Page 66 of Wildwood

I pick it up, my eyes taking in the picture, taking in the people, the stoic little girl with chin-length hair and bangs.

My body feels hot all over. Bile rises up and I sprint, barely making it in time, to retch into the toilet.

Chapter 58

I wore my hair like that for most of my childhood. Chin length with bangs. I never thought much about it. But seeing it in this photo, it strikes me how much it adds to the sense of innocence. I look like a porcelain doll.

Everyone else in the photo is an adult, and they are fussing around me. I sit in the back of an ambulance, with a blanket wrapped around my small body. My mother’s arms are around me. My father is talking with a police officer. An EMT appears to be asking me a question. Various others are off to the side, with expressions of worry and anger.

The article is titled “Lost New Jersey Girl Is Found Alive.”

After spending nearly 24 hours, alone in the woods, the lost New Jersey girl named Elinor Lin has been found alive and well. Elinor was visiting her great-uncle, Ezra Bishop, when her family discovered her missing from her bed early the morning of May 15, 2004. Family and neighbors combed the woods in search of the missing girl. At around six o’clock p.m., Ezra Bishop discovered the young girl, sleeping under a tree, deep in Bishop’s two hundred acres of dense forest. She was barefoot and experienced mild hypothermia on her toes and dehydration. Other than these ailments, Elinor is fine and in good spirits. When asked by police why she left her room, she claimed that a woman with long curling hair came to her in the night and told her to follow her into the forest. “The woods are safer,” said Lin. “The woman told me the woods are safer.” Investigations are ongoing into what actually went on the night of May 15. Anyone who believes they have pertinent information are encouraged to call the police.

I don’t want to believe it. For so many reasons, I don’t want to believe it. My heart breaks for the little girl in the photo. For the thought of her alone in the woods, for twenty-four hours. I imagine my own unborn child, eight years from now, lost in the woods. It’s almost too much to bear. I remember it now. Just like all the other memories here at Wildwood. It has surfaced, and now I can see disjointed images of it. Following the woman, long, curling hair down her back, out the front door. Of course, it wasn’t my cousin Anna; the woman was too tall. Why hadn’t I realized that? I remember walking through the woods, the look of my small, pale feet on the forest floor. I remember her saying, The woods are safer. And, Come with me, it’s important. I remember coming to and finding Ezra’s normally stoic face close to mine. His face was wrought with a mix of emotions that even now I can’t decipher. I remember the look of relief on Mathilde’s face when she saw him carrying me, a look that was quickly replaced by ferocious anger when I told my tale. And now I know, with dead certainty, that shortly after this photo was taken, these events transpired, that my family piled into the Oldsmobile and sped away from Wildwood, never to return again.

I sit on the bathroom floor a while longer, holding the article, staring off into nothing. The memory, now so concrete in my mind, feels like one of those dead bodies found in the Hudson, weighted down with cement by mob bosses for years until something happens that snips the rope and the body bobs to the surface, dark secrets and all. I’d once heard more than fifty bodies are discovered each year in the Hudson. How many more memories are going to surface and shake me to the core?

Chapter 59

I bang on the door, fury in my blood.

Madeline answers, a look of surprise on her face.

“Elinor, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“How did you not tell me about this?” I shove the article in her face.

She squints a moment, to see what’s in front of her, her eyes widening as she reads the headline. She reaches up to take the paper, but I snatch it away. I spent last night stewing about what I’d discovered. Why did no one tell me? How was I allowed to go through my existence and either allowed to forget or, perhaps, even lied to about this traumatic event? I can’t take my anger out on my parents or my grandmother. But I can take it out on her.

“Well? I come here, telling you about these dreams that I have about wandering in the woods at night. I ask you point-blank if anything terrible happened here. And you never thought to mention that as a child, I went missing and spent a night in the woods alone?” My voice is shaking with rage.

“Elinor, I don’t know what to say,” Madeline says slowly.

“Tell me why you wouldn’t say anything!” I tilt my head back and almost yell at the sky.

“I didn’t think it was my place! I wasn’t here when it happened, I was living in New York at the time. Yes, I heard about it, but when you didn’t mention it when you were talking about the dreams, well, I figured there was a reason for that.”

“What reason could there be?” I demand.

“It must have been traumatic! Maybe you’d buried the memory. Who am I to force you to face it again?” She shakes her head helplessly.

For a moment, I soften. She’s right, it wouldn’t have been her place. But then I remember what Alice said, about Madeline trying to get Wildwood. I think about what I know in my gut. That the Brooks were involved in something that happened here. There’re still the unmarked graves that haven’t been explained. She’s hiding something.

I know I should bite my tongue; I know I should keep the cards close to my chest. But it feels like a torrent is about to be unleashed.

“You are such a fucking liar,” I spit.

Madeline’s face freezes. “Excuse me?”

“You lie about everything. You use everyone!”

“Use people?!” She has the audacity to look offended.

“I know my family hated yours. I know you wanted Wildwood for yourself. You lied about what happened to me as a child. You sent kids into my woods to scare me. I’m going to find out everything. Everything.”

“You’re losing it, Elinor. You are really spiraling.”

“Of course you’d say that.” I laugh, mirthlessly. “Tell me if you see my dog.” Then I turn and march down the driveway, though my legs are shaking and feel as though they might give out.