What the Woods Keep Read online

  I perch on the edge of the chair facing Doreen, the desk between us.

  “Does Tom … Does your father know you’re here?” she asks.

  A subtle tremble of her lips appears and vanishes in a blink. Maybe the reason she’s all rattled is me—I’m what’s making good old Doreen nervous, and she’d rather not have me in her office but has no choice. I feel sorry for her, just like I felt sorry for Dr. Erich every time my presence in his office made him uncomfortable and edgy. I have that effect on people—sometimes even on my own father. Del’s the only exception, apparently immune to my uncanny “charm.” Well, Shannon was immune, too, but he never got to know the grown-up me.

  “Nope,” I say. “I haven’t talked to him today. Not yet.”

  Doreen purses her lips, a maze of wrinkles forming around her well-lipsticked mouth. Small talk’s not her forte. She studies me, and when I start to grow itchy under her stare, she says, “Tom isn’t going to like this. Not one bit. He went out of his way to keep Ella’s legacy away from you … but I’m legally obligated to execute your mother’s will, you see. Did you know your mother made special arrangements with me only weeks before her … demise, so I’d approach you on the day of your eighteenth birthday and ensure you come into possession of … certain items?”

  “No, I wasn’t aware of that.”

  The sound of my mother’s name, twisted by Doreen’s lips into something brittle and sweet, rings in my ears long after it’s spoken. I don’t think of Mom as Ella. Ella is for missing-person reports and obituaries, not for my ears or my private thoughts. Her name doesn’t belong among the living.

  Doreen clears her throat. “Very well.”

  She stands up, an effort on her part. I follow Doreen’s sagging form as it moves about the room, stopping before a vault, poorly concealed behind a tacky painting of a meadow. That painting was here when I was being kicked out of Stonebrook. Some things never change. I focus on Doreen’s back as a combination is entered and the vault door creaks open. Doreen shuffles back to the desk, her gnarled hands gripping two yellowed A4 envelopes. Dust and mothball-scented air tickles my nose, making me want to sneeze.

  Without an explanation, Doreen hands me one of the envelopes. I stare at it dumbly. The paper is frail against my fingertips. The envelope is marked with my name, written in a flowing cursive. (Mom’s handwriting? I wouldn’t remember.) I inspect my emotions: nothing but a twinge of curiosity. There are times I worry that my therapy years have rendered me so cautious that, to an unsuspecting observer, I might come off as a robot. It still takes me a few breaths to figure out an appropriate reaction sometimes, but I’m getting better at it.

  Doreen nods at the envelope in my hands. “For your eyes only.”

  She produces a letter opener from a drawer and rips open the second envelope’s belly with a single flick of a wrist. Like gutting a rabbit. The delicate sheet of paper she extracts from the envelope quivers in her hands, and her ancient mouth squeezes out the reality-bending words:

  “This is a codicil to the last will and testament of Ella Townsend-Holland. It reads: ‘To my only child, my daughter, Hayden Bellatrix Holland, on her eighteenth birthday, I bequeath my family estate, known as the Holland Manor, situated in Promise, Colorado…’”

  Codicil to the Last Will and Testament of Ella Townsend-Holland

  I, Ella Townsend-Holland, of 33 Glastonberry Grove Lane, Promise, Colorado, declare that this is a codicil to my Last Will and Testament.

  To my only child, my daughter, Hayden Bellatrix Holland, on her eighteenth birthday, I bequeath my family estate, known as the Holland Manor, situated in Promise, Colorado, upon three conditions.

  My first condition is that Hayden goes to the Manor and looks for the gifts I left her. They’ll call to her. She needs to listen with her blood.

  My second condition is that Hayden uses my gifts to destroy my darkest secret—my hidden treasure, my heaviest burden.

  My third and final condition is that Hayden trusts no one where my treasure is concerned, especially the ravens.

  Ella Townsend-Holland

  Witnessed by Doreen Arimoff and Marcia Strauss

  4

  UPON THREE CONDITIONS:

  PART 2

  The cold grip of an invisible hand squeezes my heart and doesn’t let go. The whitewashed walls of Doreen’s office waltz around me in a drunken, merry circle while my brain processes what I’ve just heard.

