Where I Lost Her (2 page)

—Lee Martin, author of
The Bright Forever
and
River of Heaven

 

“T. Greenwood's novel is full of love, betrayal, lost hopes, and a burning question: is it ever too late to find redemption?”

—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of
Bittersweet

 

“Greenwood is a writer of subtle strength, evoking small-town life beautifully while spreading out the map of Harper's life, finding light in the darkest of stories.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“T. Greenwood's writing shimmers and sings as she braids together past, present, and the events of one desperate day. I ached for Harper in all of his longing, guilt, grief, and vast, abiding love, and I rejoiced at his final, hard-won shot at redemption.”

—Marisa de los Santos,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Belong to Me
and
Love Walked In

 

“
Two Rivers
is a stark, haunting story of redemption and salvation. T. Greenwood portrays a world of beauty and peace that, once disturbed, reverberates with searing pain and inescapable consequences. A memorable, powerful work.”

—Garth Stein,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Art of Racing in the Rain

 

“A complex tale of guilt, remorse, revenge, and forgiveness . . . Convincing . . . Interesting . . .”

“In the tradition of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and
To Kill a Mockingbird
, T. Greenwood's
Two Rivers
is a wonderfully distinctive American novel, abounding with memorable characters, unusual lore and history, dark family secrets, and love of life.
Two Rivers
is the story that people want to read: the one they have never read before.”

—Howard Frank Mosher, author of
Walking to Gatlinburg

 

“
Two Rivers
is a dark and lovely elegy, filled with heartbreak that turns itself into hope and forgiveness. I felt so moved by this luminous novel.”

—Luanne Rice,
New York Times
bestselling author

 

“
Two Rivers
is reminiscent of Thornton Wilder, with its quiet New England town shadowed by tragedy, and of Sherwood Anderson, with its sense of desperate loneliness and regret . . . It's to Greenwood's credit that she answers her novel's mysteries in ways that are believable, that make you feel the sadness that informs her characters' lives.”

—
Bookpage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T. GREENWOOD

KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

For Esmée

 

—from “Stolen Child” by W. B. Yeats

 

 

I see the girls first, before the camp, before the lake even. As we drive the last stretch of the winding dirt road, through the dappled light, I can see them on the wide expanse of grass in front of Effie and Devin's cabin. They are shadows at first, just silhouettes. Paper cutouts. But as we approach, they quickly come into focus. Sharpening.

They are both barefoot and beautiful. Plum, who is ten now, sits on the ground plucking dandelions, her long brown fingers nimbly weaving them into a chain. This is
ten,
I think:
grass stains, nails bitten to the quick, scabby knees.
Zu-Zu, who is thirteen, a dancer, pirouettes effortlessly across the grass. I am stunned, she is stunning: long legs, long neck, graceful hands. This is
thirteen,
I think:
precipice, flight
.

I turn to Jake, to see if
he
sees. I am so desperate for a moment of connection, to share a single glance imbued with something.
Remorse? Regret?
Sometimes it feels that he is so willful in his refusal to relinquish anything to me, even this: a single, goddamned moment of recognition. Even now. I just want him, for once, to feel what I feel. Instead, he stares straight ahead, navigates this last turn with his hands gripping the wheel, his eyes trained on the road. I don't know why I persist. I don't know how this could fix anything. I am alone now in this endless longing, the sole proprietor of this relentless ache. Maybe I always have been.

We used to make the six-hour drive from Brooklyn to visit Effie and Devin in Vermont three or four times a year. Once a season, sometimes more. It used to be our escape from the city, from our hectic lives. But over the years, it's become an odd sort of self-torture. A masochistic game for which there are no rules. And so, over time, the frequency of these visits has decreased. It has been almost a year now since our last visit. I blame our busy schedules, our ridiculous obligations. But the truth is that it simply hurts too much; their family, this perfect beautiful family, feels like a cruel reminder of everything we've lost.

Crushed
. This is what I feel as I watch the girls. A crippling heartache.

When they see us, they both stop what they are doing and come running. Jake slows to a stop in the driveway and rolls down his window, beaming at them. His face is like the sun, emerging from behind dark clouds. We have barely spoken since we left New York. But now his eyes are bright. I feel the flutter of something in my chest, but he still doesn't look at me.

“Uncle Jake!” Plum says, leaning in through Jake's open window for a hug, her feet lifting off the ground behind her. And then she is leaning across his lap and reaching for me in the passenger seat, placing the dandelion chain on my head. “Tessie!” she squeals. She is all bones and angles. She smells like grass.

Zu-Zu stands outside the car, long arms crossed against her body now, hands cupping her elbows. She is like a reed. Tall, willowy. Her hair is pulled back into a puff of a ponytail. The little glass earrings in her ears catch the light. She is three years older than Plum, but they share the same freckled toffee skin and startling green eyes, that magical, otherworldly beauty that only mixed children seem to have. Zu-Zu smiles as she waits for this ritual to end.

