Max had said she had rare, untaught talent. Put the girl in the wild, he must have thought, and she’ll blossom into the photographer, the artist, she’s meant to be. But instead, the camera had done nothing but block her out. Fend off her attempts to create something worthy, as if her fingers on its buttons and dials were clumsy blocks of wood.
They went around in a circle, each person speaking of his or her experience of the day, how it shaped the art they put before the group. As a woman a few feet away from her wiped away tears, explaining how she had broken through her month-long writer’s block and cranked out fifty pages of her Great American Novel, Jenna stood and opened the screened door a few inches, just enough to squeeze through but not enough to make it creak. After closing it behind her, she exhaled and descended into the comforting dark.
The night air was thick, saturated with scents of pine needles and damp earth. By now Jenna could make her way through the dark to the cabins. She’d left the lamp on in her own cabin, and as she trudged down the path, the glow from her front window drew her like a magnet.
She’d said to Casey on the first night that Halcyon seemed like a campground, and she wasn’t too far off in that initial estimation. Everything was built from logs and thick planks of wood, but the buildings were somehow sleek too, as if the place had been built for discerning adults as well as kids. The cabin—hers, at least—was small and tidy, outfitted in smooth, fragrant cypress and cedar. Downstairs was a mini-kitchen and bathroom, while the loft upstairs contained a twin bed, comfortable side chair, and small dresser. Just the basics, but all she really needed.
Inside, she set her camera on the tiny kitchen counter. What she wanted to do was take it outside and throw it into the lake. Instead, she climbed the ladder to the bedroom and lay down across the bed’s patchwork quilt. Having just been here a handful of days, she was surprised by how at home she felt in the small space. She could stay here a while, holed up in the woods, leaving only for food and dips into the lake. But her camera, sitting alone on the counter downstairs, would beckon. It wouldn’t leave her alone for long, that much she knew.
She exhaled and willed the tension to leak out of her shoulders and neck. She held her hand up and prodded the space between her thumb and forefinger where a sandspur had pricked her earlier in the day. It was still sore, the prick a tiny red dot on her skin.
She turned her hands this way and that in the dim light. Small palms, short fingers. She had her mother’s hands. Even her fingernails were shaped the same—thin ovals with deep crescents. How she knew that, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she and her mom had ever bonded over manicures. They hadn’t bonded over anything.
Jenna pressed her fingertips to her forehead, remembering how the phone call six years ago had come so out of the blue. She’d only spoken to her mother a handful of times since she’d left Tuscaloosa and moved away, first to Wyoming, then to Asheville, North Carolina. Each time they spoke it was clear they didn’t agree on what Jenna should be doing with her life. That morning though, it was Betsy on the phone, relaying bits of information in staccato bites. Their mom, the totaled car off the edge of Highway 31, the sheet of stationery on her desk at home with the meager beginnings of a letter. Dear Jenna, I wish . . .
Jenna pointed and flexed her toes, then pointed them again to stretch her legs as far as they’d go. She had the letter. Not with her now, but it lived in the bottom drawer of her bedside table at home. She hadn’t looked at it again since the day her dad said she should keep it, but those four words were imprinted on her brain.
She pulled off her shoes and dropped them to the floor with a satisfying plunk. Sometimes she liked to imagine what the rest of the note from her mom would have said, had she taken the time to finish it before she left for work that day. Before she lost control of her car when another driver crossed the median into her lane.
Dear Jenna, I wish things between us had been different.
Dear Jenna, I wish I could tell you how much I love you.
Dear Jenna, I wish you knew how extraordinary you are.
But Jenna was a realist, not that kind of dreamer. More likely it was along the lines of Dear Jenna, I wish you were more like your sister.
fourteen
Betsy
After that first day, when she ended the evening in bed, emotionally depleted and physically spent, Betsy roused her sea legs. Up before the girls in the mornings, she made breakfast, helped them get dressed, and took them outside. Inside the house, their sweet routines and innocent sleepy movements pulled at her loose threads, threatening to unravel all her determination. Outside was easier. Fresh air, space to breathe.
Walsh loved the hens and eggs the best, having overcome her initial fear of the shadowed henhouse, but Addie loved tending to the cows. With Ty’s supervision she’d choose one and brush her with the stiff-bristled brushes he kept in a wooden box by the barn door. After a thorough brushing, Addie fed her as many apple cores, banana peels, and chunks of stale bread as she could before Ty caught on.
“Why can’t I give them treats?” Addie asked one day after Ty gently pried the bag of bread from her hands. “Treats make everyone happy, even cows. You should know that, Uncle Ty. You’re a cow farmer.”
Ty glanced up at Betsy and bit back a laugh. “Yes, I am. And you’re right,