  The Manor? Promise? Mom’s darkest secret? Her burden?

  “Any questions?” Doreen asks when she finishes reading what must be the most bizarre section of a last will and testament ever created (and I include in this list Houdini’s request that his wife conduct a yearly séance to communicate with his spirit).

  “Where do I start?”

  But Doreen’s eyes tell me she’s as befuddled as I am. So I push back my questions with a shrug. Doreen deflates, her eyes moving to the second envelope I clutch with both hands. When she leans forward, her interest thick and tangible in the stale air between us, I lean back. Irrationally, I expect her to jump me, to wrestle the envelope and its secrets from my hands. My fingers whiten as they grip the envelope tighter.

  Relaxing back into her chair, Doreen produces a plastic folder from a file cabinet to her left. “Well then, here’s the deed to Holland Manor. In your name.” I gingerly accept the folder. “I presume you’d like me to identify some good real estate agents in Denver? I have some connections there. I could negotiate a nice deal for you.”

  “A deal?” I ask.

  “You’d like to sell the house, yes? Legally, Ella’s conditions are nonenforceable, you know, so no one can make you go there and look for her ‘deadliest secret’ or whatever. Besides, considering how old the estate is, it’s best not to wait much longer before getting an expert opinion on the property’s value.…”

  “I don’t think I want to … sell it.” My words take me by surprise. Why wouldn’t I want to sell an old manor? I have no interest in moving out of my cozy Fort Greene lair and into the shivery sticks somewhere in the middle of nowhere, right? Right? Besides, despite his distance and all, Dad would not be happy to hear that I’m even considering … But what is it, exactly, I’m considering?

  “Don’t be silly, Hayden.” Doreen’s patronizing tone immediately makes me want to say something biting in response. Instead, I grab the paperwork, stuff it into my messenger bag, and leave Doreen’s office in a flurry of dust.

  Drunk on the oddness of it all, I hurry home, though not before getting two to-go coffees and some bagels with cream cheese from the deli next to Doreen’s office. With the deed to Holland Manor and my mother’s mysterious, unopened letter burning holes in my bag, I fly through the streets all the way back to my brownstone haven.

  Appendix to Patient Admittance Form

  PATIENT’S NAME: Hayden B. Holland

  AGE: eight years, eleven months

  HAIR: dark blond

  HEIGHT: four feet, three inches

  WEIGHT: eighty-two pounds

  DATE: February 26

  EYE COLOR: left eye is green; right eye is light brown

  TREATING THERAPIST: Dr. Thorfinn Erich (BS, MD, DO, PhD)

  APPENDIX A: TREATING THERAPIST’S NOTES:

  Slight dark shadows underneath her eyes; lips badly bitten. According to her father, Hayden’s lack of appetite has been an ongoing problem.

  Only child of Thomas Holland and late Ella Townsend-Holland. Father: tenured physics professor; currently under investigation (“persecution,” in own words) because of unorthodox ideas.

  The child was referred to my practice following a court mandate issued as a result of a settlement between the administration of her former school and the parents of another student (one Jennifer Rickman), who suffered injuries as a result of a confrontation with Hayden.

  No prior violent episodes on Hayden’s record.

  Earlier this year: The child experienced a traumatic event (mother went missing in the woods) that le
d to family’s relocation from Colorado to NYC. Police suspected foul play; but the investigation came to a halt due to a lack of credible leads.

  For someone who had recently lost a spouse under mysterious circumstances, father appears calm and distant. My research into the Holland family only brought up a small piece of news circulated briefly about a Colorado local going missing. I was intrigued by Hayden and her family even before I met the child in person.

  First impression: The child is calm, serious, soft-spoken. Minutes into our meeting, she made a joke about Einstein’s theory of relativity. First time in my long practice that an eight-year-old explained Einstein to me, sounding like she knows what she’s talking about and not simply repeating what she heard in the house.

