“It creates a false narrative. Are fossils posed so they look their best embedded in stone? Do beetles polish themselves up before crawling into sap and being encapsulated in amber? Pictures shouldn’t be a construct. They shouldn’t tell a story. They should be a candid slice of time. A moment laid to glass. As if you could breathe on it and it would come back to life for just that second,” Xavier says.
“So, no wedding pictures?” Sam asks, wrapping his arm around my waist and patting my hip.
“Those are fine,” Xavier says.
“Why?” Dean asks.
“Contextual meaning.”
“How about Christmas cards?” I ask.
“Social norm. But even those make me feel off. Fake scene, fake clothes. Pretending to celebrate. Are you wishing the people who get them a merry fake celebration? If you have to have a picture, it shouldn’t be of celebrating Christmas. That picture implies you are showing your celebration of the holiday for which you are currently sending greetings. Considering most people receive their cards well in advance of the holiday, you are implying you are sending a picture from the future, which is disorienting, or sending greetings from the year prior, which is certainly stretching the bounds of etiquette windows.”
“What would you wear on a Christmas card?” Dean asks him.
“A bathrobe.”
My cousin looks at the little cellophane baggie of candy corn each of us was presented at the end of our trek through the maze. The supervisor slipped me a couple of extra since we were in there for more than four hours.
“Alright, we’ve covered the Virginia-Massachusetts controversy. And the buckle inaccuracy. How about candy corn?” Sam asks.
“Didn’t exist,” Xavier answers.
“I mean the great mystery of the universe. Why are pieces of candy corn three different colors if it’s all the same flavor?”
“To look like kernels of corn right off a cob,” Xavier says without a pause.
Sam looks around on the ground and bends down to scoop up one of the discarded ears of corn that made its way out of the maze. He tilts it so he can look at one of the kernels still clinging to the cob.
“Son of a bitch.”
I laugh and wrap my arms around him, kissing him on the cheek.
“One less mystery in the universe,” I say.
In one fast motion he scoops me up and tosses me over his shoulder. I let out a squeal as he starts jogging across the carnival grounds toward the parking lot. We’re still laughing when he sets me down on my feet beside the car. It’s one of the very few still scattered across the swatch of gravel-covered ground. I’m pretty sure most of the others belong to people working at the carnival.
The humor fades as we get in the car. We didn’t get into it this morning with any intention of stopping at a corn maze. Now we’re only a short drive from our intended destination and the heaviness of it is setting in.
“We can go home, you know,” Sam says. “We can call this a success and just go home.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Sam smiles and kisses me as the others pile in the back seat. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“Get a room, you two,” gripes Dean. Sam responds by dramatically wrapping both hands around my cheeks and making exaggerated smooching noises, which draws an uncontrollable giggle from me.
“Okay, okay!” I breathe. “We’ve gotta go.”
Turning the key in the ignition, I pull out of the gravel parking lot and onto the narrow back road that brought us to the corn maze. I drive in silence up to the main road and pause. It forks left and right. The sign perched on the corner only has arrows and the names of towns.
“No question on this one to help you decide,” Dean says.
“Yes, there is,” Xavier says.
I glance through the rearview mirror at him behind me. He’s staring out the window but turns to look at me. I pull up onto the road and turn.
“You sure?” Sam asks.
I nod and he reaches over to squeeze my thigh.
By the time we leave the highway and get onto another set of serpentine back roads, the sun is setting, and night is filling the space among the trees to either side of us.
“Is he meeting us there?” Sam asks when we get on a narrow dirt driveway.
“No,” I tell him. “Clancy said he would leave the keys for us.”
“Is that a good idea?” Dean asks.
“There are cameras now,” I say. “They keep an eye on it. They are a lot more particular about who rents it now.”
“They need to just bulldoze it,” Dean says.
There’s tension and pain in his voice, but I shake my head. “No. It needs to stay here.”
“Why?” he asks as I pull the car to a stop and turn off the engine.
“As a reminder,” I say.
We get out of the car and a shiver rolls along my spine. The first time I was here, it was so cold it chilled my bones, and I felt like I would never get warm again.
And just like that, I’m back where all of this started. Cabin 13, in Feathered Nest.
“How long ago was it?” Xavier asks.
I pull my eyes away from the cabin to look at him, my arms sliding up to wrap around myself, then turn back to the porch.
“Four years.” I glance at him again. “Feels like a lifetime. But also as if no time has passed. As if I’m still here.”
“You are,” Xavier says. “You walked across this ground and left footprints, softened the earth so plants could grow. You breathed and the trees drew it in. Those breaths are a part of the leaves and the shade. Whatever you touched took on your energy and holds you there. Close your eyes. You can feel everyone who has ever walked through these woods. You’re still here, Emma. You always will be.”
I take in a shaking breath as I walk across the open area in front of the cabin and climb the steps onto the porch. Kneeling
