“Could’ve sold it.”
“I didn’t care about the money. I just wanted it out of my name.” Adam took the hint and fell quiet. Clare shot a look at Shanna in the backseat. Her sister stared out the window at the passing scenery, hands folded in her lap. A doorway had cracked open in Clare’s mind after the meeting with Latten and a hint of doubt had slipped through. During the ride she’d retraced every conversation and interaction she and Shanna had shared since reuniting but could find nothing alarming in any of them. Nothing that set off warning bells. And what was it she should be on the lookout for? She’d already gone over Stockholm syndrome, but Shanna’s behavior didn’t fit that type of scenario. Maybe the joy at being reunited and Shanna’s progress had blinded her to some underlying threat or issue. Or maybe her sister was simply strong, like Dr. Latten had said.
Shanna glanced at her, perhaps feeling the weight of her gaze, and Clare looked away, focusing on the road ahead.
It was easy to see where the forest fire’s boundary began. They rounded a curve in the trail and all at once the taller, old growth of the woods gave way to a lush slash of poplar half its height. Shrubs blanketed the forest floor and a smattering of pine trees grew through them, standing at least twenty feet tall.
The burn had culled the dead and dying remnants of the forest, leaving behind fertile soil new life had taken root in. It was cruelly ironic the devastation that hindered her for almost twenty years had left a new thriving environment in its wake.
All at once the surroundings took on greater depth. Familiarity. Clare’s grip tightened on the door handle.
They were almost there.
The path led up a low grade as the trees drew back, exposing a wider clearing. The new growth dwindled as they pulled farther into the open space. Fewer and fewer trees sprouted from the soil and the underbrush became sparse. The ground itself was a gray char, old ash barren and flat.
Adam pulled to a stop at the widest part of the clearing. “You okay?” he asked her, shutting off the engine. Clare counted the letters of the vehicle’s dashboard emblem three times, tethering herself to the warmth of the leather against her skin, how her heart sounded in her ears.
Finally she nodded.
They climbed out into the heat of the day. A haze hung over the Refuge’s clearing like dust that wouldn’t settle. It was silent save for the low throttle of the deputy’s cruiser as he placed it in park. Shanna rounded the vehicle and came up beside her, interlacing her fingers in Clare’s.
“Are you sure about this?” Clare asked.
“Yes. I think so. Don’t you feel it?”
Clare wanted to tell her no. But she did. She felt the atmosphere of the place, and she wasn’t so sure it was only due to the breadth of her apprehension. The clearing felt sentient. She could almost hear its voice, slithering through the straggly brush and brown reed grass.
welcomehomewelcomehomewelcomehome
Shanna squeezed her hand and started forward.
They walked together through the stilted foliage, past the place where the workroom had sat. There wasn’t even a hint of its presence anymore, just a spot on the ground tangled with leaves and dead vines. Clare wondered at the desolation. Why hadn’t the foliage grown back like the other scorched acres?
Adam followed them at a distance as they ventured farther into clearing. Here was the Johnsons’ house, their son Andrew only four when he was fed a glass of poison. Here the Eckles’ cabin; Mary and Brandon had been expecting their first child before that night in September. Clare could still feel the kick of their baby through Mary’s stomach when she’d been allowed to hold her hand against it.
Across the glade the barest patch of ground in sight rested beneath the shade of a towering oak. The oak was dead, killed by the fire, but stood in defiance of its peeling bark and skeletal branches. They approached the bare ground and Clare stopped short, letting go of Shanna’s hand. Her sister looked back at her a question on her face.
“The worship hall,” Clare said. Her voice was hushed, and she realized she was keeping it low as if someone unseen might be listening.
Shanna walked slowly around its border, pausing every so often to study a part of the ground. When she reached what used to the rear of the building she stopped and turned in a circle. “The back door was here,” she said. “He grabbed my hand and pulled me out this way.” Clare imagined the double doors open to the hall’s darkened interior, the pews holding the slumped shapes of people. And candlelight in the darkness illuminating her father’s face.
Shanna touched her arm and Clare jerked, unaware she’d returned to her side. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Clare said. “Sorry. Are you all right?”
“I think so.” She looked around again. “It’s smaller than I remember.”
To Clare it didn’t look smaller. It appeared to go on forever. Wordlessly they walked on, slowly passing ghosts of monuments. Here was a blackened boulder that had sat at the front of Stephanie Thomas’s quarters. Her little girl, Anna, had been developmentally delayed and held Clare’s hand from time to time when they walked back from worship. Here was a stunted growth of tag alder where Shanna’s friend Abigail used to live with her parents. Shanna paused at her friend’s home. A tear slipped from one eye and Clare squeezed her arm before letting her have a moment alone.
Adam stood at the far end of the clearing, closest to the vehicles. The deputy accompanying them had never exited his car. Adam gave her a small wave and she returned it. Ahead the ground became rocky and uneven. She took a few steps and slowed, recognizing the rock for what it truly was.
Shattered concrete.
This was the foundation to their home.
It looked as if it had been broken apart by a machine and mostly hauled away, but whoever had done the job had been careless, leaving chunks sticking from the earth here and there. They looked like broken teeth.
Clare glanced away. The urge to turn around and go back to the car was like gravity, but she fought it. Closure was a powerful thing, Dr. Latten had said. Something she’d never had. She looked at Shanna, still standing beside the dust of her friend’s house. If Shanna was strong enough to be here, to bear witness to this place after everything she’d gone through, she could do it as well. She was supposed to be the older sibling, the caretaker, the protector. She could do this.
Clare steeled herself, touching each individual fingertip to her thumb, counting as she ran through them over and over, and stepped across where the house’s threshold used to be.
She moved amongst the bits of rubble, taking note of what appeared to be the remnants of a campfire near the corner of where her bedroom had been. A few charred beer cans were visible within the ashes. The sight emboldened her. Other people had come here, spent an evening in this haunted clearing, drank and reveled in the fact they were alive in this place of death. It lessened the weight she’d felt since climbing from the vehicle. She took another step and looked down.
The ground sloped away sharply, ending at a depression in the earth. This was what was left of the basement. The very lowest spot would have to be the pit her father had dug and prayed to. As she watched, the depression crumbled inward, raining sand and stone down into a hollow in the earth. She told herself she’d disturbed the soil by approaching, told herself the deepening pit wasn’t what it looked like, that it would stop any second.