  Counterbalancing moments of clarity, the child tends to retreat into her own world, sometimes while in the middle of a conversation. Subsequently, she stays quiet for long periods of time, staring off into space. I would generally interpret these moments as a defensive response to a recent trauma, but with this patient, I’m not so sure. I’m not fully convinced that she’s really “out of it” during those pauses. Could this be a ploy on her part to evade my questioning when the prodding gets too intense?

  When asked why she attacked her classmate, the child kept altering her story. The reasons changed from being bullied to it all being an “accident.” In response to my challenge of her shifting narrative, the child proceeded to have one of her quiet episodes.

  When discussing my evaluation with her father, I sense an overall unease in him, but he would not elaborate as to the source of his obvious tension. At one point he remarked how, even though it was his child under psychiatric observation, it felt like he was the one under the microscope. I had to let it go.

  Suggested treatment plan: Recommendation for regular counseling sessions and cognitive behavior therapy, followed by a review after six months. If no improvement is shown, consider medication.

  5

  PUZZLE ME THIS

  According to Isaac Newton’s third law of motion, every action of a force produces an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, what goes up must come down. Or: Every force has a doppelgänger that masquerades as its double but really is its opposite. Get it?

  My opposing force must be Delphine Chauvet, aka Del.

  I didn’t like Del very much when we first moved in together half a year ago. Our alliance was one of convenience. I was taking a year off before starting college, and I needed a place to live—a place my tiny allowance could afford. I was months out of therapy by then and deciding what to do next. The possibility of having to spend another day under my father’s stifling roof was making me want to scream. (Well, technically it was my aunt’s roof, but my father was the one making it stifling for me to live there.) I’d had enough of listening to him mumble about the Nibelungs nonstop, curse his former employer, and conspire over the phone with his devoted research assistant, Arista.

  As the gods of good timing had it, while I was looking for a place of my own, Del was being pushed out of her Jersey loft by her roommate, who was eager to move in with her girlfriend. The planets aligned, Del responded to my ROOMMATE WANTED ad, and the next thing I knew the two of us were screaming insults (me in English, Del mostly in French) as we forced our moving boxes up the rustic stairwell like a pair of angry but determined ants.

  Our first days of living together were tough. The things I couldn’t stand about Del included the following: her collection of ridiculous vintage clothing that wouldn’t fit in her bedroom and required additional space in the living room; her on-and-off boyfriend, Bolin, who took an instant dislike of me; and her unceasing aspiration to give me a makeover and get my romantic life going. Her recent attempts at matchmaking (Ross, etc.) are just the tip of the iceberg.

  It took me a month to warm up to Del. Her adoration of sci-fi movies (the more outlandish, the better) was what tipped the friendship scales in her favor. She confessed later that it was sisterly love at first sight for her, from the moment she first saw my freckled nose and “witchy eyes.” By the fourth week in our dilapidated Fort Greene haven, our spirits high on Buffy and cheap tequila, we made a pact: to watch all sci-fi movies ever made; to always have each other’s backs; and to grow old together, or at least side by side, in case we ever moved out of our brownstone fortress.

  I know that Del’s been planning my birthday activities for the past month, if not longer. So I feel doubly bad for not knocking on her bedroom door immediately after I return home from my morning detour to Doreen’s office.

  Still dazed after Doreen’s reading of the codicil to my mother’s will, I leave my deli haul on the kitchen island and sneak into my room. There, I skim through the deed to the Manor. My busy mind’s already going through the logistics. I have some money in savings but nothing to get excited about and definitely not enough to finance airfare to Colorado. My very modest trust fund is off-limits. That leaves my emergency-only credit card. How long will it take Dad to notice if I dip into my line of credit?

  With stiff fingers, I open the sealed envelope containing my mother’s letter, intended “for my eyes only.” Unlike Doreen, I own no letter openers, so my hasty work on the envelope is far removed from her skillful single cut. My impatient fingers tear the envelope into uneven bits.