“Okay, okay,” Jake says. “Let me out!” And Plum, like a wriggly toddler, rights herself, scooting backwards so that Jake is able to open his door.

“Did you bring my cheesecake?” Plum asks.

“Greedy, greedy little monster,” Effie says as she comes out the camp's back door, wiping her hands on her apron, a bohemian housewife in her long chevron sundress. Her hair is still long and dark (as it always has been) except for one silvery strand that frames her face. She keeps it in a sloppy bun today, suspended with a single chopstick.

“Well, hello!” Devin says as he comes out of the woods. He is covered in sawdust and carrying a toolbox. He sets it down and opens his arms.

And we go through all the motions; this particular choreography is one we know by heart: Devin shaking Jake's hand and then pulling him in for a hug, Jake leaning down to kiss the top of Effie's head. The smell of pipe smoke and cedar in Devin's soft T-shirt when he embraces me. The way the girls circle us, waiting for the gifts we always bring from New York, which Jake pulls from the trunk like a magician: Zu-Zu's favorite salt bagels from Ess-a-Bagel, Junior's Cheesecake in its striped box for Plum. The girls disappearing into the camp, clutching their respective treats, the screen door banging behind them. Devin and Jake following behind, Devin's large dark hand spread across Jake's back.

We are old, old friends.

It isn't until Effie and I make our way to each other that I forget the next move. We have been friends since we were just little girls. She is like a sister. She will know. She navigates me the way a blind person navigates her own home. She knows my configurations. Even in the dark, she knows when something is askew.

I am askew.

But she also knows better than to say anything. She will wait for me. She doesn't ask questions for which I have no answers. This is our way with each other. And today I am grateful.

“Thank you so much for offering to do this,” she says instead, adjusting the dandelion crown I have forgotten is on my head. She is talking about Zu-Zu. She's been accepted into a prestigious summer ballet intensive in the city, and we are bringing her back with us when we leave on Sunday. Effie's sister, Colette, who recently retired from the same company, has promised that she will be taken care of. Watched over. She will even be teaching some of Zu-Zu's classes. But I know this world feels far away to Effie, a part of someone else's dream.

Effie said she couldn't bear to go. That it would be easier to say good-bye to Zu-Zu here than it would be leaving her in New York. And because Effie is my best friend, and because she asks so very little of me, I didn't hesitate before offering to come up and get her. To take her back down with us after a nice visit. To make sure she gets settled in.
It's just a weekend,
I thought.
I miss them. The girls.

Effie leans forward and touches her forehead to mine.

“I'm afraid to let her go,” she whispers.

And I feel my throat constricting. It makes me think of a snake, swallowing a live mouse. The way all the unsaid things gather and squirm there as I try to swallow them down.

“I know,” I say, nodding, eyes brimming with tears I'm not ready to spill.

Effie squeezes my hand. We are sisters, bound not by blood but by a thousand such unspoken things.

 

Devin and Jake grab our bags from the trunk and carry them down the narrow grassy path to the guest cottage in the woods behind the camp. I watch the leaves enclose them as they go. Jake is fairly tall, but Devin still dwarfs him. I listen to the receding sound of their voices, swallowed by the forest.

“Tessie,” Plum says, grabbing my hand. “Come see my room. I have a new turtle! And I built the Colosseum out of Legos!”

“A gift from my dad,” Effie says, laughing. “It took them almost a week to put it together. It took
him,
I mean . . .”

Effie's father, like my own, is a history professor, the kind of grandfather who would spend a week putting together ruins made of Legos with his granddaughter.

Zu-Zu and Plum share the larger room upstairs. It has been partitioned since I last visited, divided by colorful scarves sewn together and strung across the room on a makeshift pulley. Plum's side is oddly tidy for a ten-year-old, with shelves housing her various Lego creations, including the impressive Colosseum, and a large terrarium where Harold, the turtle, idles.

I lean over and peer into the glass. He sits on a rock directly under the glow of a heat lamp. “Wow, that is one good-looking turtle,” I say.

“Shhh,” Plum says. “He's sleeping.”

“Oh, so sorry,” I say, and tiptoe over to the divider, poking my head through to Zu-Zu's side of the room.

Pale pink tights hang from the exposed rafters; a pile of dead pointe shoes sit like some odd monument in the corner. It is a chaos of clutter that is both child and teenager all at once: ratty stuffed animals and library books, a glossy poster of Misty Copeland in “Firebird,” and a mobile made from bottle caps hanging in the window. China teacups filled with jewelry, sticky tubes of lip gloss, and so many dirty clothes.

“Be careful,” Effie says. “Harold is probably not the only animal living up here.”

