had hit a home run. “I think she’s right.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Michael led Janet to the opening to the path into the woods. She stopped there, peering ahead into the darkness.
“Why are we here?” she asked. “Is this what you want to show me?”
“Yes.”
“Why here?”
“It’s just…” Michael searched for the right words. “It will help to do it in there.”
Janet tried to remember the last time she had gone into the woods. She had been there only once since the day Justin died. When Ashleigh was small and asking questions about Justin’s death, Janet had relented and took her into the clearing and showed her the spot. The place fascinated Ashleigh. She wanted to sit and pepper Janet with questions about the day Justin disappeared and died, but Janet made them leave before Ashleigh could say anything. It didn’t feel right to Janet to be there. If she didn’t want to be defined by the events that happened in that place, then there was no point in returning to it time after time. Likewise, she spent little time in the cemetery where her mother and brother were buried. She hoped they would rest together someday, if only for the symbolic nature of having them side by side-not because she wanted to spend every Sunday bringing flowers and tending to their graves.
So what did Michael want?
The night was dark. Her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, which meant she could see about twenty-five feet in front of her.
“Michael,” she said, “I don’t like this place.”
He looked down at her in the darkness. He reached out a comforting hand, placed it on her upper arm again. “I know,” he said.
“Then why are we here?”
“We’re here because I learned something in therapy about confronting things from our past. Janet, did you ever talk about this with a therapist?”
“They made me talk to a school counselor when Justin died,” she said. She remembered the hours spent in the small office, the counselor a well-meaning but past-his-prime man with white hair and a polyester tie that Janet knew even at that young age was too far out of date. She told him what she thought he wanted to hear because she thought it would release her from the sessions sooner.
In the darkness, Janet studied Michael’s eyes. Despite his touch and his smile, his eyes looked nervous and afraid. After all the years she’d known him, Janet couldn’t reconcile the two images-the smiling golden boy she’d known both in fact and in memory and the man standing before her, a man in his early thirties who’d been a little battered by life. That one had become and fed into the other Janet understood on an intellectual level, just as she understood that the defensive seven-year-old determined to soldier on through her brother’s death had become the woman at the head of the path. A little fearful and nervous and uncertain about how the events of the last few days were going to turn out-and what it all was going to mean to her.
“I need to do this, Janet,” Michael said. “A therapist I saw in California encouraged me to come back to this spot. To be in it again. You know, I haven’t been here since that day?”
“Is that why you’re back in Dove Point? To do this?”
“I’ve been circling the issue for years,” he said. “After California, I moved to Chicago, then Columbus. I kept getting closer.”
“Why do we have to do it in the dark? Justin didn’t die in the dark.”
If he died at all.
“I need to share it with you,” he said. “And this is our chance to do it without interruption.”
Janet looked down the path again, then up at Michael.
She nodded her head, and they started into the woods.
They moved down the narrow path single file, with Michael going first and Janet following, holding on to his hand. Janet knew that kids came to the park to have sex or drink or escape from the adult world that held them back, and it wasn’t lost on her, as they walked through the woods, that if this scene were playing out sixteen years earlier-the two of them holding hands in the darkened park, heading to an isolated place-her entire body would have been thrumming with the electric pulses of desire. Even under the current circumstances, Janet felt some of that. She and Michael were together. They were touching. They were sharing something, just the two of them.
But Janet knew enough-had lived enough-not to give in to that feeling. Bigger things were happening. Much bigger.
Branches and twigs brushed against her arms and pant legs as they progressed down the path. Despite the heat and recent lack of rain, the foliage in the woods remained thick and lush. In the darkness, the leaves shifted and moved in the light breeze, their shadowy outlines tricking Janet’s eyes with their movement, giving the impression of the presence of animals or people where there were none. She smelled the rich earth, felt the buzzing of flying insects that nipped at her face and exposed arms.
She couldn’t turn back. Michael needed her. And maybe he was right. Maybe she needed to face this place again.
Michael turned back to her. “It’s right up there,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“How do you even know where to go?” Janet asked.
“There’s only one path through the woods over here,” he said. “Besides, I can just feel that this is the place. I know. Don’t you?”
Janet didn’t say it out loud, but she agreed. It did feel like the place. It really did.
Michael’s pace slowed a few moments later. He came to an almost complete stop and shifted to the right, his hand still holding Janet’s. She saw the dark outline of the little pond to the left, smelled the stagnant, boggy water. And then she saw the opening ahead of them, felt herself guided by Michael to the edge of the clearing where he stood by her side.
It looked the same as the last time, which had been how long? She tried to remember how old Ashleigh had been that day they walked down to the place her brother died. Ashleigh must have been about nine, which meant it had been six years since Janet had been to the spot.
“It’s weird to think about, isn’t it?” Michael said.
“What?”
“Someone died here. A life ended on this spot, and there’s nothing to indicate that it ever happened. Anyone could walk through here. People probably do, and they just don’t know the ground they’re walking over.”
“There’s no need for any marker,” Janet said. “Everywhere you go someone’s died there. Or had a relationship end or received bad news. If we marked all those places, the world would be full of nothing but awful reminders.”
Michael looked over at her, his face puzzled. Janet recognized that her statement revealed a calmness and rationality that she didn’t completely feel. But she did believe the sentiment she expressed. Why should the rest of the world have to be reminded of what happened to her family? Why shouldn’t the high school kids be able to roll around on the ground and make out without having to think about a death that happened years earlier?
“Well,” Michael said. He took a step forward, expecting Janet to move with him.
Janet resisted. “No.”
“What?”
“I’m okay right here,” she said. “On the edge of the clearing.” She saw a flat rock to her left and sat down on it, letting go of Michael’s hand. “I’m okay here.”
“But-”
“Michael, I guess I’m starting to wonder if this is a good idea. Being here. What are you trying to achieve?”
