Wildwood

Chapter 63

When I open the door, I know it’s already too late.

Topher and a man, who must be the police officer, though he looks to be in his seventies and is wearing plain clothes, are sitting at the kitchen table.

They stand when I walk in. The officer’s face is grave.

To anyone but me, Topher’s face is composed, even placid.

But I can see the twitch of his jaw muscle. The coldness in his eyes. He’s angry.

“Elinor, this is Detective Anderson,” Topher says, his voice even.

“Hello, Elinor,” Detective Anderson says, nodding his head, crinkling his eyes slightly in a way that says, “I’m sorry to be doing this.”

“Detective Anderson told me about the call you made to the police last night.”

I don’t know how to play this.

“And?” I ask.

“There’s not a whole lot to go on,” says Anderson. “If you want to come down to the station and make an official statement, you are welcome to.”

“Okay. And will you investigate it?”

“We’ll review the report, and, pending the review, we’d then reach out to interview you.”

I avoid Topher’s eyes, though I feel them boring into me. “Okay, I will.”

“Thank you, Elinor. I’ll be going,” says Anderson. He holds Topher’s gaze a moment, before walking toward the parlor.

Topher and I follow him to the door in a solemn processional.

“Thank you, Detective,” Topher says, shaking his hand. “I appreciate you making the house call.”

“My pleasure. And Elinor, please accept my condolences, I knew your uncle rather well and he is certainly missed.”

I mumble a thank-you, my face burning, and when I realize that Detective Anderson looks familiar, I have the unsettling feeling that that is problematic.

Topher walks silently back into the kitchen.

I’m already planning the fight in my head, what I’ll say to rebuff the criticisms and accusations that will surely come my way.

The barks were Hugo’s, I’d recognize them anywhere.

They were on a loop. I didn’t hallucinate them, Joan heard them too.

Or at least, she heard me calling for him.

But he doesn’t speak. Instead, he picks up a manila envelope from the table.

“Here,” he says, handing it to me.

My stomach drops.

“What is it? Divorce papers?”

“Jesus Christ, Elinor.” He says it softly and quietly, which is worse than yelling.

I open the envelope and my heart stops. It’s a copy of the same article I’d found in Ezra’s desk.

The article about the lost little girl from New Jersey.

The little girl who claimed a fairy queen led her out of her bedroom at night.

I stand in silence, my mind reeling, doing gymnastics, trying to right itself on terrain that’s falling away.

“Where’d you get this?” I finally ask.

“Detective Anderson brought it. He was involved in the investigation. He remembers you.”

I don’t say anything. My mind is reconstructing his face, the opposite of the police sketches that age a suspect that they are looking for years later. I imagine Detective Anderson, taking decades off his wrinkled, tired face. I recognize him.

“How did you not tell me?” he asks.

“I didn’t even remember it happened,” I start. “Why would I have kept it from you all these years if I’d remembered?”

“But you remembered it happened at some point, right?”

“No.”

“You are lying,” says my husband.

He turns and walks out of the room. I stand, in silence, my breath becoming shallow, my head feeling light.

Topher returns with something in each hand.

“I found this in your underwear drawer.” He gently places the copy of the article I’d found in Ezra’s desk on the kitchen table.

Oh fuck. No.

“And this.” He tosses the plastic baggie with the shriveled Chaga mushroom on the table as well, a fraction of the size it once was.

I stare at the table, unable to lift my eyes from the article and the mushroom. I know how it looks.

“Madeline called me, as well,” Topher says. “She told me you went to her house, accusing her of nonsense. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

“She’s not worried about me,” I spit. “She’s a fucking liar.”

“And she took Hugo, right?”

“I can’t prove it, but she did it, I know she did!”

“Why would she do that??” His voice edges louder.

“Why are you defending her?” I challenge, blood pounding in my ears. “Oh, is it because she is beautiful and rich? Is it because you are sleeping with her??” It comes out before I can stop it. The sick insecurity that’s been quietly poisoning my brain.

Topher looks like I’ve slapped him across the face.

“Elinor, listen to yourself,” Topher is whispering now. “You need help.”

“I found the wheat in your pocket. In the jacket you wore to the harvest festival.” I put my hands on my hips, trying to sound as collected as possible, though I can literally feel the insanity radiating from my face.

“What?”

“The wheat from Madeline’s crown. Did you sleep with her that night in the field? How else did it get there?”

“Oh my god!” It’s a yell and a laugh. “Do you hear yourself? A piece of wheat? Is this your fucking grand evidence? I have no idea how it got there. The place was literally filled with wheat and pine cones and apples and every other possible autumn . . . thing!” He casts about, hardly able to come up with the word. “You are crazy!”

“I’m not crazy!” I yell, feeling myself unraveling.

“Something terrible happened here. I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve seen it in my dreams, and I’ve seen Lydia here.

She’s here all the time. I can feel it. The Brooks killed her.

They killed my grandmother—I mean, my ancestor—and then they covered it up.

That’s why my uncle hated them. He was trying to prove—”

“NOTHING HAPPENED HERE! NOTHING IS HAPPENING HERE!” Topher explodes, with a wild look in his eyes.

“You are creating stories in your head, and you don’t even realize it.

