11. Louise
11
LOUISE
Jim strode toward Louise, lit behind by the late-afternoon sun. He had always seemed like a giant to her, as though he were carved out of the same mountains that surrounded the Shenandoah Valley.
One of his cheeks was puffed out with a wad of chewing tobacco. “Bears are wild animals,” he said finally. “In case you forgot.”
Louise’s hands shook, still tingling with energy. She slid them into her pockets. “Of course. I should never have… I wasn’t thinking,” she mumbled, unable to explain why he had caught her kneeling so close to an injured bear.
But he didn’t push. He peered down at Louise, his brow furrowing. “Come on then, I’ll walk you back up to the house.”
“Sure,” Louise stammered. She looked over her shoulder. “I just need to…to grab something.” Quickly she walked back to where she had sat earlier and tucked the small journal into her waistband before falling into step beside Jim.
They were both silent, the only sound the gravel under their feet once they made it back to the main road, the orchard running in long, lush rows of green on either side of them. She felt ten years old again, caught by Jim eating her weight in peaches, his features stern as he led her back to her grandmother’s house.
“You shouldn’t mess with things like that,” he said, his accent thick. Even after so many years on the other side of the mountain, he carried the lilts and intonations of the valley. “You should know better. And your grandmother wouldn’t be happy about it. Not about the bear. Or the healing.”
She stopped walking, sure she had heard him wrong. If her own grandfather and great-uncle hadn’t known about their abilities, certainly Jim wouldn’t know. “What are you talking about?”
Jim removed his hat and wiped at his brow. His eyes were softer than she remembered, two gentle ponds in the otherwise rugged terrain of his features.
“I’ve been around this orchard since I was a lot younger than you, kid. My mama worked as a nurse in the valley, until she moved here after she got married. Then she met your great-grandmother, Miss Helene.” He set his hat against his chest, almost reflexively, as though all these years later he still felt the need to show respect. “You’re not the only family with abilities .”
Louise was stunned. Even though her grandmother told her there were other healers, she hadn’t considered the possibility they were so close to home. “Your mom was a healer?”
He showed the ghost of a smile. “She was one of the best.”
Louise bit the side of her lip as she tried to process the fact that Jim had known her family’s history years before she even did. She didn’t want to show the hurt this realization caused.
“Miss Helene took my mama in, after my daddy died. She treated me like a son. She was a great lady. And I grew up with your grandma. Knew her back when she was Cami, all wild hair and moody.” There was a real tenderness in his voice, and Louise recalled her earlier conversation with her grandmother about her rebellious phase, how she’d turned down the boy her mother preferred. Had Jim been that boy? She wondered if that was the reason he had always stayed with the orchard, never married, if he’d spent his life waiting for Camille to choose him.
“Not my place really.” Jim’s voice cut through her thoughts. “It’s a family matter, but…with all that’s been going on, you know, getting it all ready for sale, and all of it, are things sorted? Between your mom and your grandma? I saw she was here with you. Seems like a step in the right direction.”
Louise looked up sharply. “What sale?”
Jim inspected her face for a moment, but then glanced at his watch. “You know I best be getting on. Have someone coming by for ten crates of strawberries.”
Louise’s worry expanded. “Jim?”
He started to walk away but turned before he got far. “Don’t be stupid, kid. It’s not a magic trick. It matters, what you do with that gift of yours.” He held her eyes intently. “Do you understand?”
There was a seriousness in his tone that jarred her. But before she could parse it, he was gone.
* * *
It was nearly dusk by the time Louise reached her grandmother’s house, the sun low over the indigo mountains.
To her surprise, her grandmother wasn’t waiting for her in the living room. The kitchen was empty as well, except for a teakettle boiling over with a loud hiss. Louise quickly removed it from the heat and then went upstairs to talk to her grandmother.
She looked up from the landing as her grandmother’s voice floated down.
“Thanks, Sam, I’ll stop by sometime tomorrow to sign it.”
Louise knew she shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but her grandfather’s name piqued her interest. Even though they had stayed cordial, fine to come together for her graduation and other major family events, as far as she knew they weren’t in regular communication.
“I will,” Camille said. “I appreciate that, and your help with all of this. And with…everything. I really do…bye now.”
There was silence and then footsteps as Camile headed her way. She stopped short when she saw Louise.
