Gesturing with her pizza crust, gossiping about how much Eva Wiley’s shoes cost and how many pairs Eva had, using her index fingers to stroke her long hair in ribbons behind her ears, laughing until she snorted her soda, Eden looked like any other beautiful girl.
But she wasn’t.
Mallory wished she could talk about all this to Meredith! But Merry was deep in some lost place these days. She came home early and exhausted from the new demands of varsity cheerleading and stayed quiet, moody. And so Mallory kept Eden’s confidence locked away, just as she kept Cooper’s kiss. Two things that meant everything to her—they might never mean a thing to the world outside the private tower room that had become her heart.
THE HUNTER
On a Friday night the week before Thanksgiving, Tim picked the twins up from choir and cheer practice and swung past the hospital to get Campbell. Worn out from an after-school snowball fight and the beginning of his own indoor soccer season, Adam was asleep in the back, slumped sideways in his seat belt.
Tim left the car idling in the circle but he immediately came rushing back out.
“Girls, we might have to leave without her,” he said, pulling the van off to one side as not one but two ambulances, the Boone and Cole County fire department vehicles, swung into the bay.
Frozen, fascinated despite the ugliness of the lights against the dark-denim mackerel sky, the twins and Adam watched as the medics threw open the doors and ejected two men roughly bound to stretchers. Both of them wore vests of hunter orange with tufts of stuffing like cotton candy at the places the paramedics had cut away buttons and sleeves. Bags of the liquid Mally and Merry knew was called Ringer’s were attached to their hands by needles. Campbell rushed out, another nurse behind her.
“Okay, what have we got here?” she asked. She seemed to see her children but not to look at them.
“Thigh laceration, thirty centimeters or more, no involvement with the femoral artery but some kind of fracture . . . and considerable blood loss,” said the paramedic, a woman from Ridgeline who had a kid in Adam’s grade. Mally climbed out of the backseat to watch.
“Get a type and match stat and X-ray,” Campbell said. “Dr. Pennington is on. Not the father, the young woman. The resident. Which is lucky. She’s an orthopedic surgeon. What about the kid?”
There was a kid?
“He’s fourteen, fifteen. We don’t know what the heck is wrong with him. He’s shocked, though. He says his uncle was attacked by a lion he shot at,” said the medic from the Cole County Fire and Ambulance. “They were looking for deer up on the ridge.”
Campbell quickly repeated everything to the doctor who ran beside her as they rushed the victims through the huge swinging doors. Mallory recognized Dr. Pennington as the woman who’d looked at her head.
“She’s something else,” Merry finally said. “Mom, I mean, not the doctor.”
“Yep. She knows her stuff,” said Tim, admiration suffusing his voice.
“Why doesn’t she become a doctor?” Mally asked.
“I think someday she might.”
The twins and Adam simultaneously squawked, “What?”
“We think,” Tim said, “Mom may go to medical school.”
“She’s forty-three years old, DAD!”
“And that would mean what?” Tim asked. “She’s already got a master’s in nursing, which cuts way down on her time, and she’ll be a resident in at the most four years. She’ll practice for twenty years or more.”
“Is this what all this stuff is about?” Merry asked.
“All what stuff?” Tim asked.
“All this stuff about Mom being tired and junk.”
“Actually, no, that’s not what it’s about,” he said.
“Because this has been going on for months,” Mally said. “She’s exhausted. She’s cranky. She’s moody.”
Tim said, “She’s pregnant.”
“She’s what?” Merry nearly screamed.
“She’s pregnant,” Tim said again, dropping his voice. “And if you tell her I said—”
“She’s pregnant with a baby?” Adam asked.
“That’s . . . how it usually goes,” Tim said.
“Dad, don’t goof around. MOM is pregnant?” Mally persisted.
“Look! Do you think we found you under Grandma’s rosebushes?” Tim was finally exasperated. “She’ll kill me so please, please act surprised when she says something about . . .”
“Mom is going to have a baby and study to be a doctor?” Mally went on. “Take my temperature, Meredith. I’m feverish.”
