13. Louise
13
LOUISE
Louise found her grandmother in the garden, pulling weeds in a bed at the back of the yard.
She yawned deeply as she walked along the warm brick path. Peter was still sound asleep on the couch. They had stayed out until nearly sunrise, when the sky was fringed with pink over the mountains. They had talked about a thousand little things, each topic inconsequential compared to the reality of their present. But for a few, lovely midnight hours, things between them were the way they had always been.
“Morning,” Camille said as Louise approached.
“Sorry I slept in.” Louise crouched down beside her grandmother. She spotted a wilted hydrangea and considered letting her hands rest on the bloom, to practice, but her grandmother’s tense demeanor told her now wasn’t the time.
“You needed the sleep.” Camille removed her gardening gloves. She rose, acknowledged the pile of weeds, and sighed. “I garden when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Less now because it does a number on my back. But still, I find it therapeutic.”
She looked pale in the light of morning. Louise was used to her grandmother working up on ladders pruning trees or hauling huge bushels in the orchard, but suddenly she seemed frail.
Camille shoved her gloves into her pocket. “It’s a gorgeous day. Go up to the park. Take Peter. You can use my entry pass. Or Sugar Hollow. You remember that swimming hole up there from when you were little? It’s not far from here.”
The blurry memory came to the surface, a cool, clear river in the mountains, perching on smooth rocks, giggling as the water tickled her toes. Peter would like it there.
Camille smiled, but it was strained, like she was holding back. “Also, I asked your mom to come back here again. I’d like the three of us to sit down together before you leave for New York. There are things we need to talk about.” She patted Louise’s shoulder. “She said she could come this afternoon once she’s done with some appointments. So you might as well do something fun in the meantime.”
Without waiting for Louise to reply, she got up and headed back toward the house.
“I don’t want to talk to Mom. Not right now.” And anyway, she had Peter to drive her home later.
Camille stopped and turned to face Louise. “Will you, please? For me?”
Her voice was so raw that Louise found herself nodding.
“Great,” Camille said, regaining her composure. “I’ll go down to the farm stand. See if Caroline is there. She can go with you too. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to have the morning off.”
Louise watched her grandmother go, as all around her the garden flowers stretched toward the June morning light.
* * *
Louise was breathing heavily as they walked the trail up to Sugar Hollow. It was unusually hot for this time of year, but the bright sun was tempered by the thick canopy above them. Every tree and fern and patch of moss was a verdant, oversaturated green, as though they were deep in a tropical rainforest instead of an ancient, fading mountain in Appalachia.
“You okay?” Peter called over his shoulder. His own breathing was easy, and it looked like he had barely broken a sweat. Though it was the first summer since middle school he wasn’t training for fall track, he was still in annoyingly good shape compared to Louise, who only exercised when it was mandatory.
Louise rolled her eyes as she wiped the sweat from her brow. “I’ll be fine. It’s not that bad.”
“That’s what your grandmother said too. ‘Small children do it all the time,’ I think were her exact words.” He smiled at her in a way that made her heart, already pounding from the incline, beat faster. “You want to quit?”
Louise wasn’t going to back down from the challenge. She tried to think of what she’d say to him if this were a week ago, before every exchange felt tougher to navigate. “Of course not. I never quit.”
Peter opened his mouth to reply but Louise cut him off.
“I know what you’re going to say. And field hockey doesn’t count.”
He grinned wider and cocked his head to the side. “Horseback riding? Or pretty much every single gym class in middle school.”
“Horseback riding was my mom’s thing. And I stuck with that for almost a year. Also shut up,” Louise said, even though in truth she was grateful for this more familiar version of Peter.
Peter fell back into step beside her as they forged up the path. Caroline was so far up the trail from them they couldn’t see her anymore. She had agreed to go with them at Louise’s grandmother’s insistence, but she had been quiet and reserved for most of the car ride there.
“Is she okay? Caroline?” Peter asked, as though reading her thoughts.
“Not really.”
“What’s going on?”
“Her mom is sick. Cancer. She doesn’t have much time.”
“Shit,” Peter said. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah,” Louise said. She tried to choose her next words carefully. It felt dangerous to tell Peter about Sarah, to reveal some of the reason she had stayed in Crozet but not the full truth. “I actually went with my grandmother yesterday, to see her.”
Louise could feel Peter studying her. “God, that was probably tough, right?”
She nodded. Peter could always read her. “It was hard,” Louise admitted in a low voice.
Louise looked up the trail but still saw no sign of Caroline. “But I helped my grandmother too. And I felt like I helped Caroline’s mom. And that part was actually really…amazing.”
A smile crossed Peter’s lips. “Of course it was. Because it’s what you do.”
Louise swatted a mosquito off her arm as she tried to parse Peter’s words. “What I do?”
“Take care of people,” he said simply, echoing her grandmother.