“Sorry, I didn’t…” Louise said. Her grandmother’s eyes were bloodshot. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine!” Camille said brightly. Louise noticed her grandmother’s hands shaking slightly at her sides.
“Just some business odds and ends.”
But Louise knew her grandfather no longer had any business ties to the orchard. “Grandma, what—”
Before Louise could finish, there was a loud knock on the door. Camille moved past Louise down the stairs and went to open it.
“Hello, Mrs. Winston. I’m Peter, Louise’s friend. I’m sorry to just show up like this but is she here?”
Louise was halfway to the door before she was aware her legs were in motion. She didn’t care if things were uncomfortable. She didn’t care if she had to lie to him. She realized, with a force that almost knocked her over, that what she had needed more than anything was to see him, to know that he was alive and whole, that he couldn’t be taken from her again. She threw herself into his arms.
“You didn’t sound like yourself,” he managed to say as she buried her face into his chest and held him in a way that felt necessary for her survival. “On the phone.”
She let go and looked up at him, then nudged him playfully on the shoulder. “You could have let me know you were on your way.”
“Thought I should keep both hands on the wheel this time.” He didn’t smile despite the joke. Instead, he looked at her the way he had at Kyle’s party, with clarity and intention, and she felt suddenly self-conscious, embarrassed by the way she’d embraced him.
Camille cleared her throat from behind them. “Louise, you’re being impolite. Please invite your friend inside. Why don’t you two go have a seat in the garden and I’ll bring you something to drink.”
* * *
Camille set two glasses down on the picnic table as the sky glowed orange over the mountains. Even with the sun low, the air was unrelentingly humid, so thick that even the frogs and crickets were listless, punctuating the early evening with thin croaks and chirps.
“Can I get you kids anything else?” Camille asked as she swatted a swarm of gnats. “You sure you’re not hungry, Peter?”
“No ma’am, thank you, though,” Peter said politely.
Louise felt herself fidgeting with her hair and put her hands in her lap. She was suddenly nervous to be alone with him, worried they would fight again like they had in the car, or that he’d see right through her, discern that she was lying about the accident.
“Thanks, Grandma. I’m fine too.”
“Yes, truly, thank you,” Peter added. “I’m sorry again I just showed up at your house.”
“No need to apologize, sugar. We’re happy to have you.” Camille patted Peter’s shoulder and left.
The buzz of gnats and mosquitos grew louder as the sun sank deeper. The breeze from earlier was gone, the stillness seeming to hold the entire orchard in place, tethered to this moment in time.
“She must like you,” Louise said. She didn’t know what else to say to Peter. She was unsure how to go back to being friends after everything that had happened between them the past couple of days. “She doesn’t ever call me sugar.”
Peter flicked a mosquito from his forearm.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, trying to draw him out. Despite his attempts to act normal, she knew something was bothering him. He could never hide a single emotion, wore every feeling on his face. When he found out he didn’t get into Virginia Tech, he had tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but Louise knew he was devastated. He was so sure that his track performance would be enough to get him accepted, that it would be enough to counter his grades. But it wasn’t enough, not for Virginia Tech or the other four state schools to which he had applied.
“Why are you here?” Peter asked, picking at the wooden table. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
For a long, tantalizing second, Louise wondered if she should simply tell him the truth. They could face it together, the accident, their fight, her family’s abilities. They only had a few days left together. But as she tried to form the words, she realized she wasn’t ready. She needed to keep her friendship with Peter, one of the foundations of her world, steady. Too much else in her life was in motion.
“It’s nothing with us. I promise.”
He let out a long breath and leaned back.
“I just needed to come here,” she insisted.
Peter chewed his lip. “Fine, okay. You don’t owe me an explanation for visiting your grandma.” He leaned forward again, placing his palms flat on the table. “But you’ve never been any good at lying. I know something is wrong.”
“I’m not lying. And it’s just…” She searched for a half truth, something she could give him. “It’s family stuff. My mom and grandma. Things aren’t good.”
Peter shook his head. He still didn’t believe her. “I get it. I literally died in front of you. It freaked you out. Don’t you think I was scared, too?” He grabbed her hands. “My heart stopped. I don’t know how to process something like that. And that you…you were the one—”
“To bring you back,” Louise said. It was both the truth and a lie, the two woven together with heartbreaking simplicity.
