Chapter 9
9
I inhale sharply, and it’s like being punched in the gut—the scent of cedar, of pine and dust and something so faint I’m not sure it’s there at all, that my mind isn’t weaving it in all by itself. Lavender.
Daisies. The flowers on the bed were daisies , I think, but that’s impossible. This can’t be the same cabin. That can’t be the same bed.
I walk to the other door. I put my hand against it, not meaning to go in, not yet, but the latch on the door must not work properly because it simply swings open. I brace myself for a rush of recognition—but there’s nothing.
A queen-size bed frame, mattress nowhere in evidence, takes up most of the room. The frame is a heavy wooden thing, handmade, knots giving it character. A wardrobe stands in the corner; to my right, a vanity. The mirror throws back an obscured reflection, speckles of grime blotting out my face.
I let out a long breath as the sense of intense familiarity bleeds away. My shoulders relax, and I realize just how tightly I’ve been clenching my jaw.
Maybe I have been to a place like this one. A place with flowers on my bedspread and a woodstove and the scent of cedar. Common things—all of them pretty much baked into the cabin experience, in fact, and hardly particular to Idlewood.
My eyes fall from my distorted reflection to the surface of the vanity, and the sensible, rational, comforting thought withers up. Because it’s right there.
The dragonfly, cast in dull brass.
It takes three steps and an eternity to cross to the vanity. I touch the thing as if it might burn me. An ornament for a door, two spots for the screws at the nose and the tail. It matches the silhouette on the door: a cross, the bar split at the end where the wings diverge.
Red Fox. White Pine. Wildflower.
Dragonfly.
I pick up the ornament, blowing dust from it with a puff of air. The patterns of its wings emerge. There are brass circles behind the dragonfly, an extra bit of decoration. I hold it next to my arm. Not the same, not exactly. The size and position of the circles behind the body are different.
As if this was the image I was grasping for, when I sketched out what I wanted and handed it to the artist. As if glimpsed in a half-obscured reflection, through memory long submerged.
I sink down onto the stool. My mouth is dry.
Why is this here?
Absurd. It belongs here. I’m the thing out of place.
Trapped between the back of the vanity and the wall is a triangle of white no bigger than a clipped fingernail. It has the gloss of photograph paper, and now I spy the telltale squared-off smudges on the vanity mirror, where other photographs might have been taped. Whoever cleared this place out must have missed one.
My eyes fix on it. My hands are shaking, a tremor that starts in my smallest finger and radiates until I have to clench both hands tight against my body to still them.
I should go. Turn and walk out of this place and put all of it, these strange coincidences, out of my mind. They mean nothing.
And yet instead of turning around, I reach out. I pinch the corner of that little white scrap, draw it out. It’s a photograph; apart from a crease where it was trapped against the wall, it’s intact.
The photograph shows a man you could almost mistake for Connor. The same mouth, the same slightly gawky ears. He wears a heavy coat, unzipped, a gray sweater underneath. He holds the mittened hand of a very young child. She’s cocooned in a bright pink winter coat. Her cheeks are bright red. Despite the cold, she isn’t wearing a hat, her brown hair in a loose tumble over her shoulders. In her other arm, she clutches a stuffed bear. It looks brand-new, with a bright red ribbon around its throat. The man is smiling. She isn’t.
I know that girl. Of course I do. I don’t have much of anything from when I was younger, but I stared at the photos of myself displayed on the mantel often enough. Me at the dinner table; next to a Christmas tree; dressed in my Sunday best with my hair in French braids, eyes still red from crying at how hard Beth pulled to get them flat and even.
I feel as if I am not in my body at all. It has dissolved around me, leaving me untethered. I don’t know how long I sit there, staring at the photograph, mind reeling.
The man is obviously Connor’s father—Liam Dalton.
And the girl in the photograph is me.