These Silent Woods: A Novel(3)

It could happen, him not coming, and I know that; it’s always lurking at the edge of my mind, me and Finch at the start of winter without ample food. The snow piling up, the roads unpassable. I pluck an egg from the red bowl. “I’m sorry about Susanna.”

“It’s just that maybe we could’ve nursed her back to health. Maybe she would’ve been all right, if she’d had some time. If you’d given her a chance.”

“No, Finch. That raccoon had her by the neck, and it was broke, I saw how it was bent.” I turn from the woodstove and look her in the eye. “Maybe it would’ve taken a while, but she wasn’t gonna make it, sugar.”

“Well,” she says quietly, “I don’t see how that makes it right, what you did.”

I crack two eggs and drop them into the skillet, edges turning white, hissing, lifting. I sprinkle the white clover and add a dash of salt. “Sometimes what’s right isn’t all that cut-and-dried, Finch. Hate to say it, but it’s true.”

She stretches her legs out onto the little green trunk we use as a coffee table and then snaps her book closed. She walks the book over to the bookshelf in the corner and slides it into place—tidy little creature, Finch is, with the books organized by genre—and then spins to look at me. She saunters over, mouth twisting to the side. “But you always say there’s a right and wrong, and you have to do what’s right,” she says, peering into the skillet. She looks up at me. Those penetrating green eyes, wanting an answer.

But. This house with two rooms and four blankets, an old table, a bookcase. We have a kettle, a Dutch oven, a cast-iron skillet. A sink with a little window that looks out over the long dirt road that leads here. Two shelves above the woodstove. A small and insulated world for both of us, and there is a simplicity to it that makes it difficult to explain the complexities of life. The unreliable and often shifting line between right and wrong. The truth is, sometimes Finch probes for answers that I simply cannot give her, not because I don’t want to, but because there is too much to explain. She has never known anything but this cabin, the woods that hold it. It’s the life I chose for us. Well—it wasn’t so much a choice, I guess. It was the only way.

Let it suffice for me to say this: sometimes bad things happen and you’re unprepared and you make choices that seem good to you at the time, and then you look back and wish there were things you could undo, but you can’t, and that’s that.

I flip the egg and the yolk sizzles.

“Jake will be here soon,” I say, hoping to divert her attention.

She grins. “I know. Tomorrow.”

I look at my watch: a Seiko, doesn’t need a battery. Nicest thing I’ve ever owned, a graduation gift from Aunt Lincoln. Thirty-three hours. Maybe thirty-two if he times it right and misses the traffic. We’ll hear the engine, first: a low purr against the whisper of pines. We’ll see the truck emerge, the silver hood gleaming in the sun, the branches that hang over the road, lifting like a drawn curtain. He’ll pull into the yard, quiet the engine. He’ll climb from the truck, use his arm to lift the bad leg, wince as he stands. He’ll lean against his cane and grin, that wide smile, his mouth the only part of his face that made it through the blast unscathed.

Finch will run to him. Throw her arms around his waist and nearly knock him over and he’ll throw his head back and laugh and carry on about how big she’s gotten since he last saw her.

Finch and me will unpack the supplies, load after load. Up the steps, across the porch, into the cabin. We’ll have venison stew, open the front of the woodstove, listen to the fire crack and spit. Once Finch can’t stay awake any longer, we’ll lean into the night and sit in the living room and Jake will ask about our year, and I’ll ask about his health, and we’ll laugh and for a week everything will feel good, almost.

Jake will be here and we’ll be all right.

“You got your gifts all ready?” I ask Finch, although I know she does. They’ve been ready for weeks.

“Yep. A bone knife, some pressed violets from last spring.” She nods toward a pile on the countertop. “And,” she adds. “My cardinal.” Finch is quite the artist, and her sketch of a cardinal perched on a branch is one of her best pieces yet.

“Good,” I say. “What do you say we bury Susanna after breakfast, then we’ll split some firewood and stack it out back? Snow will be here before you know it. Less than a month, I bet.”

Finch looks up, her eyes brimming with excitement. “My sled.”

I split the eggs down the middle and scoop half onto Finch’s plate and half onto mine. “Your sled.”

Last year, Jake brought one, but we had a light winter, weeks and weeks of sleet and ice but not one good snow.

I grab an apple from the bowl and pull my pocketknife out and slice it down the middle. I set the plates on the table. “Breakfast.”

Finch climbs onto her chair. “I’m gonna make a cross for Susanna, to put at her grave.”

“There’s some twine in the chest.”

“I’ll need my hatchet. And can I use your pocketknife?”

“If you’re careful.”

Finch pushes the egg around her plate. “You think this one was hers?”

Finch and her impossible questions. Why does lichen grow on trees in this part of the woods but not in the other parts? Why do chickens have round eyes? Do you think Emily Dickinson was lonely?