Louise studied her hands in Peter’s. It was the second time that week he had held her hand, such a basic act but entirely new. She wanted only to sit there in the quiet garden and hold his hand for hours. She could still hear his words in her mind, that he loved her. Impossibly, he loved her.
“Thank you,” Peter said. “I know I already said it. But I should have probably said it again.” He paused. “I probably should start every single conversation with that.”
Louise tried to smile. “Might be a little weird.”
Peter didn’t return her smile. “So come back home then. If what you say is true and you’re okay, then just come home.”
Louise wished she could say yes, go back with him and pretend that everything was fine, go see a midnight movie and eat at their favorite restaurant in Carytown. But she still had more questions. She thought of the journal, her grandmother’s plea for forgiveness, if it was meant for her mother like she suspected. She had tried so many times in the early years after they moved to force her mother and grandmother to interact, invited her grandmother to as many events as possible where her mother would be, birthdays and recitals and debate tournaments. But it never worked. Her mother was always civil, but unwilling to bend or soften. Yet, if she could find out the truth behind her grandmother’s words, discover the root of their fracture, maybe she could finally mend it.
“I can’t. Not yet. One more day. Just one, okay?”
He looked up at the darkening sky. “Okay, so you stay, I stay. I’ll give you a ride home tomorrow, whenever you’re ready. If everything really is fine, then that shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
His request, and her pending reply, felt loaded. It would make things harder, to have him there. She wouldn’t be able to speak openly with her grandmother, would have to find opportunities to talk to her in private. But she didn’t want to hurt him again by sending him away. And a small but insistent part of her was comforted by the idea of having him there, someone on her side.
“Okay,” she said. “Yes. You should stay.”
* * *
Louise woke at midnight, unable to fall back sleep. She crept past Peter, snoring loudly on the couch in the living room, and made her way out into the yard. Her feet were bare and the ground was wet from dew.
The night sky was cloudless, a black curtain, and studded with stars. Louise was grateful for the full moon as she walked along the edge of the orchard toward the small guest house down the hill.
The little cottage sat near a cluster of peach trees. Her grandmother had rented it out occasionally over the years, to college students and orchard workers, but it was currently vacant.
Louise tried the door, but it was locked. It didn’t matter anyway. She knew what she would find inside: the two small bedrooms and a kitchen and living room, now filled with bland department store furnishings. Her mother had brought baby Louise straight from the hospital to that guest house. She’d been only twenty-two when she got pregnant, when she was casually dating her father. Both were seniors in college and totally unprepared to have a child. Her father moved back to California to attend law school shortly before Louise was born, and though he provided financial support and visited once every summer, Louise saw him more as a distant uncle than a father.
Still, her memories of the cottage were nothing but warm and golden, and she preferred to envision it the way it had been then: the oversize leather couch in the living room, the antique floor mirror where her mother checked her reflection as she dressed in scrubs for work, the trundle daybed Louise slept on. She could see the round kitchen table, where there was always a puzzle or art project out and where they never ate, choosing the coffee table in the living room instead.
Louise sat down on the creaky wooden porch steps. One of the boards was rotted, and the exterior paint was peeling, but it still felt like home, because it was the only place where they had all been together, where her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had been so close it sometimes felt like they were sisters, drinking wine on the porch swing while Louise ran in circles in the grass. She was never scared, even as darkness fell and she ran down the rows of the fruit trees, the little cottage hidden by branches. She always knew the three most important people in her life were there under the lights, their heads together, talking for hours.
She looked out past the orchard, at the mountains, turned cobalt blue by the moon. Whenever she visited her grandmother and spent the night, she was always struck by how different Crozet was, how deep the quiet, how the darkness seemed more solid, vast and infinite in a way it wasn’t in Richmond. She heard bird cries she never heard back home, songs she had known as a child, warblers and woodpeckers and whip-poor-wills. Her great-grandmother, Helene, used to sit with Louise and point out all the different birds as they landed at the feeder.
“Some of the old mountain people around here think that one, the whip-poor-will, is a death omen,” Helene had told Louise one evening, as they sat in the yard waiting for Louise’s mom to get off work. “That they arrive when it’s time for a soul to depart, and carry it with them as they go.”
Louise had watched the large, squat, brown bird as it pecked at the seed, feeling a shiver of dread. “Is that true?”
“No, Louise.” Her great-grandmother had smiled. “They just like the night. They aren’t afraid to sing in the darkness.”