  Inside I find a flash-card-size piece of hard, glossy paper: a gorgeous medieval print of a girl in a long, midnight- blue gown. A dragonlike creature the size of a porcupine is curled at her bare feet. A string of runic symbols is woven around the girl’s shape like a halo, covering her entire silhouette, including the spiky creature below her. The girl’s widespread hands hold two objects: a bleeding heart (not a heart symbol, but a real one, like from the biology books) and a transparent cup filled with red liquid. The back of the card is covered with familiar, left-leaning writing:

  A sheen of cold sweat coats my palms. Mom’s presence in the room is elephant-huge. That forest-saturated scent that permeates my memories of her invades my airways now. I want to (need to) scream.

  I don’t scream, of course. Instead, I set the card aside.

  Sitting prim and collected on the edge of my bed, I challenge my mind to produce a single clear memory of my mother. But there are none. Don’t get me wrong: I have a whole mental trove of Mom memories, it’s just that none of them is something I can hold on to. My mother remains elusive, in the periphery of my vision—there and not-there, dead and alive, like Schrödinger’s theoretical cat, its state altering the moment I focus on it.

  It’s been a decade since I last heard Mom’s voice, spoke to her, looked at her. Having her message addressed to me, right here in my hands now, it’s like all those years never happened. Like Mom never left at all, just took an extended leave and is now back, terrifyingly alive, an uncanny revenant. Would she like this grown-up version of me? A girl raised on books and wishes, brought up by strangers, shaped and polished in doctors’ offices? What would she think of me? Would she be proud? Would she love me?

  My pondering is interrupted by the bang of a slamming door. Del’s frantic footsteps remind me I have friend duties to attend to. Having no better place to hide stuff, I stick the deed to the Manor, the codicil, and Mom’s cryptic message under my pillow. My disheveled thoughts and feelings recede back into the dark crevices of my mind, waiting for my next moment of weakness so they can raise their scaly heads above the surface.

  I find Del right outside my door: She’s all dolled up, her hair pulled into a chic, loose bun, with a few tight curls escaping to frame her lovely heart-shaped face.

  Her mouth full of bagel, she asks, “Done with your chore?”

  “You’re welcome.” I eye the bagel in her hand. “And yeah, all done.”

  “Secrets are bad for the soul.” A headshake of disapproval. “Sharing is easy. Let me show you how it’s done. I lost my virginity at the age of seventeen to a dashing barista in the back of his Mustang.”

  “Doesn’t sound very comfortable.”
<
br />   “Memorable, though. And now you know one of my dearest secrets. Your turn.”

  “I don’t have any secrets. My life’s boring and so am I.” I make my way to the kitchen and start on my bagel. After taking a sip of now-cold coffee and fighting the urge to spit it out, I shove the paper cup into the microwave and count off the seconds it takes to reheat.

  Del watches me, then pouts a little. “But I have abandonment issues! And you’ve been kind of aloof lately. More than usual, that is.”

  We mirror each other’s movements as we sit on the floor on opposite sides of our battered coffee table. Obviously, I’m on fire to tell Del about my morning adventure at Doreen’s and desperate to hear Del’s opinion on Mom’s weird conditions. But that means I’d have to tell her all about Promise and Mom’s disappearance, and once I start talking, I won’t be able to stop, and then Del will know the real extent of how messed up I am.

  Del’s eyes plead with me, and I break. A little. “I’m thinking about a spontaneous trip,” I say.

  Del’s eyes grow excited. “Where to?”

  “Colorado.”

  A puzzled look. “What’s in Colorado?”

  “Promise. It’s a town. I used to live there, before…” I trail off. “Before New York.”

  There are times I forget what Del knows and what she doesn’t. She knows my mother’s been missing for years and is declared dead in absentia. What she doesn’t know is that the night Mom went missing, the local woods of Promise, for lack of a better word, erupted, forming a new clearing in the process. More of a crater, really. As if a burning giant’s foot stepped down into the woods, the trees were stomped to the ground, and the grass was burned off. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the night of Mom’s disappearance, Promise became the landing site of a small meteorite. But there were no meteorite sightings recorded anywhere in Colorado that night—I checked. No bangs of explosions heard. No flashes of light seen. The local police and fire departments declared it a freak forest fire that burned itself out. Their main theory was that my mother set it and then skipped town.