Sage pushed it out onto the tracks. She felt bad about littering.

She cared about the land. She had distant memories of her father teaching her to respect wildlife, to exist alongside other living creatures. He had built her a bird feeder, and she would sit on his shoulders to fill it every day. Touching her two-sided necklace again, she thought of her twin brother. Jake had loved the land so much, he had wandered off into it forever.

“Jake,” she whispered.

That had been her first word, her brother’s name. Most babies said “Mommy” or “Daddy” first, but Sage believed that all twins called for each other before anyone else. She touched his face—the tiny eyes, nose, and mouth her mother had carved, smooth against her skin—and said a prayer.

She didn’t want to be running away from home, but she had to. The other night, her mother had been so crazed, so furious, just because she’d fallen into a river. She had called her “slutty,” just for staying out late with Ben. How would she feel when she found out Sage was going to have a baby? Sage couldn’t hide it much longer.

She had thought of the trains going by, her mother’s stories about people riding from town to town, and Sage had known she had to head west. She had left that stupid note, afraid that if she took time to write any more, she’d lose her nerve and stay.

Pedaling her bike through the moonlit streets, her eyes swollen from crying, she had felt an odd sense of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to see her mother’s face once she realized what a horrible girl she’d been. Heading over to Ben’s to say good-bye, she had climbed up the stone chimney to his bedroom window. And she had been so surprised, happy, and guilty to hear he was coming with her. Love was one thing; sacrificing high school, his home, his family was another.

Sage wished she wasn’t pregnant, but she was. She had a new baby growing inside her. It was going to change everything; it already had. When she’d missed her first period six months ago, she had thought it was stress over school. When she’d missed her next one, she’d blamed it on her new diet. She had thought getting sick every morning had to do with nervousness about Ben, wanting to keep him so badly it was tearing her up inside.

Morning sickness was supposed to last only three months. For Sage, it had been going on for nearly the whole time. She knew some of it had to do with guilt and anxiety, keeping this secret from her mother, living in a constant state of hiding: the sounds and smells and fears and her size. She had started showing, her belly popping out so far that even her biggest jeans wouldn’t fit. Her mother hadn’t said anything, but one morning Sage had found the raisin bread and ice cream gone, replaced by whole wheat bread and fat-free yogurt.

So Sage needed a lot of prayers. She said one now, to her brother Jake. With the train rattling west, with her boyfriend anxiously waiting across the dark, hot car, she touched her twin’s carved face and prayed her heart out:

“Let me have a boy,” she said in the tiniest voice.

Her brother had been lost in a canyon, and her father had disappeared from Sage’s world. Even before her mother had made the decision to move east, her father was gone. Sage had a long memory, and she remembered the day her big, wonderful cowboy father had become a ghost.

For years, Sage had prayed for Jake to return. If he did, maybe her father wouldn’t stay a prisoner on his ranch. He told her he was herding cows, growing feed, but Sage knew otherwise: Her father was riding trails, scouring the long hills, searching for the little boy he had lost.

“A boy,” Sage prayed, touching her belly with one hand and her necklace with the other. “Let it be a boy.”

“What?” Ben asked. “I can’t hear you.”

“Nothing,” Sage replied from across the car. “I’ll be right there.” She stayed where she was, crouched in the corner, concentrating with all her might on the medallion she held in her hand. She could feel the small bone face pressing hard into her palm, and her lips kept moving in prayer.

Maybe if she brought a boy into her family, everyone could be happy again.

Chapter Five

T
he morning after she’d found Sage gone, Daisy stood on the back porch watching gold leaves shower down from the birch trees on the hill. They sparkled in the shadows, a constant flow of tiny leaves falling down to the cold ground. She hadn’t slept much. Now, as she stared at the leaves, she thought of Sage out there in the world.

The sugar maple at the end of the driveway had turned scarlet, as bright as Daisy had ever seen it. The colors were late this fall, owing to an especially cool, rainy summer. She and Sage waited for “the peak” every year: the day when the fall colors were the brightest, the most spectacular. She held herself tighter. Today was the peak, and Sage wasn’t here to see it, and the sharpest pain she’d ever felt stabbed Daisy in her chest.

“It’s cold out here.” Hathaway came to stand beside her sister. “What are you doing without a sweater on?”

“I’m warm enough,” Daisy said.

Hathaway took her hands and rubbed them. They were numb and stiff, and Daisy hardly noticed her sister’s warm fingers, the gentleness with which she put her arm around Daisy’s shoulders and led her through the kitchen door.

“Where is she?” Daisy asked. “I can’t stand not knowing, Hath. What if she’s cold?”

“She’s taking care of herself,” Hathaway said. “That’s what this is all about. She had to run away so she could figure out what she’s going to do. When she’s clearer, she’ll come home.”

“But where
is
she?” Daisy asked, feeling thick, not hearing. She had called the ranch to ask James if he had heard from her, but the telephone had just rung and rung. He didn’t have an answering machine, but someone—Dalton, Louisa—should have been there. “I thought maybe she’d try her father. Whenever she’s this mad, she talks about going to him—”

“She wouldn’t go to him right now,” Hathaway said gently.

