Brave in the Woods Page 15

  When they arrived at Alice’s, Juni couldn’t believe they still had a three-hour drive back home before she could burrow deep into her closet and possibly never come out. She had called ahead and told Dad she had decided not to take Elsie, and could he and Anya please get everything ready so they could drive straight home?

  When they arrived at Alice’s, Dad and Anya were standing by the lakeshore. They both opened their arms to Juni, who settled into a three-person hug. There, with the clear water lapping at their feet, all three generations rocked and rocked through the sun setting, the seasons passing, the world coming to an end.

  A LITTLE BIT LIKE A MIRACLE

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Penelope came back.

  Living with the family in Quincy and having her name changed to Yolanda was not to Penelope’s liking, and she had let it be known. Juni wondered how many scratches those poor boys endured before they realized she didn’t belong to them.

  Anya was very forgiving when this happened. She appreciated the families who learned they weren’t cat people, or realized the cat they’d chosen wasn’t the right one, and instead of turning them over to a shelter where they might be put down, they brought them back to Anya. The house was big, and there were many arms to hold them until those kitties found the right place to be.

  Apparently, the right place for Penelope was in Juni’s room, every day, smack in the middle of her fluffy blue comforter.

  Eventually, Juni decided to ask for a family meeting, which they hadn’t had since Connor had . . . died.

  Died. She’d acknowledged the word, finally, if only in her mind.

  She checked herself. Took a few deep breaths. The bees were quiet.

  Juni understood now why Anya had given her the journal. It was simple, really. Anya had talked with Juni about it just after they’d gotten home.

  “Sometimes, you have to tell yourself a story until you can tell yourself the truth,” Anya had said. “Storytelling runs in our family. Maybe this is the true curse.”

  Anya had smiled when she’d said it, but Juni thought that was truer than true.

  “You are a girl with asthma. I am an orphan. But we are so much more than our struggles.”

  Anya made a big pot of chicken paprikash, her favorite of Abigail’s handwritten recipes, and when they gathered for dinner, Juni had a list of requests.

  “I want to have a funeral,” she said.

  Mom closed her eyes. Dad didn’t. Anya nodded for Juni to go on.

  “You can’t lose yourself in the woods all the time, Dad. And, Mom, you can’t stay in your room watching dumb TV shows.” Juni was firm. “It scares me.”

  After a few moments, Mom said, “There’s nothing to bury, Juni. They still haven’t been able to get to where Connor—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Anya said. “We need to give ourselves something.”

  Juni wanted this part to be over so they could move on to the next part, whatever that was.

  * * *

  They planned a funeral and chose personal items to bury. A kaleidoscope Connor had once told Juni could find gold at the bottom of rainbows. The lug wrench from his toolbox. A little boy’s shirt, from all those years ago, the one Connor had wrapped a newborn Juni in before running for her life.

  They’d decided to bury Connor’s things on the far end of their property; out past the goat pen, through a small wood and into a meadow, a beautiful meadow—with mustard greens and wild grass—that let out onto the lake. It had been Connor’s spot. There were two identical cedars with thick trunks sitting ten feet apart, so he’d strung a hammock. It was shaded most of the time, but in the early evening, there was a brief flood of sunlight.

  Mrs. Wheeler carved a fine headstone.

  CONNOR THOMAS CREEDY

  Son

  Brother

  Grandson

  Friend

  Hero

  At least a hundred people were there. There were Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers from years past who had stayed in touch with Connor. They all brought heart-shaped stones. There were Sports Nut employees and a few of his junior-college professors. Everyone knew Connor. He’d saved animals and lifeguarded at the lake and volunteered at the fire department, and Juni was certain she would never know anyone like him again.

  Overwhelmed by all the people standing in groups, talking and smiling and laughing as they told their own stories, Juni sat in a rented folding chair in the front row and looked into the woods beyond, thinking about the buck she’d seen in the pet cemetery, the one who’d started everything. She wondered where he was out there, if he had a family. If he was all alone.

  Mason sat beside her, then Gabby. Juni knew she could do anything now, face anything, all by herself. But she was so glad she didn’t have to.

  As people began to sit, Juni heard an excited barking coming from the tree line back toward the house. She turned to see Elsie. The Wilders had come to pay their respects, too.

  Juni ran all the way across the meadow, happy to greet her, and Elsie was just as happy to see Juni. Or Connor’s watch. Juni didn’t know, but she didn’t care, either. They snuggled and hugged and turned in circles together.

  Then a small golden retriever puppy came bounding into Juni and pounced on Elsie’s paws. She had the same long hair as Elsie.

  Juni looked up to see the Wilder girls, all smiles.

  “We got a puppy!” Gertie, the youngest Wilder, declared. “Her name is Roxy.”

  Juni wrapped her arms around Roxy, who couldn’t stop wiggling. She licked Juni’s face all over.

  “She’s yours now,” Pops said, and at first, Juni thought he meant Roxy. But then he leaned over and gave Elsie a scratch behind the ears. “Then again, she always was, wasn’t she?”

  Juni nodded. She took Elsie by the scruff behind both ears and touched their foreheads together. “We’ve got this now, don’t we, girl?”

  TRUER THAN TRUE

  IT WAS LATE afternoon, the mid-October sunlight fading beneath the tree line. Juni was sitting at the kitchen table working a math problem—Elsie at her feet and Penelope at her elbow—when she heard a car roll down their gravel driveway.

