13. Friday, October 13, 2023 #2
“Sorry, Nana,” she whispers, before hurrying out of the woods and back onto the lawn, where there’s still a trace of light. Quinn is heading in her direction.
He puts the drone on the ground and hands Polly his phone. “You watch the live video and look for Nana while I fly it.”
Quinn has already opened the screen she’ll watch the drone footage on.
It’s blank but Polly focuses on it, waiting.
Quinn fiddles around with the control panel and the drone suddenly lifts straight up into the air.
The screen lights up with visuals of the lawn and trees, and them standing just below it.
“It’s working,” she calls out. Quinn maneuvers the drone up high above the tree line then sends it forward away from them and over the woods. There’s a staticky noise right before the picture on the screen disappears, replaced with gray fuzz. “Is this normal?” Polly holds it out for Quinn to see.
“No!” he yells at her, looking down at the control panel and then over at the screen. “You must have pressed something on the phone.”
“I did not,” she snaps back.
“Well, it’s never done that before.” He moves the control panel to one hand and is reaching for the phone with the other when there’s a popping noise, like a fuse blowing or an outlet shorting. The lights on the control panel go out and the screen on his phone turns black.
“What the fuck?” he mumbles, looking from the control panel to his phone. He tries to turn the panel back on, but nothing happens. He tries to reload the live stream, but the screen stays black. “It shorted out,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I don’t understand geek talk,” Polly says. “Is the thing broken or what?”
He stares into the woods and then nods. “I think so.” They stand there in silence, staring at the trees. Darkness has fully fallen, and the only light is coming from the windows of the house.
“We have to call Mom,” Polly says. “We need to tell her that Nana is lost in the woods.”
Alice
They’re halfway through their first drinks and have only just ordered their entrées when Alice gets a phone call from Polly. Her daughter is out of breath, but Alice gets the gist. She tells Polly they’re on their way.
“What’s going on?” Geoff asks.
“Polly said that my mother went into the woods after one of the cats and the kids think she’s gotten lost in there.
” Alice signals to the waiter so that they can cancel their order.
Geoff takes a sip of his drink, a mocktail of his own choosing.
Since his night in the woods, he’s barely touched alcohol, only the odd glass of wine.
“How long has she been gone?” he asks calmly.
“I’m not sure, almost an hour it sounds like.
” Alice waves to the waiter, more frantically this time.
“Apparently Quinn flew his drone over the woods to see where she was, and it broke.” She turns her attention to the waiter to explain that they have a family emergency and must leave unexpectedly.
The waiter nods and hurries off to get their bill.
She puts her phone in her purse and reaches around for her coat. Geoff continues sipping on his drink.
“And it’s dark out now, so…”
He nods and sucks it back in one go. “I guess we’d better go home, then.” He takes the paper umbrella from the drink and pulls it closed, then opens it back up. “I can’t believe they still put these things in drinks.”
Alice shakes her head in disbelief, but Geoff’s too busy studying the umbrella to notice.
“Yeah, well, I don’t really care about the stupid umbrella. I’m just a bit preoccupied that my mother is lost in the woods in the dark and the kids are freaking out.”
Geoff’s head snaps up and he looks surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were really worried. I’m sure your mom will be fine.” He gives a little laugh and shrugs. “I mean, I was.”
“Yes, but you’re not a seventy-eight-year-old woman, are you?
” She gets up and pulls money from her wallet to toss on the table.
The waiter is taking far too long to bring a bill for only two drinks and she’s not waiting another minute.
Geoff gets up as well, grabs his coat off the back of the chair, and follows her as she marches toward the front door.
“Should I call the police?” she asks on the way out, reaching in her purse for her phone.
Geoff puts a hand on her lower back to guide her though the tables, something he never used to do. Instead, he used to get up from the table first to go to the bathroom, leaving her to pay the bill.
“No,” he says firmly. “Let’s not involve the police yet. They don’t know those woods any better than your mother does, and it will only blow things out of proportion.”
Alice is not sure how an old woman lost in the woods is not an emergency, but she puts her phone away. She decides to wait until she’s home and able to assess the situation before she calls them.
All the way home from the restaurant, Alice thinks of the thing she mumbled after leaving the cabin, about her mother getting lost in the woods.
