“True enough,” Marcus said, but then he closed the subject completely. “That’s enough,” he said. “That’s just enough of that. It makes me sick to talk about it.” He looked up from his hands and out the windshield. “Go slow here. These ruts are terrible. Do you recognize anything yet?”
Henry peered into the trees surrounding the van. The road looked like a hundred other roads he’d explored; the trees were just trees and he still didn’t know their names after all these years. Willows he recognized because they signaled water, and maples because Kitty had planted one in their backyard, but otherwise trees were either things to cut down to make way for buildings, or things to preserve to enhance the value of a lot. Fifty feet ahead of him, the road was blocked by a yellow gate.
“Pull over here,” Marcus said. “Anyplace is fine.”
Henry parked and looked around. He thought he sensed something in the woods to his right, a flash that was either memory or his old, skilled recognition of a likely plot. “We’re here?”
“Pretty much.”
Henry twisted around on his seat and looked at Brendan, who hadn’t said a word throughout Marcus’s story. “Isn’t this something?” Brendan’s eyes were shut and his face was very white. “Uncle Brendan? You okay?”
Brendan cleared his throat twice and said, “Fine. Just a little twinge.”
“What do you think? Do you remember this?”
“I never saw it. Or if I did, it was never like this — I was in the monastery before this road was built, long before your parents moved out here. I never saw the cabin.”
“It’s gone now,” Marcus said. “You want to get out?”
Together, Henry and Marcus lowered Brendan’s wheelchair to the ground. Bongo jumped out and darted past the gate, his nose half an inch above the ground as he followed some irresistible scent. A trail cut into the trees, twenty feet or so before the gate, and it wound up the gentle slope and then vanished. The slope, Henry saw, was the tail end of a long ridge running diagonal to the road.
Marcus pushed Brendan’s chair close to the trailhead and said, “Your land starts about a hundred yards in, I think — on the top of the ridge, running north and east. The section your brother lived on is at the far end of the parcel. You can still see where it was logged, even though it’s growing in. I wish there was a way to get you up there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brendan said. “I just wanted to know it was still here.”
“But it’s gorgeous.” Henry turned to Brendan and Marcus, aware that his mouth was stretched in a childish grin. The parcel was remarkable, he could tell already — elevation, good drainage, obviously plenty of water. And if there was a view of the reservoir from the top of the ridge …
“I’d like to go down to the water,” Brendan said quietly. “Is there some way we can do that?”
“No problem,” Marcus said. “This road runs right to the water’s edge, and it’s not that bumpy — I can push you down.”
“Would you mind?” Henry said. “If I just did a little exploring? I’ll only be a few minutes, half an hour at most. I want to go up on the ridge.”
Marcus frowned. “You don’t want to come with us?”
“Let him go,” Brendan said. “It’s going to be his, and his sister’s — he might as well see it.”
Marcus shrugged, and then he took a pencil stub and a small notebook from his shirt pocket and sketched a rough map for Henry. “Look for the boulder, here, to the left of the trail, near the three birches — the boundary runs right near it. The far end, where your folks’ place was, is marked by the beginning of the logged area.”
“Great. I’ll just be a little while.” Henry stepped back to the van and changed his shoes for the sneakers he’d taken from Kitty’s, which made his feet feel light and youthful.
“We’ll be down at the water,” Marcus said. “It’s not very far. Come get us when you’re ready.” He stood quietly for a minute, his hands resting on the back of Brendan’s wheelchair. “You know, your parents …,” he said, but Henry was off before Marcus could finish his sentence.
He didn’t want to think about his parents anymore: not about his father struggling over steamy islands or watching people crash from cliffs, not about his mother chain-smoking by the radio or about the mornings when he and Wiloma had followed their parents through these woods, these very woods, on this trail or another, winding gently down and left toward the shore where the reservoir lapped at the rocks. The story Marcus had told him changed nothing — all these years he’d thought that if he knew what had happened to his father he’d understand what had happened to his own life. But the story was only a story; his parents were still dead.
The water was close, he remembered suddenly, just down the road and beyond that curve, and a small wooden dock jutted into the water. There was a shed someplace, where his father had rented a boat. He climbed with firm, strong steps until he reached the boulder Marcus had described, and then he stepped across that invisible line and thought, Mine, as his foot touched the springy moss. Mine, mine. He climbed higher, admiring the widely spaced old trees. A road cut through here might spare the best of them, preserving an authentic woodland feeling. Buyers were always willing to pay more for that.
At the top of the ridge he turned and saw the reservoir shining below him. Islands dotted the water—Hills, he remembered his father saying morosely. Those used to be the tops of hills — and the shoreline was ruffled with points and bays. Around him as far as he could see stretched green woods, his woods. He hardly thought at all about how half of this would be Wiloma’s or how none of it would be his until his uncle died.
Somewhere, not far away, the trees thinned to young undergrowth and exposed his parents’ cabin site, but he couldn’t make himself look for the clearing. Someone else owned that land now. It was gone and so were his parents, but so, too, was the sad and dispirited creature he’d been these past six months. He felt a great surge of exhilaration and hope, and a conviction that his earlier selves had nothing to do with him now. With some energy he could turn himself into someone else. Without hardly knowing it he began to whistle, and his sneakered feet picked their way lightly along the path.
The condominium complex he’d imagined earlier faded away and he saw houses instead: modern, cedar-sided, with huge windows facing the spectacular view. Homes for· the computer executives, spaced on large lots and linked by a narrow, curving lane. He could see the development’s slogan already, the carved wooden sign that would span two tall pillars: “Any Closer To The Water — And You’d Be In It!”
Near the water, near a dock and shed that were either the ones he remembered from his childhood or replacements of them, Henry saw Marcus and Brendan beside a bunch of aluminum rowboats. They were facing the water; Marcus stood next to Brendan with his arm straight out, pointing at something in the distance. Bongo stood up to his chest in the water, drinking thirstily.
“Hey!” Henry called, full of excitement, drowning in plans. “You guys!” They weren’t very far away, but they couldn’t hear him.
27
WILOMA AND WALDO OVERSLEPT, AND IT WAS AFTER TEN BEFORE they finished breakfast and headed for the dam. Wiloma wished she’d never touched the margaritas Waldo had ordered. Beyond the fact that she felt queasy now, and beyond the ridiculous ways she and Waldo had behaved, she disliked the film of irritability and suspicion the drinks had left behind. The day was beautiful, but the light hurt her eyes and made Waldo look pale and pouchy. He was as kind and thoughtful as he’d been throughout their drive, but now his kindness seemed calculated and she found hidden motives in his every word.