I’m not sleeping with Madeline! I’m FRIENDS with Madeline.

A ghost isn’t spiriting you through the woods at night.

You were ACTUALLY lost in the woods at night.

You aren’t seeing ghosts or witches. You are fucking tripping on MUSHROOMS! !”

“I’m not hallucinating!” I am begging now, I can hear that in my voice. “It’s Chaga, I was taking it for my migraines. Alice gave it to me.”

He laughs mirthlessly. “Who, the Goat Lady??”

I am finally stunned into silence. As tired and crazed as I am, I’m still smart enough to know how bad this all looks. The evidence against me. All the lies by omission.

“Do you hear yourself?” he says gently now.

I exhale slowly. This has all spiraled so wildly out of my control in this short time.

“I don’t know what to say. I . . . I know how it sounds and how it looks.” I shake my head. “I don’t want to worry you.”

“It’s too late for that, Elinor.” He takes a deep breath. I know what’s coming, before he says it. “I think we need to think about moving.”

“No!”

“It’s not what I would have wanted, either, but Elinor, this place isn’t good for you.

Clearly. And no wonder. You experienced something incredibly traumatic as a child.

Anyone would get messed up living in a place that had that history for them.

” Topher’s face softens. “I’m not mad at you, for the record.

I don’t blame you. But we need to think about our family. About the baby.”

There’s a wild desperation in my gut. The rational part of me knows he’s right.

But the other part of me cannot give up now.

And while he’d never understand it, part of me feels like I’m doing this for the baby, not in spite of the baby.

I need to right whatever wrong has been done here, because I can’t bring a baby into the world otherwise.

The world is so fucked-up as it is. Wildwood was supposed to be the safe place.

“Please,” I implore. “We don’t have to decide this now.

I’ll see Dr. Prescott again. I’ll push her on the medication.

Give me more time. I love this house. I just kind of lost it after Hugo went missing.

I love him so much.” I’m crying now, not sobbing, but the tears are just rolling down my cheeks.

“I’m supposed to go away in two days. I don’t know that I can do that.” Topher is rubbing his forehead, staring at the floorboards. He looks so, so troubled, my heart breaks a little.

“Why are you going away?” I must have known this, but my brain is completely dead.

“The conference in LA. It’s supposed to be for a week.” He’s almost talking to himself at this point. “But you can’t be alone right now.”

“You should go!” I say it too forcefully.

He looks almost quizzically at me.

“I’ll go stay with Mia. She said I could stay with her any time.”

Topher considers this, still rubbing his forehead, looking years older than when we’d arrived in Newfield.

“You’d do that?”

“Yes,” I say firmly. “I can drive down the day you leave.”

He is staring at me, now rubbing at his stubble, his mouth open. “Okay. I’m going to be checking in on you. And with Mia. And we’ll talk about what to do when I get back.”

Relief floods through me, but it spreads shivers instead of warmth.

“Okay. That’s fair.”

Topher walks toward me and pulls me into a long hug. He kisses the top of my forehead and lets his lips linger.

“I’m going to be okay,” I tell him. “It’s going to be just fine.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, when Topher is taking a power nap before heading off to the hospital, I sit at the kitchen table and flip open the manila folder. Eight-year-old me stares back at me. Chin-length hair, bangs, and a look of innocence.

I pick up the article and realize that there’s a second article beneath it.

This one is from a different paper. I scan the article and much of the information is the same.

A girl walked out of her room at night, following a woman with long, curling hair.

But farther down, something new catches my eye, a familiar name. Alice Clark.

Alice Clark was questioned by police, at the request of Bishop, who claimed Clark had been found trespassing on his property in the past. However, after the interrogation, the police have removed Clark as a person of interest.

I chew the inside of my cheek. Alice had been trespassing on our property.

Why? And what made the police dismiss her as a suspect?

I think of how so much of my theory is tied up in what Alice had said about the Brooks trying to buy the property, and my uncle hating the Brooks. But why am I trusting Alice?

I realize, suddenly, that I have no idea how the case concluded.

I have no idea what final determination my family and the police made on what happened that night.

I know it was Lydia who led me out into the night, though I’m not sure why.

But what was the final narrative to everyone else?

Was I kidnapped and let go? Or did I sleepwalk and then fabricate a tale, like one of the nursery rhymes my mother used to tell?

Or did I sleepwalk and then my mother created the fairy tale, as a way to trick the young mind into forgetting that it actually happened?

Did she plan for the nursery rhyme to turn fact into fiction, in a little girl’s memory?

I flip the article, scanning the back quickly before putting it back in the manila folder.

There’s a picture on the back. It shows the same scene as the other newspaper, though it’s taken from a slightly different angle.

It shows a few more people standing around the driveway, who were cut off in the other photo.

It’s not clear if they were helping or rubbernecking.

But my eye stops on one person in the crowd.

A beautiful young woman, with long red hair and striking eyes. A younger Madeline Brook.

As I slide the articles back into the folder, something clicks in my brain. When I’d banged on her door, only a few days ago, and showed her the article. I wasn’t even there when it happened, she’d said. I was living in New York.

I smile to myself, as a shiver runs up my spine. Liar, I think.