“Because she’s pregnant,” Daisy said, holding her head in her hands.

“Yes,” Hathaway said.

How had Daisy not known? She and Sage had always had such a strong connection, sometimes Daisy would know what was happening before Sage told her. The night Sage had come down with chicken pox, Daisy had walked into her dark bedroom and known that when she turned on the light she would see spots. The time Sage had rescued a skier caught in the rope tow at Sugardust Mountain, Daisy had had a premonition of her saving a boy’s life.

“I wish she knew she could have told me,” Daisy said. “I wish she didn’t think she had to go off on her own to figure it out.”

“She’s so independent,” Hathaway said. “It’s a good thing. I’m telling you, she’ll be back any minute now. What she’s doing is like Outward Bound. Of the emotions, you know? Testing her own limits. I wish I’d been more like her. And you—”

“Me?” Daisy stared out the window.

“You paved the way for her,” Hathaway said. “Going out west by yourself, making your way cross-country, finding new ideas for your work. She’s your daughter, and she wants to live up to your life. She wants to live adventurously.”

“But I wasn’t adventurous.” Daisy watched the driveway, wanting to see that brown head bobbing along the boxwood hedge, just like the thousands of other times Sage had come home to her. Then, turning to face her sister, she said, “I was scared of everything.”

Daisy and Hathaway had been raised by quiet parents. Their world had been books and stories. Their father had been a drama professor and their mother an English teacher—soft, gentle, and as eccentric as a person could be who’d died as young as she had, at thirty-six. She had named her daughters after Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s true love, and Daisy Buchanan of
The Great Gatsby
. There hadn’t been much room for adventure in their scholarly household.

“Being scared of everything makes some people brave,” Hathaway said. “You went out west because otherwise you might have been too afraid ever to leave home.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I never left,” Hathaway said. She brought her fingers to her lips, as if there might still be a cigarette in them, and when she looked away, she had tears in her eyes. She was big and tall, with a brassy Broadway voice like some of the actresses their father used to teach about, but inside she was the most gentle and timid soul around. “She’s full of fire,” Hathaway continued. “We couldn’t hold her back even if we wanted to.”

“I’ve always tried to teach her to trust herself,” Daisy said. “Trust her instincts, her good sense. When we lost Jake, I was so—”

“I know.” Hathaway held her tighter.

“—so afraid that Sage would see the world as a bad place. Full of dangers.”

“You’ve protected her, too,” Hathaway said. “It’s a balance . . .”

“But she’s pregnant,” Daisy said, the shock hitting her again. “She’s missing and she’s pregnant.”

The mail truck pulled up, and the letter carrier climbed out. He began stuffing envelopes into the box by the road, and Hathaway gestured for Daisy to wait. Daisy was grateful. She wanted to pick up the phone if it rang. She watched her sister walk down the driveway, exchange a few words with the mailman, begin flipping through the letters and catalogues. Hathaway had been walking slowly, head down, but suddenly she began to run. The other envelopes fluttered to the ground as Hathaway held one out in front of her.

Daisy knew even before she saw: Sage’s handwriting. Hands shaking, she tore open the blue envelope.

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I worried you so much. Ben and I didn’t mean to upset you with staying out late and tipping over the canoe. I never want to upset you. But I love him. I know you say I’m too young to know, but I do anyway. I love him like you loved Dad and don’t say about the divorce because that was just because of the tragedy. Because of Jake. When we capsized last night, Ben saved me. He swam right over and pulled me out. Not that I wasn’t swimming fine myself, but I thought you’d like to know that he put me first. He always does, and I do the same with him. That’s how love should be.

We’re running away. Don’t worry about school. This is the part that’s hard to write. We’re going to have a baby. I can almost see your face. You’re mad. I know, and I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back, or I mean, turn back time. We are together, and that’s what matters. I’ll go crazy if I stay here. I will. In fact, I almost am already. Right now, just writing you this note, I feel dizzy, as if I’d just eaten pencil lead. I’m dying of love for Ben, Mom, and we have to be together. He’s dying, too. Don’t worry. I’ll call and write a lot.

Love, Sage

“Oh, God,” Daisy said, when she’d read it through a second time.

“Where’s it postmarked?” Hathaway asked, checking.

“Silver Bay. She must have mailed it before she left.”

“She’s smart, our baby.” Hathaway sounded almost admiring.

Daisy stared at the back of the envelope. There, pressed into the paper, were the imprints of two faces. They were almost invisible, like ghosts staring out of the trees. Daisy could make out the eyes and mouths she had once carved into a disc of cow bone; she could see which was the boy’s face and which was the girl’s.

Touching the spot where Sage had pressed her necklace into the paper sent electricity through Daisy’s body. She closed her eyes and let the current flow, and when the telephone rang she knew it wasn’t Sage. Caressing the imprints of her children’s faces, her fingertips tingled and burned. The phone rang again, and Hathaway hurried to answer it. Her voice drifted across the kitchen.

