Chapter 21
Carrie
He asked her if she liked the ribbons. She said she did, but she had no coins to pay. He smiled at her, the kind of smile that caught at her imagination, and she kept seeing it, hours later, as she was scolded for shirking her work on washday.
—Tabitha Morgan, July 19, 1929
The frustration grows inside me. Over the next few days, I pace up and down Ivy’s cottage, the conversation with Tom swirling around the walls like a storm. It needles me, the way he expects me to leave again. Like this isn’t my town too. Like Jess wasn’t my person before his. They were both mine before they were each other’s, but he’s erased that entirely. It’s all been conveniently swept away, along with the ghost of my very existence.
I’m the one who left, but now I’m the one left behind.
On the third day, Matthieu shows up, all smiles and mugs of tea and talk about the progress I’ve made. I swallow down the bitterness, the unease Tom has stirred up inside me. We make small talk, and he tells me about a migrating bird he found that blew in with the snowstorm. But with every hammer blow, every chunk of plaster I remove, I imagine all the things I should have said to Tom. And to Howard. One wants me to leave, and one wants me to stay. It’s as though the town is divided, and that same divide sits in my heart. I wonder if they’re all talking about me, gossiping in shop aisles and over café tables. I picture them stoking the embers of the past, just as Howard predicted.
As I imagine my presence lighting a match and casting it into these perfectly honed lives, for the first time I want them to burn. I want them to feel the cold as they flee their smoldering homes, driven away with ash in their lungs. Sniffing, I reach for the next length of skirting board and grip it so tightly that my knuckles flare white. It’s my choice, isn’t it? Whether I stay or go. I want to belong. I do. I want to feel that deep, rooted comfort of home that others seem to feel so easily, so naturally. But what if Woodsmoke and the mountains just don’t love me back?
“Carrie . . . your hand,”
Matthieu says quietly.
I look down to see a lone trail of blood, beginning in the soft folds of my palm, extending toward my wrist.
“Oh,”
I say, a dull ringing beginning in my ears. “Oh, right.”
Matthieu takes the board, gently prying it from my hands. He’s peering down at me in that calm, steady way some people have, his whole being focused on me. I sag slightly as the ringing grows louder and my skin flushes hot under the layers of my clothes. I was so deep in the past that I wasn’t focused on the present.
“You need to sit,”
he says, his voice seeming far away. I think of how different he sounds from Tom. There is no razor at the edge of his syllables. No tiny cuts at the end of each word. Only a low, soft roundness that wraps around me. I drop down, bringing my knees up to my chest, and he hunkers down next to me, keeping a polite distance. As he hands me a clean rag to press into the folds of my hand, I can’t help it. Maybe because he’s not from Woodsmoke, or maybe because he’s just here, in this moment, and there’s something about him that feels almost familiar. Comforting.
It all spills out.
“It’s getting to me, being back here. I can’t move without memories exploding around me. That man who was here the other day?”
“Yes.”
“He’s my great-uncle. Howard. He’s basically my grandfather. I’ve always thought of him that way anyway. But—but he’s worried about Cora, my great-aunt. He told me I should stay and not flit in and out, and I don’t know, maybe he’s right. But now, if I leave, it’ll upset Cora, and then I think maybe I shouldn’t have come back at all. Maybe—”
“Carrie,”
Matthieu says, holding his hand out for the rag before passing me a bandage. I take a shuddering breath and look at him, feeling foolish for unburdening myself. “That’s up to them, how they react to you. You can’t control them. You can only take hold of how you feel. How you react. Yes?”
I nod, tearing my gaze from his. The tears are threatening, closing up my throat, and I swallow them back down as I carefully place the bandage on my palm. I must have caught it on a loose nail or a splintered piece of wood. I’m not really present. Haven’t been since I arrived back here. I have one foot here in the present and one all the way back a decade ago. And I wonder if it’s the same for Tom. Was that what Howard meant? Have I pulled everyone I’ve ever cared about in Woodsmoke back to ten years ago, making them relive the moments that have led to my return? That’s what I was afraid of with my homecoming. That it would cause such a ripple that it would be more like a tidal wave.
“I spoke to Tom as well,”
I say quietly. “It didn’t go well.”
“Who’s Tom?”
“My—my ex. Well, more than an ex in some ways, I guess. An old friend as well. At least, I thought of him that way.”
I take a deep breath. “I was meant to marry him, but I let him down. He wanted the family here, the house, the life . . . and I wanted to explore the world. Now he has all that with Jess . . . who used to be my best friend. And I guess . . . I guess I thought it wouldn’t matter. I thought maybe I’d run into them, but it’s not that simple. You can’t snap your fingers and vanish ten years of absence. It feels like I’m still suspended in the decision I made that day to leave. Still eighteen and having to defend my own choices. Even if they’re not what other people wanted for me.”
Matthieu is quiet for a moment. “I understand that, going against expectations. When Henri—”
He swallows, glancing at me. “I told you I had a brother, and we loved hiking the mountains here? Well, when I was sixteen, he went missing here. Never found a body, never found any answers. He just . . . vanished. We were staying at a guesthouse, and when I woke up I was alone.”
“Oh, Matthieu, I’m so sorry,”
I say, blinking quickly. “Are you here to . . .”
