Page 5 of The Last Stars in the Sky
Daniel doesn’t reply, but I feel his wince even if I don’t see it because despite what I just said, my reaction is the same. We both back away from the thought of asking Mattie to do anything she doesn’t want to right now because getting her to comply with even the most basic requirements of family life brings both resistance and drama.
“And we could explore a little,” I add, not wanting the day to be nothing but a to-do list, cottage style. “The old four-wheeler is in the barn, and the truck too, I think. I doubt they work now, but we could see. Maybe you could fire them up.” A few years ago, Darlene would drive both once in a while to keep them going, but when it became ever clearer that none of us were coming back anytime soon, I think she probably stopped.
“Sure,” Daniel says expansively.
“Great,” I say, and I nod toward the kitchen. “There are eggs and bacon in the oven.”
He nods, and for a second, we just stand there—Daniel by the fireplace, with his back to the fire, me in the middle of the room, as if I don’t know where to go. Then he puts his mug down on the mantle and comes over and slips his arms around my waist. It’s both deliberate and awkward; we’ve moved around each other these last months, making sure not to touch. I didn’t actually realize how much until this moment.
After a second or two, which feels like too long, I clumsily put my arms around him. There’s a familiarity to it, but without the ease, which makes it feel even more strange. We stand there for a moment, arms around each other yet somehow it feels as if we are not quite touching.
“This could be good,” Daniel says quietly, which is what I’ve been telling him all along, but he makes it sound as if it is a new sentiment. “For us.”
Thatis new, and it gives me a jolt—of hope, at the possibility of it, but also alarm because even though neither of us has said so,usis a concept we need to address. “Yes,” I say at last. I’m under no illusions that it is anything more than a brief detour, a step out of time, although one that I hope will bring us closer in the long term. In six weeks, we’ll be back in Connecticut, or wherever Daniel finds a job, trying to carve a new life out for ourselves, falling into patterns, making new ruts. It’s what I crave and dread at the same time, and living in that paradox is exhausting. I close my eyes as the morning sun sends its bright, healing rays across the pine boards of the floor.
“Yes,” I echo, with more conviction. “For us.”
THREE
“What, am I supposed to be impressed?”
Mattie tucks her chin toward her chest as she scuffs one sneaker along the dirt road. It has not been an easy day for her—or for me. There have been, I’ve come to realize, too many unwanted surprises here, too many strange and unexpected things for my suburban daughter. Last night, in the blur of getting to bed, Mattie didn’t fully appreciate the complete rusticity of our situation. Now she’s starting to—althoughappreciatemay be the wrong word. Actually, I know it is.
I suppress a sigh as I scan the barren landscape—leafless trees, frozen ground, everything muted and brown and utterly, eerily still in the dead zone of late autumn, early winter. No snow, no vivid autumn hues, just thelack, like color has been leached from every living thing. Even though the woods are still, I feel as if I’m being watched.
I know there’s nothing out there right now except for maybe a hungry squirrel, a hibernating bear. I’m not being watched by anyone at all, and maybe that’s what’s unnerving. The utter and absolute remoteness of this place, where you could scream as loud as you wanted, and nobody would hear.
If a tree fell in the woods, would it make a sound?
The answer, here, seems obvious.
Mattie certainly hasn’t been bowled over by the wilderness. She’s eyed everything askance on our little nature walk, just the two of us, as Ruby opted to stay back in the cottage with Daniel. Our chance to explore our surroundings, have a little mother–daughter bonding time, although precious little bonding has happened so far.
We’ve ventured out to peer into the pump house, now a shadowy, cobwebby clutter of old and probably broken tools, and then the root cellar, the door too swollen from rain and age to open, its latch rusted. Just as well, perhaps, as I have no idea how much stuff is moldering in there.
We walked down the dirt road to the old garden, turned into a tundra of thorny, barren raspberry bushes and frozen, stony ground, and now we are up at Maple Manor, the whimsically named shack where, for a decade or so, my parents made maple syrup.
It was a shabby-looking place in its heyday, and it is more than half falling down now. Mattie nudges a pile of rusted tin pails heaped outside the walls with her sneaker. “This place is, like,sodecrepit.”
I let out a huff of laughter because of course it’s true. “But you used to love Granny and Grandpa’s syrup,” I remind her, although maybe she doesn’t remember. It’s been years since we’ve had any.
Mattie scowls and digs her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat. The wind coming off the lake is cold and cutting, and it makes my eyes water and my cheeks sting. Dead leaves swirl and eddy about our feet and the wind soughs through the bare branches above us before it dies down again, leaving that almost unnatural stillness—the silence of the woods stretching all around us, unsettling in its totality. Our nearest neighbor is, I believe, more than five miles away, down a rough dirt track.The nearest gas station is ten miles, and the nearest town over twenty.
I have an urge to shout or to clap my hands over my ears, I’m not sure which. Something, to break the silence, or maybe just to get a reaction from my daughter.
“How long are we staying here for?” she asks on a martyred sigh, even though I’m pretty sure she knows the answer.
“Through Christmas, probably, and then we’ll have to see.” Hopefully, then Daniel will have a plan. We all will.
Mattie shakes her head, in a weary sort of disbelief, which I suppose is better than her ranting at me yet again. This morning we cleared the little room of its boxes, to be a bedroom for her; Ruby was happy to stay in the loft. I had visions of making it cozy, piling up the pillows and duvet, but a mouse had made a nest in the mattress, and Mattie squealed in horror at the sight of the mess spilling out onto the floor—crumbs and corn kernels, mouse droppings and mattress stuffing.
“We’ll bring a mattress down from the loft,” I told her quickly, placatingly, but she backed away, hands held up as if in self-defense, declaring she’d never sleep in a room where a mouse had been making its home.
“Then you won’t be sleeping anywhere in the cottage,” Daniel informed her cheerfully, which did not improve the situation.
“Sam will be here soon,” I remind her now. “That will be fun, won’t it?”
She shrugs, and I try not to sigh. They’d only just started to get along before he left; Mattie was finally old enough for Sam to take seriously, and I’m hoping that when we’re all together, it will feel…right, I suppose, in a way it hasn’t in a long time.