  Juni looked out the living room window and saw the same navy-blue sedan that had come all those months ago to tell them about Connor. She almost fell to her knees.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she opened the front door to the same army man who had come before. “I’ll get my parents,” she said before he could speak. Father Thomas had come with him again. Luca hadn’t.

  Juni walked to the back of the house, where Mom was reading on the porch, an inexplicable feeling of calm spreading through her. It was happening. Whatever slivers of doubt she’d still managed to carry were going to be removed. For better or worse, her family was about to learn the truth once and for all.

  Mom must have seen something in Juni’s face, because she jumped up, dropping her book on the deck—bang!—which made Dad look their way from his place in the goat pen. He came running.

  Hearing the car, maybe, Anya had come downstairs, and met them in the foyer. The army man shook each of their hands in turn, and they all went to sit in the living room. For a brief moment, Juni didn’t want to know. The not-knowing was torture, but it left a place for hope.

  “They have him,” the man said with great sorrow. “They found Connor.”

  * * *

  Since Elsie had come to them, for reasons no one understood, she had gone to Connor’s spot in the meadow every day at two o’clock on the dot. And every day, on her way home from the bus stop, Juni walked down the path through the woods to bring her home.

  Juni had made a bed for Elsie in her room, had laid one of Connor’s favorite sweaters on top. Juni couldn’t smell Connor in the fabric anymore, a soapy scent that trailed him after a shower, but Elsie seemed comforted. She dug her nose under one of
the sleeves every night and lay that way until morning, Penelope burrowed into her furry belly.

  Juni had taken all the antler drawings off the kitchen wall and moved them to her room, taping them around Connor’s mural. She’d taken the antler branches she’d found in the old gnarled tree near Lena’s house and mounted them on a rough-cut piece of cedar. Then she’d woven her twinkle lights all around. Her very own gallery.

  Through the winter months, Juni had been helping Luca plan his hike on the Pacific Crest Trail coming up in the spring. He was leaving from Campo on April 17 and figured he would reach Chester sometime in late June, early July. Juni, Mason and Gabby were planning to meet him at Domingo Springs Campground with tamales, just like they did every summer.

  Juni’s family had a small urn with Connor’s ashes, and Luca was going to take him along.

  One Tuesday in April, just before Luca was set to leave, Juni walked to the meadow from the school bus and Elsie wasn’t there, so she stayed and talked to Connor for a while, alone. About her day. About the fact that she liked kissing, but not all the time. About Anya, Mom and Dad. She talked about how they were going to help with Luca’s supplies while he walked the PCT, how happy she was that Connor finally got to go, too.

  Juni felt him before she saw him.

  The buck, standing beside a thick cedar off in the distance. She counted his ten tines.

  She stood slowly and, just as slowly, began walking toward him, expecting him to bound away. He didn’t.

  Juni got within a few feet before he finally took a step back. A tender step. They contemplated each other. She wrapped her hand around her own antler bone, warm from resting against her skin.

  There it was again. The shimmering feeling of Connor.

  The buck lowered his many-pointed antlers, nosed the ground and then stood tall. It was a full minute, an hour, infinity maybe, before he turned and disappeared into the shade of the thick wood.

  Juni felt herself let him go.

  “I’ll be okay,” she whispered.

  This was the story Juni chose to tell herself, and she would make sure this one was truer than true.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THERE IS POWER in the stories we choose to remember, the ones we think define who we are. I kept coming back to this idea as I wrote about Juni and her family. At first, all I had was a bunch of loosely connected fragments that didn’t make a lot of sense as a story. These are the people who helped me wrangle all those ideas and fragments into a collective whole.

  They are generally the same people who help me wrangle myself into a collective whole.

  To my writers’ group (we really should think of a name for ourselves after seventeen years). Thank you for my books. I could not have done this without the love and support from each of you. Anne Reinhard, Georgia Bragg, Leslie Margolis, Edith Cohn, Victoria Beck, Christine Bernardi, Elizabeth Passarelli and Laurie Young.

  Thank you to the Village Cafe crew; Karol Ruth Silverstein, Greg Pincus, Ann Whitford Paul, Dana Middleton, Armineh Manookian, Lissa Price, Lisze Bechtold, Marianne Wallace, Mary Malhotra, Nicole Maggi, Ronna Mandel, Collen Paeff and Joseph Taylor. I almost gave up on this story, and you were all there to remind me I was a writer and this was a story worth finding.

  Kristi and Ed Tavares. Thank you for the stories, Ed. You filled in the gaps for the family I didn’t get to grow up with. Can’t wait to enjoy a tamalada together where I promise not to insult the Dodgers (maybe).

  Stacey Barney and Rosemary Stimola. Thank you for your guidance, wisdom and patience. Emphasis on patience. These books wouldn’t be what they are without you.

  A huge thank-you to Ileana Soon, who created a magnificent cover. You captured the perfect moment.

  Thanks to Captain (and uncle) Howard Ruth Jr. for walking me through Grandpa’s days flying a Stearman and the official circumstances around a fallen soldier. Any errors in the telling are mine.

  Thank you, Dad, for giving me the woods and Lake Almanor.

  And thank you to my growing family. Mom, Kevin, Kate, James, Sara, Henry, Elliot and Calvin. I wouldn’t have anything to write about without all of you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tracy Holczer is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Secret Hum of a Daisy and Everything Else in the Universe. She lives in Southern California with her husband, three daughters, and two rather fluffy dogs named Buster and Molly. She has a deep love for the mountains where she grew up, the lakes and rivers that crisscrossed her childhood, so she writes them into her stories.

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