The Shipley house is still dark when I return, but no longer silent. I hear someone tiptoeing around the kitchen and poke my head inside to find my uncle by the coffeemaker. I suppose this is better. I was planning on swiping the keys for the pickup and apologizing later. Now I can ask for them like an adult.
Dan doesn’t even blink at the sight of me. “Back early from your walk, huh?” he murmurs.
I guess I’m not surprised that my early excursions haven’t gone unnoticed. Raising teenagers, Dan and Maggie are probably used to sleeping with one ear open.
“I was thinking of going for a quick drive. Do you mind if I take Maggie’s truck? I swear I’m a good driver. I took lessons in—”
“Keys are in the front hall,” he interrupts, then turns toward the cupboard to get himself a mug.
Uncle Dan’s pretty cool.
Since it’s Saturday, the roads are deserted, and it takes less than ten minutes to make the drive. It’s not a familiar one, but I know the address is correct. I looked it up online. I don’t turn onto the long dusty driveway, though. It’s private property, and with Gabriel Thorn being such a notorious part of this town’s history, I’m worried there might be regular police patrols around his house.
I pull off the road half a mile away and park on the shoulder, flicking on the emergency lights. Hopefully a Good Samaritan doesn’t recognize the Shipley truck and call my aunt and uncle. I swing my combat boots over the side of the pickup, hop out, and slip into the trees.
It’s a short walk, and no longer unfamiliar. It’s as if my body knows exactly where to go, my legs carrying me through the woods, boots confidently moving over the packed undergrowth of the worn path. When I come to a low, primitive rock wall, which is nothing but a pile of round river stones stretching down a hill and curving out of sight, I know I’m on the right track.
That wall goes directly past the place I used to call home.
Buthomeis not the word for it now. A home is a place people can’t wait to get back to after a long spell away. I cannot say the same about this place. As I walk, the dread builds. But for some reason, I can’t stop my feet from taking me there.
Before I reach the clearing, I see them. First a few, then more and more. Some are long gone, and only strings of twine remain, like the wispy branches of a weeping willow. Old, broken birdhouses. I try to look away, but everywhere I turn there’s another one. Dozens of them. Once, they were a bright array of colors, like a rainbow, making these woods feel like some mythical fairy haven. Now they’re faded and missing sides, hanging at odd angles for dear life, long abandoned by feathered friends.
I stop, drag in a breath, and let it out, closing my eyes.
The memory flits in. Me, only six or so, sitting at the kitchen table, watching my father nail the sides of a new birdhouse together. He’d do the carpentry, and I would do the decorating. I proudly mixed together two paints to make an ugly gray-purple and was so excited to lay a paintbrush against its wooden surface. “I’m going to do black polka dots,” I said, licking my lips in anticipation. “Like a purple cheetah.”
He glanced up at me with a smile. “Well, won’t that be special, my little sparrow.”
I shiver at the nickname and open my eyes, gazing at one of the empty houses. All the paint has faded away. Is this the one from that day?
There are so many. Some are lying among the dried leaves on the ground, mere splinters. It almost feels like a cemetery.Here lies Gabrielle Thorn’s childhood.
To think I was named after that monster.
I shudder again and take another step, crunching through the thick brown leaves. When the roof of our timber-frame house comes into view, my breath hitches.
Our cabin in the woods. Our little slice of heaven.
That’s what he used to say. All the other kids lived on real streets, with lawns and public paved roads and next-door neighbors. We had none of that, and I was a bit jealous. But my father always said that being here, in the middle of nowhere, was a dream come true. A babbling brook in the back of our property. Trees upon trees. No one to bother us. Acres and acres of peace and seclusion.
Little did I know that when I was asleep, he would leave our heaven and find women to murder.
I locate the brook, which is little more than a muddy gulch now. It was too shallow for fishing, and really wasn’t good for much of anything. It didn’t even babble, unless the rain was coming down hard. Even though it’s small, I have to step on a flat rock in the center of it to jump to the other side, where I find a path among the leaves. It was my father and I who walked this path into existence, tromping down the grass and making footprints in the soft earth on our way to look for a new branch for every birdhouse.
The path leads directly to the cabin. The “big house,” as Mom called it. The “little house” was the cabin a quarter mile away. Dad’s studio. I turn my head and peer through the trees in its direction. But I’m not ready to see it. Not yet. Maybe never.
My childhood home is an A-frame, the roof practically slanting to the ground. The dark wooden backside shows age from not having been stained for a long time, and there’s a big holein the half-boarded back window. It looks like an eye, peeking out at me.
It’s abandoned, then. No one has lived here since us.
I shift my gaze. Against the back exterior wall is an old charcoal grill, struggling to stand upright on three decayed legs.
“Burgers, anyone?”
I remember my dad standing in front of the grill in his ridiculouschillin’ and grillin’apron and chef’s hat as Mom and I scurried to set the picnic table with plates and condiments. We were laughing so hard at his getup, a gift we’d given him for Father’s Day. It was a good day. We were so happy.
I swallow, not wanting to think about what happened after.
