She’d been prepared for Ed’s passing. Her sweet, quiet husband, living so long with colon cancer. Of course she sobbed that morning when she woke to find him blissfully silent, after so many weeks of the hospice workers giving him painkillers that dried out his mouth and scratched his throat, forcing him to make the unmistakable sound of approaching death.
But Tom, even with his smoking habit, always seemed so solid and healthy that death wasn’t a possibility. Lung cancer, however, disagreed.
“Lynn?” Roxy’s voice was quieter when she called out again. She really was trying to be a bit less blunt these days, more compassionate. Age was supposed to soften people naturally. Roxy was waiting for that to kick in.
She walked through the kitchen and down the hall to Tom’s study, swallowing her desire to kick aside the oriental rugs that lined Lynn’s wood floors throughout the house.
You don’t get it, she thought as she carefully avoided the curled edges of the runners. If I fell or tripped, and truly hurt myself, I couldn’t bear the thought of you always alone in this big old house, wrapped up in your secretive work and worrying about your family. You are the strongest person I’ve ever known, Lynn Roseworth. But you need me up and mobile.
The door to Tom’s study was closed, signaling that Lynn was deep into whatever she was working on.
Roxy wanted to pound on the door in irritation, but instead took a deep breath and quietly knocked. “Hey Sis, I’ve been calling for you. Can I come in?”
When there was no response, Roxy tried the handle. If it was locked, she would have no choice but to make a minor scene. Lynn might have her headphones on, with Yo-Yo Ma blaring, oblivious to anything from the outside world.
When the handle turned, Roxy peeked in. “Lynn?”
The room smelled so much like Tom, a mix of tobacco and books, that another wave of sadness brushed over her. She understood why Lynn chose to spend so much of her time in here. Roxy often found herself going into the basement of her own home, carrying whatever she was reading at the time, to walk past her husband’s workbench. Beyond Ed’s woodworking tools and amongst the last of the scattered shavings of pine, she would sit in the maroon recliner she’d banished to the underworld of their house. She’d inhale deeply, open the book, and find the words blurred by tears.
Entering Tom’s study, Roxy could see the aging desktop computer was humming with no fewer than twenty open internet searches and a Word document. She fought the urge to peek at it, but remembered the time Lynn had caught her flipping through files when she was supposed to be looking for the remote to the TV in the den.
“Never, ever, are you to know what I’m doing,” Lynn had said. “You’re already at risk and have been unfairly scrutinized because of me. I can’t drag you down further. Promise me, Roxy. Promise me.”
Roxy had begun to protest and accidentally hit the side of the desk. It was like pouring gasoline on the fire of the nagging pain in her hip from where that Colorado thug had struck her and tossed her into the snow. She’d grimaced and said something about being tougher than old rawhide—with the skin to match—but she’d grudgingly vowed.
She’d felt better knowing that Lynn wasn’t alone in her work, that after some significant time and discussions shared only between them, Tom turned over his study to his wife. Even after a lifetime seeing the wrinkles on his forehead deepen from handling crisis after crisis, domestic and international, she’d never seen him look as grim as he did after Lynn allowed him to join in her research. It was no wonder he made the decision he did, as much as it shocked the country and, ultimately, fractured his family.
Roxy’s attention was caught by a small video in the corner of the screen, playing on a continuous loop that reset every few moments. Roxy looked closer, putting on her glasses, which hung from a multicolored lanyard around her neck. The video was from an entertainment news show. It had a broad, dramatic headline beneath the image of a handsome, redheaded young man: “WHERE IS WILLIAM NOW?”
Roxy sighed and turned away. She knew exactly where Lynn was.
Through the house she marched, out the porch door, and into the garden once again. She swept past the Rose Peddler, hoping Lynn’s oldest daughter, Anne, would be late in arriving this morning to open the garden shop at ten. Especially fragile these days, it always made Anne nervous to see her mother emerge from the woods.
Roxy cleared her throat, to prepare to yell. It was her only option, given that her friend was deep within the trees, separated from the outside world by the sky-high iron fence. Not long after they’d returned from Colorado all those years ago, Lynn had the fence erected to surround the entire woods. No one, not even Tom, knew the pass code to enter through the hidden gate.
As she rounded two large boxwoods that Lynn had planted strategically to block any view of the gate, Roxy sighed in relief to see a blond-haired woman standing at the fence line, her hand on one of the iron posts. More white than blond these days, Roxy thought. But aren’t we all.
“There you are,” she said. She watched as Lynn turned slowly, her hand remaining on the fence. “It’s a bit early to be tromping about in the woods.”
As she approached, she could see that Lynn was trembling. The binoculars that hung on a strap around her neck rose and fell with heavy breathing. When Lynn teetered, it became immediately clear that she wasn’t casually leaning on the fence, but rather clinging to it to keep from falling.
“Lynn!” Roxy rushed forward, grabbing her friend. “Lynn, what’s wrong?”
Even when supported by Roxy’s arm, Lynn still clung to the fence. “Roxy… you have to go away.”
“What are you talking about? Come on, let’s go to the shop and sit down.”
“Are my ears bleeding?” Lynn turned her head.
“No, not at all.”
“My head isn’t hurting. I don’t feel pain…”
“Honey, let’s go inside. I’ll call the doctor—”
“No,” Lynn shook her head. “You have to go. Right now. And don’t let Anne come to the shop. Close it. No one comes anywhere near the property.”
“I’m not going anywhere. What the hell is going on? Do you feel like you had a stroke? Does your chest hurt?”
Lynn closed her eyes. “I’m afraid it’s happening. After all this time… it’s happening.”
Roxy lifted her chin. “Well, let it come, then. I’ve had a good, yet increasingly strange, life. And if it ends standing outside the damn woods with you, so be it. But I can tell you, I feel just fine. Maybe irritated that I haven’t had enough coffee, but I’m not dying.”
“Roxy, please. It could be happening—”
“Look at me. I’m fine. No one is dying, OK. Start with explaining to me why you think… after all this time… you’ve been triggered.”
The words still felt heavy, difficult to say. Even after everything she’d learned, everything she’d seen that Colorado night that haunted her, Roxy still struggled with discussing it: a nightmare that should disappear in the morning light but proved to be just as real as the grass they stood upon, the branches above, the very air around them.
They all carried the burden. All of them who survived that frantic escape from Argentum. How do you pay the gas bill, clean your windows, go to Bunko, go on living a normal life, knowing what’s beyond the night sky?
“Just talk to me,” Roxy said softly. “Why did you go into the woods this time?”
She watched Lynn take a deep breath. “You really feel OK?” Lynn said. “No pain, nothing strange at all?”
“I think you know there’s a whole lot strange about me. But nothing unusual. I know you were watching some video about William. Don’t be mad, I just glanced at it on your computer screen when I was looking for you. I promise I wasn’t snooping.”