Page 82 of The Last Stars in the Sky
He shakes his head slowly, with utter certainty. “No,” he says, and that seems to be the end of it.
The next few days creep by slowly; we tiptoe through them, trying to keep up with all our chores and activities, yet always looking over our shoulders, bracing for an assault, an ambush. Nothing happens. After three days, I start to breathe a bit easier. I can’t live in a state of constant tension; no one can. You have to find hope; you have to nurture it. Thriving, not surviving, as Mattie said, I recall, and almost smile.
On a sunny day at the end of the month, Mattie and I go in search of strawberries. We take the old logging road that curves around the lake, now overgrown, barely visible through the bushes. Still I find it, tracing my steps, remembering the way, a heart memory born from instinct.
Daniel didn’t want us to go, feared for our safety, but I have the .22 strapped across my chest and I can’t live like I’min prison. Not here, of all places. I’m even carrying the old glass of clear green plastic that I used as a child; I found it in the cupboard. I showed it to my mother, and she laughed and nodded; I think she actually remembered. I hope we find strawberries today.
Mattie and I have agreed, without having to say anything, not to talk about the nebulous threats that can feel as if they surround us on every side. We simply want to enjoy the day—the sun pouring from the sky, the breeze whispering through the grass. The possibility of finding strawberries, out here, deep in the woods.
“Do you think we’ll find any?” Mattie asks, her voice caught between skepticism and hope.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen strawberries up here since I was younger than Ruby.” But then, I’m not sure I ever really looked. Maybe the year or so after, with my mother, but not since then.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Mattie says with determined optimism, a spring in her step, and I smile at her.
I almost don’t recognize the little valley when we come upon it. The pine trees that were mere saplings in a wide field when I picked here with my mother now tower above us, blocking out the bright sun and making me feel like a child lost in a wood.
The only way to recognize the place is by the old farm gate, now just a rotting plank hanging from rusty hinges, the trees grown up around it, the remnants of the farmer’s field, gone forever.
“Here?” Mattie asks dubiously, and I try to laugh, although I find I am suddenly close to tears.So much has changed. I knew that, of course I knew that; I’ve lived it every day, and yet Ifeelit now, right down to my marrow bones. The world is not what I once knew, what I still want it to be.
“Let’s look, anyway,” I tell my daughter, and I manage to keep the tremor from my voice. We look, hunting among thetrees, even though I know in my heart we won’t find them here in the shadows, where grass barely grows. They’re gone; they were gone a long time ago. I knew that, and yet I still feel grief.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Mattie says quietly, and I try to smile at her.
“I know it is.” And itis, because, miraculously, my mother is back at the cottage, and we are all safe. For now.
“What about in the sunlight?” Mattie asks, wandering away from the gate and the trees, to a patch of grass that gets a little sun. I watch her kneeling in the grass, her dark hair falling in front of her face. She’s nearly ten years older than I was when I picked with my mother, and yet right now she reminds me of me. I feel the passing of years like a physical thing, a turning inside me.
“Mom!” Mattie calls excitedly. “I think I’ve found one.”
I come to look, not daring to believe, and I see my daughter with a tiny jewel-like strawberry nestled in the palm of her hand. I let out a cry of surprise, of hope, and then I kneel in the long grass with my daughter, and we hunt for strawberries.
We only find a few—a couple dozen at most, barely covering the bottom of my glass, and yet each one is like a precious pearl, a treasure.
“They still grow here,” Mattie says eagerly. “We could find more.”
“We could.” I’m conscious we have been gone for more than an hour, and Daniel will be worried. “We should get back, though. We’ll come again tomorrow and have a really good look.”
We walk through the woods back to the logging road, the woods full of sound and light all around us, so different from when we came here in November and everything was barren and brown and eerily still.It’s been three days, I think, nearlybuoyant with hope.Maybe they won’t come. Maybe it wasn’t anyone dangerous.
As we walk along, Mattie turns to me with a serious look. “You should give them to her. To Granny. Remind her of when you were little, and you guys played pioneers.”
I’m touched that she remembers that story. “Well, we’re not playing now, are we?” I tease gently, and she smiles.
Back at the cottage, I take my glass with its precious few strawberries, and I bring it to my mother. She’s sitting on the deck, half dozing in the sunlight, looking diminished and fragile and yet still so very much herself.
“Mom.” I speak gently, and she opens her eyes. For a moment, they cloud with confusion, and I hold my breath. She’s never forgotten who I am before, but I know there has to be a first time. But then she smiles and stretches out one scrawny hand, and when she speaks, her voice is warm and rich with affection.
“Alex.”
“Look.” I kneel in front of her, and I press the glass into her hand. “Strawberries, wild ones. From the valley toward the other side of the lake. Do you remember?”
For a second, I think she doesn’t, even though the older memories are the ones she still seems able to access the most. But then her face softens, and she looks down at the strawberries and then back up at me. “Pioneers,” she says softly, and she presses her other hand, clawed and wrinkled, against my cheek. “My cottage girl.”
Tears prick my eyes as I press my hand over hers and hold it against my cheek. My heart is overflowing—with love, with grief, the two so intertwined I can’t tell one emotion from the other.
“You’re a cottage girl too,” I whisper. “The original, Mom.”
