Secrets of Eden

K. HAYWARD: Okay. I guess.

WALKER: What did you tell her-Ms. Laurent?

K. HAYWARD: Look, do I have to talk about this? It was one thing to talk to Heather. She knows what I’m going through. It’s one thing to talk to Josie. If everyone else would just leave me alone…

WALKER: I’m sorry. Did Heather tell you why she was in Haverill?

K. HAYWARD: Well, at first I thought she had been with Stephen.

WALKER: Your pastor.

K. HAYWARD: Well, the pastor. I don’t know if he’s my pastor. I guess he’s back in Vermont, but he’s not back in church. And it’s not like I’m real involved with the church these days, anyway.

WALKER: Did she say what she was doing with the minister?

K. HAYWARD: The rumor is she was doing the minister.

WALKER: Pardon me, ma’am?

MORRISON: Katie, you really need to save that tone for me. That was a joke, Sergeant.

WALKER: I see.

K. HAYWARD: No, she didn’t say much. And she wasn’t there to see him, anyway. I’d thought she was, but I was wrong.

WALKER: Did she say anything?

K. HAYWARD: She used to like him. That’s what the rumor is. But she doesn’t anymore.

WALKER: How do you know that?

K. HAYWARD: Well, I don’t know it. Not for sure, anyway.

WALKER: But why would you suspect it-that she and Stephen are no longer seeing each other?

K. HAYWARD: Because she is totally into angels and she said he isn’t.

WALKER: She told you that Stephen Drew doesn’t like angels?

K. HAYWARD: Sort of. She said he had built a wall against angels.

WALKER: Do you know what she meant by that?

K. HAYWARD: No idea. But look. Everyone says he was sleeping with my mom. Everyone. Then everyone says he was sleeping with Heather. That’s probably what she meant.

WALKER: You told me the first time we spoke that you didn’t believe that your mother and Reverend Drew were intimate. Have you changed your mind?

K. HAYWARD: Intimate?

MORRISON: Sleeping together, Sweetie.

K. HAYWARD: Oh, I get it. Yeah, I’ve been following what people are saying. You can’t help it, you know? And I guess I was wrong. Way wrong. Maybe they were sleeping together. Everyone in the whole world seems to think so.

WALKER: What else did Heather say?

K. HAYWARD: She told me to keep my heart open to angels. To take care of myself. And to be careful.

WALKER: Be careful?

K. HAYWARD: Uh-huh. That’s why she came to the school. Don’t you think? To warn me and to, like, let me know I could call her whenever.

WALKER: It felt like a warning?

K. HAYWARD: Uh-huh. It definitely felt like a warning.

WALKER: A warning about what? Or whom?

K. HAYWARD: I don’t know. Maybe some evil angel-if there is such a thing. Maybe grown men in general. It’s not like she and my mom have had great success with your gender. I’m just saying…

WALKER: Just saying what?

K. HAYWARD: I don’t know. Look, this is all totally confusing. But you know what? If my mom did have an affair with Stephen, I’m glad. She needed something nice in her life. At least I think I’m glad.

WALKER: Why the doubt?

K. HAYWARD: Well, we’ll never know if that’s why my dad… um, you know.

WALKER: No, I don’t know.

MORRISON: Killed her mother, Sergeant. We’ll never know if that’s why Katie’s dad killed her mom.

FROM A SACRED WHILE BY HEATHER LAURENT (P. 129)

In 2006, Florida lawmakers passed a law that protected the billboard from one of the great environmental threats to its existence: the tree. During the debate a state representative in favor of the bill testified, “Tourism depends on billboards, not on trees.”

This is one of the biggest differences between the Northeast, where I grew up, and Florida. Our tourism depends on trees. Vermont, for example, doesn’t even allow billboards.

Roughly 4 million tourists descend upon the Green Mountains alone each and every autumn to peep at the leaves and savor what poets like to call “the fire in the trees.” There are a great many reasons people celebrate the fall foliage, not the least of which is that it is indeed very pretty. For a few weeks in late September and early October, the New England maple blushes a shade of cherry far more vibrant than a preschooler’s most colorful Magic Marker, the ash glows as purple as the billboards on Broadway, and the birch trees bloom into a neon that’s downright phosphorescent. The woods grow more scenic, more lush, and more visually arresting-especially when the sky above is Wedgwood and the vista is framed by the rising wisps of our own autumnal breath.

But here’s a reality that fascinated me as a young adult: Fall foliage is not the Grand Canyon. Or Yosemite. Or even Niagara Falls. It’s not jaw-dropping, pull-me-away-from-the-edge-of-the-cliff, never-seen- anything-like-it spectacular.

So why the attraction? Why the cars, the crowds, the buses lumbering like moose up and over each mountain gap? At least part of what draws us is this: death. Not all of it, certainly. Some of the pull is romance in a four-poster bed and an inn with a dog and a fireplace. The leaves are a pretext to escape an urban condo with a view of another urban condo.

But we also understand that the phantasmagoric colors we see in the trees are millions (billions?) of leaves slowly dying. We might not know the biology behind the change, but we realize that the leaf is turning from green to red because imminently it will fall to the ground, where it will sink into the forest floor on its way to becoming humus.

The science is actually pretty simple: The tree is aware that the cold is coming and the leaves haven’t a prayer. Consequently it produces a wall of cells at the base of the leaf, precisely where the stem meets the twig, thus preventing fluids from reaching the leaf. At the same time, the leaf stops producing chlorophyll, the chemical behind photosynthesis and the reason leaves are green. Without the chlorophyll, the leaf’s other chemicals become obvious, such as the maple’s red carotenoids. Soon the leaf withers and dies.

But what a handsome death it is. No dementia, no incontinence, no children or loved ones bickering over whether to pull the plug or order one last round of chemo cocktails. Humans should be so lucky as to turn the kaleidoscopic colors of the forest when we pass.

Of course, the whole of autumn is about transience. The entire natural world seems to be shutting down, moldering, growing still. The days are short, the nights are long, and everything looks a little bleak-except for those leaves. Those kaleidoscopically lovely maples and birches and oaks allow us to gaze for a moment at the wonder of nature and to accept the inevitable quiescence of our own aura. Like so much else around us, it’s not the leaves’ beauty that moves us: It’s the fact their beauty won’t last.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were a couple of reporters who expected an indictment any day now as the last of the leaves fell from the trees, and they were confident that when the time came, we would be arresting Stephen Drew. They called my