“
Mom,
” Zu-Zu says, and plops down on her bed, clutching the stuffed baby seal, Baby Z, I gave her when she was born. I bought him at the New England Aquarium when I still lived in Boston. He is threadbare now. Every bit of fur loved away.

I sit down next to her on the bed, and squeeze her and the seal together. Her hair smells like citrus.

“I don't mind a little mess,” I say to her.

“Seriously,” Effie says to Zu-Zu. “Can I tell her about the you-know-what?”

Zu-Zu rolls her eyes.

“Tell me!” I say, eager for the scoop.

“So, yesterday, I come in here looking for my flip-flops and smell something funky.
Rotten
. So I search and search and search. Finally I realize the smell is coming from her backpack, which is shoved under her bed. And inside is her lunch box from the last day of school, which was
three weeks ago,
by the way. So I open it up, and it's
grapes
. And they've totally fermented, turned into some kind of hooch.”

I laugh. “That skill will come in handy in the dorms this summer.”

“And prison,” Zu-Zu says, smirking.

I love this girl.

“You can hold Harold if you want,” Plum says then, coming through the place where the divider parts and handing me her turtle. “He's awake now.”

Downstairs I hear the door slam shut, Devin and Jake's muffled voices below. We all sit down on Zu-Zu's messy bed, and I want to curl up with all of them, even Harold, and never get up.

 

After lunch, the girls want to swim, and so we all walk down to the boat access area where there is a sort of grassy beach. The clouds have parted, and the sun is bright, sparkling in the water. Plum hoists an inner tube over one shoulder and Zu-Zu carries their towels, slung over her golden shoulders. Their feet are bare, the pink pads callused. Devin and Jake walk ahead with the girls, each drinking a beer, and Effie and I hang back.

“I'm so glad you're here,” Effie says, leaning her head against my arm. “It's been such a long time.”

I nod.

“You okay?” she asks, pulling away from me.

I nod again, but she frowns.

“We'll talk tonight?” she asks, and reaches for my hand. And I think about how I used to be the one who fixed things. How I used to be the strong one. When did this happen to me? What have I become?

Effie spreads a soft blue blanket out on the grass, and she and I sit and watch the girls. When we were teenagers, we used to rub baby oil all over our bodies, squirt lemon juice concentrate in our hair, and lie in this exact spot, waiting for the sun. We used to swim the way the girls do now, fearlessly, out to the sandbar in the center of the lake where we stood and howled, and then leapt into the murky depths. We used to
live
in the water. Fishes. Her grandma, Gussy, called us the Mermaids of Gormlaith. But I have no desire to go into the water now. I don't remember the last time I even wore a bathing suit.

The sound of the girls' voices, the joyful splashes, is the best music. I don't even mind when they bicker and whine.

“Give me!” Plum hollers as Zu-Zu steals the tube away. “That's mine.”

Devin and Jake have their suits on too and both of them ease into the water, tentatively at first, and then dive under. Jake emerges, shaking his hair like a wet dog, splattering Zu-Zu, who squeals. They dive and surface after long stretches under the water, surprising the girls. Each of the guys puts one of them on his shoulders for a chicken fight. Jake has Plum. She grips the side of his head, and he smiles and smiles. But he doesn't look at me. Won't.
Can't
.

 

After the sun goes down, we eat outside at the picnic table, drink. Unlike at home, I am careful here, counting glasses. It is too easy lately to drink too much. To love the warm way it numbs. And I feel Jake watching me; he's counting my drinks too.

The mosquitoes bite my ankles, and I let my skin prick and tingle and itch. I wait until I can barely stand it anymore before I scratch. I am sunburned from earlier, and relish in the tender pink sting of my shoulders.

“So tell us about this new writer Tess mentioned,” Devin says to Jake. “The kid.”

“
Charlie
.” Jake smiles. “He is definitely young. But he's not like a lot of the other new kids coming up. You know, all style, no substance. More concerned with how many Instagram followers they have than with their writing. He's kind of a throwback. He still writes on a typewriter, for Christ's sake. He's not on Facebook. He doesn't have a Twitter account. It's pretty incredible when you actually stop to think about it.” Jake plucks a raspberry from the bowl Effie has put in the center of the table for dessert and pops it in his mouth.

He's talking about Charlie Hayden, a new client of his. Jake is a literary agent; he started his own boutique agency two years ago. We'd already mortgaged our house once for the adoption, so he had to borrow from his parents to get started. It was a gamble, one I was leery of, and the first year was a real struggle, but he slowly built a decent client list, hired a couple other young but well-regarded agents who brought their clients with them. And then a few months ago, he signed on this hotshot kid the National Book Foundation named one of the “5 under 35.” At twenty-five, Charlie's the youngest of the bunch; he reminds me of an overgrown baby.