Once upon a time, this farm was thriving. Dad had some cattle. A couple goats and chickens.
He grew oats and corn. Some potatoes and vegetables. Not a lot, but enough. Mom helped too.
It was less of a money-making endeavor, and more of a family tradition. My father’s father had been a farmer in Nebraska. And my mother came from a long line of farmers too. They were perfect for each other, in the beginning.
We like to grow things. Be self-sufficient. Take care of our own, Mom once told me.
On Sundays, she would sell fresh eggs at the farmers’ market, but she barely made enough to cover her stall fees. And as my dad grew older and my brother and I were less interested in helping, everything fell by the wayside … first, he sold the cattle to a larger farm in Illinois. Then the barn grew into disrepair, and when the chickens and goats died, Dad didn’t replace them.
Even the crops eventually withered away, dwindling to dust…
And when my mother left … Dad gave up on the place completely. He maintained the grass, but that was it. Each morning, he slipped on his dumpy orange hat and thick jean coveralls, and he went to work at the cement plant. With Mom gone, he stayed away more and more, as though, at times, he could barely stand the sight of us.
I opened the door of the rickety old barn, a flap of birds sending a tiny electric shock through me, leaving me breathless.
The barn was empty, besides a rack of old, rusty farm tools, stacks of crates for hay, and the ghosts of what might have been.
I hadn’t expected to find Chrissy in here … but I wondered: where did she go when she left last night? She hadn’t taken the money. The two twenties and ones left behind.
The closest hotel wasn’t for miles. I wondered, stiffly, if she went back home to Dennis.
Although the barn looked worn and abandoned, there was gravel covering the old dirt floor. It was growing thin beneath my feet.
It embarrassed me that I wasn’t taking care of the place like I should be. Jack hadn’t made a lot of changes when he’d lived here by himself, but he had added some things … the carpet (that he later destroyed with his own blood) and the gravel outside in the barn. He’d also repainted cabinets and walls … I’d done nothing of the sort since taking over, besides moving out his old stuff and repairing the damage to his room.
Why am I even still here?
As I closed the heavy wood door of the barn behind me, I realized my hands were numb, the soles of my feet pure ice through my thin, insufficient sneakers.
But instead of heading back to the farmhouse, I marched for the trees.
As I crossed the tree line, entering the thin patch of trees between our property and Chrissy’s, I turned to get a good look at my view from here.
There, wide and clear … my brother’s window. With binoculars, he would have had a good view of Chrissy if she were standing here.
I tried to imagine Chrissy, young and beautiful, beckoning my brother to the woods … Mom and Dad wouldn’t have liked it. The Cornwalls and the Breyases didn’t talk much, even though they were our closest neighbors.
It had been years since I’d gone through these woods. When I was very little, Mom and Dad let me run and play on the farm and explore the woods with my brother. They warned me to be careful in the creek, but for the most part, they let us run free.
Until Jenny died.
After that, the whole landscape changed—the farm falling into disrepair, my parents keeping a tighter leash on Jack and me. We spent very little time out here after that—our lives mostly changing, as it so often does for teens; our interests centered on our friends and our privacy, tucked away behind closed bedroom doors. Locked up inside trunks.
Hidden in the secrecy of letters…
And for some, like Mom, it was easier to leave it all behind.
Maybe she had the right idea.
The path was overgrown, barely visible now, but my feet knew the way, and as I trudged through the woods, brushing branches and thickets from my hair and arms, I could hear the soft babbling sounds of the creek.
I had expected it to be dried up after all these years. But it was full from the recent rainfall, a strip of muddy current running rapidly downstream.
Trickles of rain pinged down from overhead, colliding with the leaves and the branches of the forest, creating a chilly mist that coated my hair and face.
In the foggy reflection of the stream, I stared at my shapeless face as it waxed and waned, trying to imagine Chrissy, or my brother, spending time down here as kids. How did I not know he was sneaking out?
The creek was fairly shallow, if I remembered correctly, barely to my knees. But it was freezing and there was no way I wanted to wade across it this time of year.
I looked leerily at my destination on the other side.
I could have used the old farm road to reach the entrance of the Cornwalls’ old property, but for some reason this felt right—following the path my brother and Chrissy would have taken during their nighttime rendezvous.
This part of the creek was too wide; I moved east, following the flow of water, until I reached an old overturned tree, bridging a gap between the twenty feet it took to get across.
Even at its narrowest point, my legs were too soft and slow to jump ten feet to the other side.
The log was my best bet now. I stuck out my right foot, tentatively, testing its strength. It was twisted and rotting in places, but it felt solid enough to hold me.
I took a deep breath and stepped on,