She knows she was just being stupid, but it feels like she manifested it and now she’s wracked with guilt.
Mother-daughter guilt is almost as potent as mother-child guilt.
Pulling into the driveway, Alice prays that her mother comes out to greet them, safe and sound.
Instead, Polly and Quinn come around the side of the house looking tense.
Quinn is holding the drone control panel against his body as though it’s a wounded animal.
In a flurry, he and Polly take turns recounting what happened.
Soot getting out of the cabin, Nana going after him into the woods, the kids going in after her but not seeing any trace.
Then the whole episode with the drone, the static on the screen once it flew into the woods, and the device shorting out completely.
“I’ll get a good flashlight and go in and have a look,” Geoff says before heading toward the house.
“No,” Alice calls out. “I’m not losing you in there again.”
Geoff turns back. “I’ll stick to the path and won’t go too far.” Alice starts to protest again but he holds up a hand. “It’s just a forest, Alice. I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m sober this time.”
“Okay. We’ll come stand at the start of the path and if you get turned around you can call out and we’ll call back to guide you.”
Geoff chuckles, like Alice is being dramatic, but then gives a thumbs-up. “Good plan. Can you please get me a blanket to take for when I find her?”
“Yes, of course,” Alice says, following him. Her earlier irritation at her husband disappears now that he’s taking charge. She’s even impressed that he thought of bringing a blanket. It’s the kind of detail that Alice might come up with.
Now Alice stands at the opening in the woods with a lantern, the same one she used when Geoff went missing, her body tensed, waiting for any sound or sign of Beverley and Geoff. All the outside lights are on, so the lawn is bright and surreal-looking.
It’s gotten cold. It’s the chill that comes every October that she’s never ready for, and it makes her bones ache.
Alice shivers in her plaid wool coat and her guilt deepens.
She sent Quinn and Polly inside to warm up and put on a few more layers, mostly because she needed a break from putting on a brave face for them both.
She’s scared, but she doesn’t want them to see that.
Her mind has run through every worst-case scenario—animal attack, heart attack, violent fall.
Alice fights to keep the tears away, which surprises her.
She’d thought she was numb when it came to her mother.
That the years of harsh words, judgment, conditional love, selfishness, and a complete lack of apologies had sandpapered Alice’s heart down to an unfeeling stump.
Turns out she was wrong. There’s love inside her for her mother, wrapped up with the na?ve hope that one day she’ll finally get what she needs from her.
It’s the love and hope, when faced with the possibility of her mother’s death, that is causing Alice to feel a pulling-apart of the carefully constructed seams of her adult persona.
“It’s weird, don’t you think?” Polly says, coming up from behind with Quinn, causing Alice to quickly wipe at the tears in her eyes.
“What’s weird?” Alice asks, pressing pause on her unraveling to sound calm and in control in front of her kids.
“Dad getting lost in there and then Nana so soon after. And the drone thing. It’s like the woods are a black hole or something.”
Alice reaches out and puts an arm around her daughter and feels Polly relax into her. “I think it’s just because we’re not familiar with it. I mean, there’s almost fifty acres of forest back there. We’re bound to get lost until we learn it.”
Quinn huffs beside her. “The woods as a black hole? Impossible. Black holes have infinite gravity, and mass is both compressed and stretched. No human would survive going into a black hole. They also happen in space and—”
“Okay, nerd,” Polly interrupts. “I didn’t mean an actual black hole. It’s a metaphor. I just meant there’s something strange about the woods. When your stupid drone malfunctioned, you said the same thing.”
Alice waits for Quinn’s backlash, but when he doesn’t say anything she jumps in. “There’s nothing strange about the woods. Maybe there’s just no cell reception in them. And drones malfunction all the time, don’t they? I mean, technology can be glitchy.”
“Do you think the woods might have something to do with why Justine Gordon killed her family?” Polly asks.
A shiver crawls down Alice’s spine at the thought. She’s just about to respond that the two aren’t connected when a light appears through the trees, bobbing toward them.
“Dad?” Quinn calls out.
“It’s me and Beverley,” Geoff calls back.
The only thing keeping Alice from crumpling to the ground and sobbing like a child is her arm around Polly, who unknowingly holds her up.