“What are you talking about?” Louise asked. “I don’t…”
Peter put a hand on her wrist. “Don’t do the false-modesty thing. I’m not saying this to start an argument, or get into any of the stuff from before. But you’ve always taken care of people. Your mom. Me. I mean you must have spent a solid year of your life helping me study or with homework. You help my mom in the garden and say it’s for fun. You put everyone else first, always. Ever since the day I met you. It’s why I…”
“What?” Louise asked, even though she knew the words that would follow, even though fear coursed through her body. She wanted to hear him say it again.
She held his gaze, each long, brown eyelash making her heart somersault along with the force of his words, the intention in his eyes. He stepped forward, until Louise could feel the electricity surging between them, her body pulled toward him even as her mind struggled against it.
“You guys okay?” Caroline called from somewhere out of sight.
Louise immediately shot back, almost stumbling over a large rock behind her. “We’re fine!” she shouted.
Caroline appeared up ahead, taking a swig of water from her bottle.
“So how much farther?” Peter asked.
“Not far. Just follow me.”
A few minutes later, they reached a small outcropping of rock. Beneath it, a waterfall flowed down into a large swimming hole. It was a dozen different colors at once, depending on how the light hit it, a shadowy green around the edges, a bright aquamarine in the most direct patches of sun, and almost entirely clear in the shallows, the smooth rocks beneath revealed in vivid detail.
“Wow,” Louise said as she moved toward the edge.
“Worth the hike?” Caroline asked.
“Definitely,” Peter said behind her.
“So how do we get down to the water?” Louise asked, turning back to face them. She gripped the straps of her backpack, tried to ignore the way her body still tingled. “Through there?” There was no clear path to the bottom, but it seemed possible to pick their way along the rocks.
Caroline set her backpack down on the ground and took off her baseball cap. “There’s a path that winds around the rocks. If you’d like to go that way.” She began to kick off her shoes.
“Which way are you going?” Louise asked.
“The easy way.” She placed her shoes and socks in a neat pile beside her backpack.
Louise followed her line of sight to a long, thick rope tied to a tree directly to her right. “You don’t mean…?”
Caroline grabbed the rope and handed it to Peter. “You want to go first?”
A struggle played out across Peter’s features. She knew, because she knew Peter better than anyone, that he wanted to jump. But Louise was scared of heights, and he wouldn’t leave her alone, the same way he had missed parties and dances she was too introverted and awkward to attend, sat on the bleachers in the back at school events, to be with her.
“He will,” Louise said quickly, before Peter could respond. “And so will I.”
Peter looked incredulous. “Seriously?”
Louise nodded despite her nerves. Her fear of heights was an endless source of amusement for Peter. He loved to tease her whenever she refused to ride the Ferris wheel at the state fair or on the class trip that spring when she was the one student not to go out onto the deck of the Empire State Building.
Caroline clutched the rope and smiled at Louise. Then she jumped, flinging herself over the edge and splashing into the water below.
Louise peered down over the outcrop and watched her rise to the surface.
For a moment, neither she nor Peter spoke. She felt the magnetic pull from earlier, like he was her center of gravity. But she held her body very still, until she knew she could resist the force, focus on what a colossal mistake it would be to allow herself to give in. She was leaving in three days.
“You really want to jump?” he asked, his voice cutting through her thoughts. “You don’t have to.”
Louise swallowed her nerves. There was so much she couldn’t give to him, but she could give him this one last shared moment. She reached for his hand.
“Together?”
His face cracked into a smile that was so bright Louise felt its reflection on her own skin. He took her hand.
And together, they ran toward the edge.
* * *
The air was heavy as they made their way back to the parking lot, a summer storm approaching from the valley. Louise’s hair and clothes were soaked, and her shoes squeaked with each step, but she felt lighter, happier than she’d been in days. They had spent nearly two hours swimming, lying in the sun, talking about music and TV shows and books.
But despite the reprieve of the afternoon, reality loomed larger with every step down the trail. She would have to face her mother and grandmother when she got back. Peter and Caroline had grown quieter too, as though they also sensed the realities of life waiting for them. She knew Peter was dreading the fall, staying home in Richmond while all his friends left for college, and Caroline was likely lost in her own, much more serious concerns, navigating the catastrophe of her mother’s illness.
A rumble of thunder echoed as they arrived at a steep bend in the trail.
“Not much farther,” Caroline said.
The sky was still blue above them, but Louise knew how fast storms could hurtle down from the mountains.
They increased their pace, Caroline in the front and Louise in the back.
Between them, Peter looked down at his phone. “My mom is so pissed. I told her I’d be back by now.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize how long this trail is,” Louise said as she stumbled slightly over one of the many loose rocks in that stretch. She was about to warn Peter to watch his step when one of his legs rolled to the left and he fell hard onto the ground.
Louise reached him first and knelt beside him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Peter muttered, grabbing his ankle as he pushed himself up to a seated position. “This is a joke. Freaking car accident two days ago and now this? You’re bad luck, you know that?” he said, humor in his eyes despite the pain.
“Can you put weight on it?” Caroline asked as the wind picked up out of nowhere, gusting through the tree canopy, swirling leaves through the air.
Peter gritted his teeth and tried to move his ankle. “I think I tore something.”
Louise placed her hand on his ankle, and before she realized what she was doing, it was too late. She felt the heat immediately as her skin made contact with his skin, her nerve endings buzzing.