Louise made out the sound of footsteps. Peter walked toward her wearing the same clothes from the day before.
“Hey,” Louise said as he approached. With Camille always present, they had both acted normal the entire evening, though whenever Louise had glanced in Peter’s direction he was already looking her way.
Off in the distance, a frog let out a low croak.
“Can’t sleep?” Peter asked as he eased himself down onto the step beside her.
Louise shook her head.
“Me neither.” Peter pointed back at the cottage. “Is this…?”
“Yep,” Louise said.
Peter nudged her shoulder, and Louise felt a flutter in her stomach that she tried to ignore.
“I think it’s nice.” He smiled. “Better than a treehouse even.”
She had told Peter about the cottage countless times. When they were eight, she said it was a tree house, set up high in the woods. Then it was a log cabin, with an outhouse for a bathroom. Over the years, the stories became less and less colorful, until finally the cottage was just a little house.
They sat in easy silence, gazing out over the orchard, which spread down the hillside and disappeared into the dark, watching as the air lit up with hundreds of glowing embers. She remembered catching fireflies with Helene and Camille, squealing with delight as she opened her hands to see them light up, impossibly bright for creatures so small.
“This place reminds me of camp,” Peter said softly.
Their summer camp was in south Virginia, on a flat expanse of land alongside a river. There were no mountains or orchards, but she understood what he meant, how the sky there felt endless, the nights sweet with the smells of summer, how time was slower, more deliberate. Louise always liked camp, but Peter had loved it. He was a natural there, extroverted and funny, and when they first went in elementary school, before Peter grew a foot and joined the track team and got noticed by girls, it was his escape. It was the place where it didn’t matter what grades he earned in reading or math, where he didn’t have to be sepa rated into a group for extra help, where people only knew him for his strengths. And even as he got older and made friends with the popular kids, when he didn’t need camp in the same way, Louise knew it would always be his safe space.
“I can see that. Especially at night,” she told him.
“Like when we all sneaked out to that abandoned cabin in the woods.”
Louise couldn’t help but smile. “When you forced me to sneak out to that abandoned cabin in the woods. I wanted to sleep!”
“It was our last summer as campers. That’s practically mandatory.”
“Remember the failed prank to bring the go-carts down to the lake?”
Peter leaned back against one of the porch columns and faced Louise. “God, those things were so heavy.”
Louise laughed. “Not the best idea.”
Peter smiled, and Louise leaned against the opposite column, her legs straight out in front of her. In the darkness of the night, it felt like just another blissful summer, the two of them up late, sleeping in a tent in Peter’s yard, until one of them got scared and convinced the other to run back inside.
Peter’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t you going to miss it? Camp? All of it?”
Their eyes met, and Louise’s breath caught in her throat. She had been so distracted by the events of the last few days—Kyle’s party, the accident, the healing—that she had buried the cold, clammy fear that they wouldn’t be spending the summer together, that in the fall Peter would stay behind in Richmond, and she would be living six hours away.
She nodded, an ache in her chest.
She wanted to say the words out loud, the ones that had been fighting to the surface. That he had always been what she wanted, that she saved his life out of sheer will, because there was no world for her in which he didn’t exist. She almost let herself imagine the summer as it could be, full of nights like this one, under star-streaked skies, Peter beside her, not as her friend but as more.
But Peter was her family. His brothers were like her brothers, always teasing her, but in a way that made her feel included. His mom was there for her all the times her own mother couldn’t be, the gingerbread decorating party in first grade, when Bobbie told Louise she would be there but either forgot or couldn’t find the energy to come. Louise’s eyes had stung with hot tears as she sat alone, knowing deep down she wouldn’t show. But before the tears could fall, Marion swept her up in a hug, whispering in her ear, “Come sit with us, honey, we’ve got plenty of room.”
At every point in her life when she had felt the absence of her family most acutely, the lack of a father, the chasm between her mother and grandmother, Peter and his family were there to fill the gap. It wasn’t simply that Louise was scared. It was reckless, to risk losing Peter, endanger the world that had taken years to rebuild.
She realized, with a sadness that felt as vast as the night sky, that she would never be able to take the leap he wanted her to take, that this desire for safety was too ingrained in her, that it was better to minimize the ways the world could break your heart.
“I’ll miss everything,” she managed to say. “All of it.”