“Not at the same time,” Tim said. “She’ll take some time off and then Aunt Karin . . .”
“Aunt Karin’s having another baby?”
“No,” Tim said of his sister. “Aunt Karin will take care of the baby while Mom works part-time and goes to school part-time. Sheesh! That’s part of the master plan. She took the job in the ER before this happened.”
“Happened?” Merry asked. “It happened, like a thunderstorm?”
“We didn’t plan it,” Tim said. “Gosh, this is pretty personal.”
“It’s just biology!” Merry and Mally teased him, again simultaneously.
“These things happen,” Tim said.
“And you’re always on our case about, ‘When you’re thirty-five, you have to use two kinds of birth control.’”
A woman and a young teenager, people Mally assumed were family to the hunter and the kid, rushed past them, their tearful faces maps of strain and worry. For a moment, the Brynns were silenced by their grief.
Then Tim went on fending off his daughters’ assault. “By the time you’re thirty-five, you’ll be married,” he said. Tim began to walk toward the doors of the emergency room.
“What about us?” Adam yelled.
“We’re planning on keeping you,” Tim said casually, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. But the three kids leaped out of the car to chase him.
“I thought Adam was the accident,” Meredith went on.
“Perfection is never an accident,” Adam replied, pulling up the sleeve of his fleece to display his minute bicep.
“Really, Dad,” Meredith went on. “Mom said she didn’t necessarily plan to have Adam . . . that you guys just didn’t try to stop him. Aren’t you a little old for this?”
“Movie stars do it all the time,” Tim said, taking a seat in the ER lobby and seriously studying a copy of Sports Illustrated that was at least two months old.
“The Cubs won the Series, Dad, which means they got into the play-offs,” Mallory told him, peering at him over the top of the magazine. “It happened two months ago, which means you aren’t reading that magazine. You’re avoiding us. What you’re saying is that you were irresponsible. And now Mom is going to possibly die from having a baby too late in life!”
“Mallory Arness Brynn, sit down,” Tim finally said. “You’re smart, and you certainly have the most opinions per pound in the family. But this is none of your business. Your mother has wanted another child for years. I didn’t when the business was getting up and running. And she figured she’d never do it once she was in medical school. So we gave it a short period of trying and . . . it worked. And by the way, she’s fine. And so is your little brother.”
“A boy? A guy baby?” Adam pumped the air with his fist.
“Our little brother? You can already tell?” Merry marveled.
“Mom is more than four months along in her pregnancy,” their father said, as though he were reading the news.
Adam began counting on his fingers.
“He’ll be born around my birthday!” Adam said. “We could name him Alphonse or Amadeus or . . .”
“Artichoke, or maybe Math Genius!” Mallory said. “It took you five minutes to think of how many months there were between four and nine! Ant, be quiet. This means . . . they were fooling around again when we were up on vacation at the camp.” Once again, eleven years after Adam’s birth, Tim and Campbell evidently fo
rgot all the lessons they had played with all the subtlety of the percussion section of a marching band, during their two-week vacation up at the Brynn family’s cabins.
Mallory almost forgave them. The camp was the place where they all forgot their real selves and simply played, kids and grown-ups alike. Even though they were almost grown, at least in their own eyes, and even though their “vacation” took place no more than ten miles from their front step, the twins still loved the cabin camp, and their time there with their cousins—fishing and swimming in the Tipiskaw River that rumbled over the rocks below Crying Woman Ridge. Nobody thought about makeup or gossip or homework. Days began slowly and ended even more so.
While Campbell sometimes grumbled that other families went to Disney World, when they had gone there, the year Adam was six, the girls actually preferred throwing potatoes into the fire pit to cook to riding the latest roller coaster at Epcot.
Some of their father’s great-uncles and their families still came to the camp during the two full summer months that Grandma and Grandpa spent up there, from July until school. Mallory never entirely understood that, because Grandma Gwenny had more gardens than an English countess and had to pay a kid to weed them while they were “gone,” though they probably could have seen their yard from the top of the ridge. Mallory knew that the roses, for example, were at their most glorious when Gwenny wasn’t there, though she drove down a couple of times a week to bring huge cuttings up to the camp and to the nursing home.