“I don’t…” Peter fell silent as more thunder rumbled above them. His eyes traveled from her face to her hand on his ankle.
There was a quiet so distinct that Louise felt it curl around her body, as though the three of them were inside a little pocket of stillness.
She drew away quickly, fingering the strap of her backpack. “We should get back to the car. Before the storm starts. We’ll help you, Peter.” She stood and hugged her arms to her body.
Slowly, Peter got to his feet. He stepped cautiously at first, then put his full weight on the injured ankle. “I don’t think I need help. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Not even a little.”
“Great,” Louise said, her chest tightening, avoiding their eyes.
She took off down the trail, the wind howling violently after her. With one more enormous clap of thunder, the sky cracked open and the forest turned gray with rain.
* * *
Rain pounded the windshield. By the time they arrived at Caroline’s house the driveway was a river of red clay mud.
“Thanks for…for the afternoon,” Caroline said from the back seat. She got out and hurried toward her house.
“The storm should be over soon,” Louise said to Peter, hoping to break the tension, so that they could both ignore what had happened on the trail. “The sky is brightening up. Should be fine for your drive home.”
Peter only nodded.
Louise wanted nothing more than to spend the next two days with him in Richmond. And yet she might have ruined any chance at normalcy by being so reckless.
When they passed the farm stand a few minutes later, he turned abruptly into the empty parking lot. The rain had finally stopped.
“I thought you were going to drop me at the house.”
Peter put the car in Park and shook his wet curly hair out of his eyes. “What happened out there, Louise?”
Louise felt suddenly claustrophobic, trapped inside the tight space with only Peter and the sound of the car AC. “What do you mean?”
“Please don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not… I didn’t…” Louise searched her mind for excuses, for explanations. She closed her eyes as drops of water ran down her face from her hair. “I can’t do this right now.”
He shifted in his seat. “Why did you really come to Crozet? Is it because of the accident…because of what you did…how you…”
“I did CPR,” Louise said.
“That’s not all you did, and we both know it.” Peter looked down at his ankle. “I felt it, earlier. Whatever that was.”
Her body trembled. “Please, Peter. I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. But it’s complicated…and…”
“You’re lying to me,” Peter insisted, “about the trail. And about the accident.”
Louise shook her head, as though she could force him to take back his questions. She could sense it all unraveling, and she was desperate to put everything back in its place.
“I’m not,” she said feebly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not lying.”
“What really happened after the accident, Louise? Why am I alive? Why didn’t I have a scratch on me? Why did you leave immediately after, go to your grandma’s when your mom hates her? None of this makes any sense, but I was just going to let it go… but then after what just happened…” Peter rested his hands on the steering wheel. “Tell me something honest. Something real .”
She felt like the air around her was constricting her lungs. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“Please, Peter. Let’s just go home. Do all the things we planned. I’m leaving, and…it’s… Can we just go back to normal?”
“No,” Peter said sadly. “We can’t.”
Louise reached for her seat belt. She couldn’t be in the car with him a second longer.
She took off into the orchard, weaving in and out of the rows of trees so that even if he followed he wouldn’t be able to find her. Her feet sloshed in the puddles, spraying her legs with red mud.
At some point, she started to run. She ran to the edge of the orchard and then down the hill that sloped toward the creek. It was only where the grass gave way to the rocky pebble banks, where she knew she was out of sight from the parking lot, that she allowed herself to stop moving.
She bent forward, heart pounding, and watched as the water, flush from the rain, rushed over the rocks. Beyond, the gentle, cloud-shrouded mountain rose in a sleepy incline toward a sky streaked with pink and orange.
It took Louise several moments to process the large black shape on the other side of the creek. It was a bear the size of a boulder, nearly obscured by the tall grass and wildflowers as it lay crumpled in a heap.
She waded into the creek, her mind racing. It must be a different bear, a coincidence. She gasped as the icy mountain water filled her shoes, and she stumbled across the slippery rocks, until she reached the edge of the creek a few feet across, where the grass grew up to her knees.
She sank down on the opposite bank, the bear only inches away. There was no fear this time. The bear was motionless, its eyes vacant. It was the same bear. She knew with a conviction she didn’t understand, a dread that sunk into her skin.
Peter’s face flashed into her mind. The heat in her hands, the same heat that had brought that bear back to life. Only now that heat was gone as she touched the bear’s matted fur.
Louise leaned back onto the wet grass, a phrase echoing back at her across the years. Her great-grandmother, Helene, at the orchard shortly before her death, one of the last times Louise saw her.
Normally, Helene was playful with Louise, in a way she never was with anyone else. She was always ready to offer her a treat or little trinket from a basket she kept for her visits. But that day, her eyes were full of sorrow in a way Louise had never witnessed. Camille told Louise that Helene thought she was back in Rouen, during the war. She kept repeating the same three words in French, over and over, eventually reverting to English. She said the words to Louise, as though willing her to understand them, until Camille took Louise’s hand and said it was time to go. They were words without meaning for Louise, until now.
It won’t endure.