“For closure, I think,”
he says with a shrug. “And maybe answers? My family didn’t want me to come here. They thought I should leave it all in the past. But they weren’t here when he vanished. It was just me and him. And I can’t shake that feeling I had when I woke up in the guesthouse and he was gone. That . . . fear.”
He smiles ruefully. “So I understand . . . well, searching. For answers. And not doing what everyone expects of you.”
I look at him, the angles of his face, the way he’s hunkered over, still keeping a respectful distance from me. “I’m assuming the police . . .”
“Yes, all that happened. It was a long time ago, but lately, just in the last couple of years, I can’t shake this feeling about the mountains. Maybe I won’t find anything this winter, or maybe I’ll finally put the ghosts to rest.”
He bites his lip. “I think we should stop for today, take a break. I need you to see something.”
I nod as he gets up. He offers me his hand, pulling me up so we are standing next to each other. I take a few steps away, readjust the bandage, pull my jacket sleeves back over my wrists.
“Shall we?”
he asks. He raises his eyebrows, and I look up into his eyes. All inky darkness below dark, thick brows, his hair a tousle of black. There’s a tiny piece of plaster dust above his left ear, but I refrain from mentioning it. It strikes me suddenly how very tall he is, and how when he’s not smiling his features appear haunted. It’s the swollen mouth, the deep-set eyes. He seems at once present, standing right beside me, and yet a thousand miles away. I wonder if this is what losing someone to the mountains does to a person. I don’t know how to tell him about the book, about all the stories pressed into it, all the warnings. Should I tell him? But then his mouth widens into a tentative smile, small crow’s feet appearing at the corners of his eyes, and my stomach does a little flip.
Despite the sting of my tears, as well as the sting of Tom’s words, I smile back. Matthieu is the only person in Woodsmoke I don’t have some kind of history with. Spending some time with him is like taking a break from the muddle of my thoughts. It’s the distraction I desperately need, and being near him feels like a balm. Like he’s the coolness I needed to calm my flames. Perhaps today is not the day to talk about the old ways and the stories. “Lead the way,” I say.
We take the path up the mountain. The one that winds up to the first lookout over Woodsmoke, the one I followed the night I arrived. Except, instead of gazing over the quiet, watchful town, as I did, Matthieu turns his back on it and heads west. We take a trail that’s seldom used in winter. Even the creatures that live on the mountain range are rarely seen on it.
“Mind the branches. If you knock one, you could upset a snowdrift,”
Matthieu says over his shoulder. “I did it the other day. Feels horrible when the snow gets under your collar.”
I shiver, imagining the snow melting against my hot skin, water trickling down my spine. “Thanks for the warning.”
We continue in silence but for the sounds of the world around us. Slowly, inch by inch, I give in and stop looking inward. As we walk deeper into the secret heart of this mountain, I wake up. The scent of snow is different up here, colder and threaded with loam. Without the constant chug of cars and fumes, it tastes like a tall drink of water. I breathe it in, letting it pool on my tongue, trickle down my throat. And I feel more alive than I have in weeks. There are heavy snowdrifts packed in under the trees, marked only by the occasional scatter of bird tracks. The bright blue of the sky is piercing the thick pine trees around and above us and is so clear it feels like it goes on forever.
“We’re nearly there,”
Matthieu says quietly. I notice he’s being more careful, treading only where his footfalls will make the least sound. I do the same, weaving under branches, hunching my hands up inside my jacket to protect my fingers from frost. It’s almost silent, in a heavy way that seems weighted and timeless. These mountains hold so many tales, so many secrets. It’s rare for them to give them up, rarer still for them to be recorded and passed down. I think of Cora and the book.
Matthieu stills suddenly, and I hold my breath. He looks back at me, a grin lighting his features, and points through the thicket to our left. “Just where I left it,”
he says in a soft hush that almost carries his words away and past me, like the breeze itself. I look to where he is pointing, narrowing my eyes to search for anything that stands out in the world of white and pale wood.
“Amazing,”
I breathe. I track the fluttering movement of the tiny bird, the bright plume of fiery feathers across its chest. When it flits to a higher branch, its wings stretch wide, the charcoal depths of them like ink against the snow. “How?”
Matthieu shrugs. “I got lucky, I guess. Looks like this chap is lost. Maybe he’ll be gone by morning? It’s a varied thrush. Rare here, usually seen on the Pacific Coast of the US. My—my brother was a birder. Loved researching different species.”
We hunker down to watch the bird as it moves between the branches. Then, in a flurry, it finds a higher branch, puffs up its tiny chest . . . and sings. It’s a haunting cry, as though the bird is searching, forever searching. My breath catches in my chest, leaving a dull ache. I reach out to steady myself and find Matthieu’s hand held out to steady me. My fingers, cold and small, flex within his warm grasp, his hand tightening around them as I regain my balance. I listen to the sad song of the little bird and let everything else fall away.
I dare not look at Matthieu. Dare not move in case he releases my hand. In this dead, white world, where this tiny bird is so lost and alone, I feel the heat from Matthieu’s skin. It reaches through me, around me, firmly burying the memories I’ve been restlessly circling. I am grounded. And somehow I belong in this moment. I am no longer alone.