“I’m old,” Grandma Gwenny said. “I can have it both ways. I’m going to come up to this camp as long as I can walk.”
The first two weeks of July were reserved for Tim’s family and his brothers and sisters. Everyone was there to watch the ring of fireworks displays from all the towns around Ridgeline, from Deptford to Kitticoe all the way out to Warfield, nearly twenty miles away.
It was, Campbell once said happily, like having a ringside seat for summer.
Later in the year, often after Christmas, they visited Campbell’s father in Virginia for a week. He visited them, in turn, at Easter time.
But evidently, it was always and only the camp that made their parents get all peppy. Mally wasn’t quite sure how to feel about the baby. Of course, he would be adorable. He would be so adorable that leaving him to go to college when he was only three would probably break her heart. On the other hand, it would probably keep Campbell and Tim from going mental with loneliness once all of them were gone.
But what if he had terrible birth defects because Campbell was so old? Mallory knew that tests revealed most of those things, but tests weren’t infallible! Campbell could practically be a grandmother!
Tim looked up. “Why are you pouting?” he asked. “We’re both very happy about the baby. Now, if that emergency is under control . . .”
“I don’t want to change any diapers,” Adam said firmly.
“Girls think it’s sexy,” Merry told him.
“Hence my decision,” Adam replied.
“What decision?” Campbell asked. All of them nearly levitated out of their chairs. And no one said a word. Behind them, they could still hear the man screaming about a “critter.”
“What’s he talking about?” Tim asked.
“What are you talking about?” his wife asked in return, pushing the sleeves up on her sweater, as if prepared to do combat. “As if I didn’t know plain as the nose on my face, Tim Brynn.”
“Medical school,” Adam said virtuously. “I think it’s very brave of you to try to learn things at your age, Mom.”
“Campbell, really, what is he on about?” Tim asked.
“He says he was attacked by a mountain lion. He smells like he fell into a distillery. I suppose it’s possible he could have encountered a bear way up there. He was deer hunting. Said he got a shot off that sliced its leg but it ran away. You don’t think an old guy from Mount Kisco is smoking dope, do you?”
“No, but it’s weird,” Tim pointed out, grateful that Campbell wasn’t pushing his discussion with the kids. “Is the boy okay?”
“He is,” Campbell said. “But he swears he heard it growl too. I think he turned to run and hit his head or something. He’s got a bump but he’ll be fine. Why people take twelve-year-olds hunting is beyond my comprehension.” She shrugged into her coat and went on, “It is weird enough that they’re going to bring an animal control officer all the way from Warfield tomorrow morning. If there’s any kind of predator up there, behind Rose Reservoir, she’ll track it with dogs. It’d probably have to have been some kind of coyote. But it’s strange that the Polk kid said the same thing.”
Madly, Mally was texting Eden into her phone. CM. 2BAD2BT. When no familiar text floated on down with a waterfall of electronic tones, she punched in Eden’s number.
“It’s Eden! Leave a message and hope for the best!” said the familiar voice, with its nearly imperceptible lilt.
“No, Eden! No! Damn!” Mally whispered. As if Eden could answer her anyhow . . . from up on Rose Ridge.
Mallory shoved her phone back into her pocket. She was going to have to find a way, to get out past the Rose Ridge reservoir herself, which was about as far from her house as she’d ever run, more than ten miles. Her parents warned her not to go up there with anyone, because of the reservoir’s reputation. Boy Scouts dutifully picked up beer cans there every spring, but there would always be a whole new crop by fall. Down in the water, the rear end of at least one old car stuck up like something out of a horror comic.
How would she find someone who could help? And if she found Eden, who would she be?