When Hathaway turned around, Daisy felt calm. She opened her eyes and saw tears brimming in Hathaway’s light blue eyes.

“They have a clue,” Hathaway said, a hopeful, terrified smile reaching from ear to ear. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke. “That was Detective LaRosa, and she said they questioned some men who work at the railroad depot. A girl who looks like Sage was asking questions about some freight cars, about which ones were going west.”

“Going west—”

“She asked about the train’s route, the man said.”

“She wants her father,” Daisy said. “She’s going to James.”

Ben had watched his mother’s cat circle round and round just before she had kittens, building a nest out of scraps of paper towels pulled from the garbage, old socks dragged down from the bedrooms, the chamois Ben used to polish his mother’s car. Sage was acting just like that now.

She was pacing around the boxcar, tidying up their sleeping area, plumping up their bedrolls, trying to make a nest from a bundle of rags she’d found in a wire basket. From his seat on a crate off to the side, Ben watched her and wished she would stop moving.

“Sage, hey. Come over here.”

“In a second,” she said. “This floor’s so hard—maybe you’ll sleep better if I pile up some of these old cloths under your bedroll.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ben yawned again, wishing he hadn’t told her he couldn’t sleep. Whenever he mentioned any discomfort, any problem, Sage always tried to fix it. He’d been amazed, at first, that anyone would be so concerned about his comfort. Back in Silver Bay, when things were still normal, she would always give him the best seat at the diner, buy him cranberry muffins from the bakery, sew buttons back on his shirts, draw him cards and write him poems.

But now he wished she’d just stop. It was making him crazy, watching her try to improve something that couldn’t be fixed. She could pile a thousand rags—calling them cloths only made it worse—on that hard, cold floor, and he still wouldn’t be comfortable. He was sore and hungry, a thousand miles from home and getting farther away every minute.

“Sage, will you stop?”

She turned to look at him. She’d been smiling, her freckled face radiant as she tried so hard to please him, but at his sharp tone, her face fell. He wished he could say it again, take the impatience out of his voice, put the smile back on her face.

Crushed, she knelt down. She pretended to be plumping up his pillow, but she was crying. Ben could tell by the way her shoulders were quaking. Sliding off the crate, he went to her, wrapped her in his arms. Her sobs were silent, the tremors running through her body the only sign that something was wrong.

“Let’s go back,” he whispered into her ear. “This is too much for us.”
Too much for me,
he thought.

“I just wanted”—she gulped—“to make your bed a little softer.” As if she hadn’t even heard what he’d said. Ben held her tighter and gave her a small shake. He had fallen in love with Sage last year. Sage had been climbing a rock face, green eyes narrowed in concentration as she’d gripped each crevice, found each toehold. Ben had gone after her, surprised by how hard it was to catch up. They had paced each other the last twenty yards, and when they’d reached the top, they’d lain on their backs in the sun. Kissing her had been as natural as his next breath.

“We should go home,” Ben said.

“I can’t.”

“Your mother won’t be mad.” Ben thought of his own mom. She’d been so disappointed in his last grades, the fact he’d been missing soccer games. She wanted him to go to Trinity, her father’s college, and they had an appointment with the admissions office next week. “Not for long.”

“But we’re going to live on the ranch,” Sage said. “You, me, and the baby.”

Ben held her tight, pressing his lips against her neck. His heart was pounding hard. When she’d come to his house in the middle of the night—just thirty-six hours ago—he had freaked when she’d said she was leaving. Being with Sage made him do things he’d never done before—his feelings for her were like a whirlwind inside his body, slamming him in and out of situations he couldn’t believe were real.

But now, after a day and a half in a sour-smelling boxcar, reality was waking him up. Sleepless all night, he knew he couldn’t keep this up. Sage was sick constantly. She was trying hard to make everything seem fun and adventurous, but she couldn’t manage to disguise the fact that they were tossing away their lives. Ben had college in his future. He wanted to be a geologist, study the rocks he’d climbed on his hikes. Being cooped up on the freight train was making him lose his mind.

“The ranch is beautiful,” Sage said. “The Wind River mountains are all around. We can ride horses to the summit and see forever.”

“You haven’t even seen your father in all this time.” Ben wanted to talk some sense into her, make her decide to turn around on her own. “How do you know he’d let you stay? Why do you think this’ll be any easier for him than for your mom?”

“I was born there,” Sage said. “Me and my brother. My father would never kick me out.”

“Then why haven’t you ever seen him?” Ben asked softly, not to be mean, but to make her face reality, get her to see the truth and not just how she wished it was.

“He’s keeping watch.” Sage started to cry again. “In case my brother ever comes back. It’s not that my father doesn’t want me, it’s that my mother would never let me go . . .”

“Sssh,” Ben said. “It’s okay.”

Ben stroked her hair, wishing she would calm down. He knew about mothers hating fathers: His own mother despised his father so much, she’d get bright red and start spitting any time his name came up. He thought of his baby, growing inside Sage, and he wondered whether someday the baby would say the same thing of him and Sage.