“Morning,” I call back to him.
When Grandma was still alive, she and Mr. Perkins would often sit on the docks at sunset, chatting about the years that lay behind them—back before the tourists came, when you’d find gold on the bottom of your boots just walking around the shore, and fish swam in the lake as thick as mud. Now, from time to time, Mom and I will make the walk down to the marina to check on Mr. Perkins, especially in winter. We’ll bring along a thermos of hot cinnamon-apple tea, a sweet pumpkin cobbler straight from the oven, and jars of freshly sealed honey.
But this time, I haven’t brought pie.
Mr. Perkins tips his head to me, and in front of him is a broom he had been sweeping side to side, brushing the dock clean of the snow. An odd thing to be doing in winter. But Floyd Perkins has never been ordinary.
“Docks were starting to sink,” he says, as explanation. “And my snow shovel broke.” He waves a hand at the broom, as if the solution were obvious, then squints up at the sky. “This damn snow won’t let up. It’s nearly as bad as the year your great-aunt Helena started tossing ice cubes out her window.” Mr. Perkins knows most of the Walker tales. He was here the winter Helena Walker lobbed ice cubes out the loft window each morning—a peculiar spell for conjuring snow. A spell only Helena could perform. Winter lasted eight months that year, and after that, Helena’s mother, Isolde, forbade her from summoning the snow again—placing a lock on the icebox. The thought of it still makes me smile: Helena’s wild red hair spiraling up around her as flakes seethed down from the sky.
“The forest seems angry,” I say, nodding up at the mountains, where clouds gather against the jagged slopes to the north. It isn’t Helena Walker who’s responsible for this winter’s storms; it’s something else. A darkness over the lake—a forecast of something to come. I shiver and tamp my feet in the snow to keep the circulation moving through my limbs.
“These woods have a temper,” he agrees, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Best not to anger it.”
A tree all alone may grow hatred in its bark and moth-eaten leaves, a note handwritten in the margins of the spellbook reads. But an entire forest can weave malice so deep and well-rooted that no safe passage can be made through such a place. The entry was written as if it was an afterthought, but it’s always stuck with me. The severity of it. The warning that a forest cannot be trusted. The trees conspire. They watch. They’re awake.
I turn away from the mountains and ask, “Did you see someone walk around the lake this morning?”
Mr. Perkins wipes at his forehead, then holds his hand over his eyes, as though he is looking out across an endless blue sea, in search of land. “Who you out looking for?”
I’m not sure I want to say, to explain about Oliver. About all of it. So I just say, “A boy from camp.”
Mr. Perkins leans heavily against the handle of the old wiry broom, like a crutch or a cane. “Are those boys bothering you?” he asks. His face hardens into a protective look. The worried arch of his gray eyebrows, the downturn of his upper lip. He’s the closet thing I’ve ever had to a grandfather, and sometimes I think he worries about me more than my own mom does. “If those boys ever say anything to you that is less than chivalrous, you let me know.”
He worries they’ll call me a witch to my face. That they’ll throw stones at me like locals used to when they saw a Walker roaming around the lake. He worries I might be as fragile as ice—easily shattered with a harsh word.
But I have more of my grandma in me than he thinks. “The boys haven’t done anything,” I assure him, offering a tiny smile.
He sticks out his chin and says, “Good, good,” before shifting his shoulders back, fighting a tired, crooked spine. His left hand begins to tremble—as it often has in recent years—and he grips it with his right, to stop the shaking. “Haven’t seen anyone out walking this morning, boy or deer or lost soul.”
“It could have been earlier.” My lips come together, feeling foolish for even asking. For following Oliver’s tracks in the snow. “Maybe before the sun was up.” I try to imagine Oliver sneaking out from the house in the dark, without saying goodbye, and wandering down through the trees as if he were hiding something. As if he didn’t want to be followed.
He left, and a thin edge of hurt works its way under my skin. A feeling I don’t want to feel. A pain I won’t allow to dig any deeper into my flesh. I won’t let this boy unsettle every part of me.
Mr. Perkins shakes his head. “Sorry, not so much as a jackrabbit came by this way.” His eyes skip out over the lake, like he’s remembering something, and he scratches at his wool cap revealing the tufts of gray hair underneath. “It can be hard to find someone in these woods,” he adds, his jaw clenching, shifting side to side, “if they don’t want to be found.”
Fin trots off ahead through the snow past the dock—back on Oliver’s trail again.
Maybe Mr. Perkins is right. If Oliver doesn’t want to be found, maybe I should leave it alone. Go back to the house. I glance to the mountains where a dark wall of clouds is descending over the lake. “Another storm will probably hit within the hour,” I tell Mr. Perkins. “Maybe you should head back inside.”
A chuckle escapes his throat—as if the sound began in his toes and had time to gain momentum. “Just like your grandmother,” he says, clucking his tongue. “Always worrying over me.” He waves me off and begins shuffling back down the dock. “At my age, an hour feels like an eternity.” He sweeps the snow from the edge of the dock onto the frozen ice. “Plenty of time.” Instead of saying goodbye, he hums a familiar tune under his breath, a tune my grandma used to sing. Something about lost finches flying too far east, poison berries held in their talons, seeking the weary and brokenhearted. A fable song—about time being cut short, slipping through fingertips. Hearing it makes my chest ache. A strange sadness that I will never be rid of.
It makes me feel impossibly alone.
Fin heads around the shore, and I think again that maybe I shouldn’t follow. But curiosity is a nagging thump inside my skull. Urging me on.
I push through the deep snow, beneath the stormy sky, until we reach a place where Oliver’s tracks veer away from the lake. Where they lead up into the trees—to a place I rarely visit.
A place where the gloom of darkness never lifts. Where I’ve often seen human shadows wandering at twilight—specters who don’t yet know they’re dead. Where Walkers prefer to avoid.
The Jackjaw Cemetery.
The graveyard sits between the rocky shore and the forest—visible from all sides of the lake. A hundred years ago when the first settler died, the mourners walked a few yards down the shore and decided this was as good a place as any. They dug a hole where they stood, and this became the spot where the dead were lowered into the earth.
Fin trots into the graveyard, then stops at a row of old stones, digging his nose into the snow, pawing at the ground briefly. I don’t want to be here, among the dead, but I follow Oliver’s tracks to where they end.
My skin shivers. My temples itch like bugs crawling across my flesh. I kneel down beside the grave where Oliver’s prints came to a stop and run my palm over the face of it, wiping away the layer of snow. I know this grave—I know most of the ones that belong to my family.
Willa Walker lies here, beneath several feet of hard-packed earth and clay.