By now, Cooper was home, but there was no way she was going to be able to get all the way out to the Cardinal tree farm tonight. She didn’t know if he even had a cell phone. Eden’s uncles were there working with her father for the Christmas tree season, with several of her boy cousins. She’d told Mallory that this year Grandmere had made dozens of pairs of tiny baby moccasins ordered by people all over New England. In the bottom of each tiny gathered bit of foot-shaped hide, Annaisa poked a hole. Lots of people put them on their Christmas trees for babies born that year, Eden explained. The moccasins weren’t for wearing. By poking the tiny hole, her grandmother said, she gave the parents a powerful symbol, the wish that the baby would live long enough to wear out a thousand pairs of moccasins. It all sounded so ordinary and Eden-like and normal.
Mallory couldn’t wait to see Cooper. She’d even been practicing putting her hair up in different ways—something she was as likely to do as to dye it purple. When she thought of him, her stomach still whirled. She’d lost five pounds since Halloween, something her mother noticed and criticized. Now, all she felt when she thought about Cooper was anxiety.
Of course, she could be completely wrong.
Maybe the older guy did run into a bear. It happened out there every couple of years to deer hunters. Maybe he cut himself on a branch and was too drunk to confess.
For why would Eden do such a thing?
Why?
Mallory didn’t know why. All she knew was that she had to know.
AT THE VERGE
Please, Drewsky, please, please,” Mallory begged.
“No, Brynn, no, no,” Drew Vaughn answered.
“Why?” Mallory exploded into the phone. “I would for you.”
“You always say that. And yet, you have never driven me anywhere or done anything remotely weird or life-risking for me because, hey, you can’t! You’re not even fourteen.”
“But I would if I could and you know it! An hour at most, Drew.”
“Not an hour at most because it’ll take an hour just to get there and back on a Friday night, and then you have to do whatever nuts thing you have to do.”
“Okay, an hour and a half at most. You’ll be home by eight-thirty. The glitter people never go out before ten.”
“Well, my parents glitter me home at one at the latest, not that you should tell anyone that. Or else the Green Beast turns back into a pumpkin. I’m
dating a senior. Give me a break.”
“Drew, I wouldn’t ask you if I could ask anyone else,” Mallory wheedled.
“That’s nice of you. Good old Drew, the last choice.”
“I didn’t mean it that way and you know it. You’re the only one I can ask, for obvious reasons.”
“Well, it’s still no, and for obvious reasons. First of all, it’s dark and I don’t have this big desire to go driving up the crummy road by Rose Ridge reservoir when the dopers have probably been there since three-thirty this afternoon. Second, I have a date. And third, I have a date.”
“Okay, fine,” Mallory said, her voice flat.
“What do you mean, okay fine?”
“Okay fine. Don’t take me. And don’t ever, ever, ever ask me for another favor again as long as we live. Don’t ask me to do your trig on the way to school. Ever. Don’t ask if you can use my iPod. Don’t ask me to run with you so you can time yourself.”
“Brynn, what the hell?” Drew was honestly bewildered. “What could you want in the dark out there that can’t wait until morning?”
“I said forget it.”
“Good grief! I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes,” Drew said. “If it’s something nuts, I swear I’ll never give you a ride to school again. You can ride the bus like the teeny little freshman nothing that you are.”
“Oh, Drew, thank you! Thanks so much! I totally love you for this!”
But Drew had already hung up the phone. Mally ran to pull on her windbreaker over her Spandex running pants and tied a scarf around her neck. She rummaged around until she found Adam’s stocking cap and the miner’s headlamp he’d taken to his sixth-grade sleepover camp.
She had no idea how far up she’d have to walk. She and Drew had driven up to the top of the hill above the reservoir with the intention of going swimming one day just after he got his driver’s license, but there was a loud party going on that repelled them right away. Girls were swimming in their underpants and bras. Even if Drew would have liked looking, he didn’t want Mallory there and said so. But it was probably no more than a mile, and maybe less. If there was anything to see, she knew she’d see it . . . or hear it. If there were hunters, they would be back down at the Camelot or the Holiday Inn. An hour and a half, she had promised Drew—while promising her parents that she had to help Drew pick out flowers for Pam’s birthday (Mallory had no idea when Pam’s birthday actually was). What she was worried about was encountering some high-school stoners sitting in the scrubby trees up there and wondering if she would dare to explain to them why they should go home or if they’d fall into the reservoir laughing.