Ruin Falls (22 page)

She set the plate down, noticing that although she’d remembered the syrup, the French toast was missing the fruit Bill insisted on and which Abby admitted did make for a pretty presentation. No time now. Leaving Cody in the kitchen to eat, she dashed upstairs for the outfit she’d at least had the forethought to lay out the night before.

She got Cody dressed, kneeling on the floor, and contemplating the next step: tooth brushing. Her son smelled yeasty and sweet, delightful to her mind. But the voice of Bill was loud in her head. Teeth had to be cleaned, the spaces between them flossed, after each and every meal.

She led him into the bathroom.

“Mama?” Cody asked through a mouthful of froth. “Am I going to have to do this every day?”

“Go to school, you mean? Every weekday,” Abby confirmed as she worked the nylon thread up and down. Who knew what Bill would do if she stepped out of line? Cody had better be enrolled, present and accounted for in his new school, as long as they were here. She vowed that her son wouldn’t come down with so much as a cold. “Why? Don’t you like it so far?” Abby offered an encouraging smile. “French toast in the morning’s pretty nice, right?”

Cody nodded.

Abby studied her son’s small form. She didn’t see the eagerness she’d hoped for, evidence that despite everything, Cody was ready to move on to this next stage. Instead her son looked a little lost; his face aimed down.

Abby’s gaze sought out the clock. In just seven minutes her son would be on his own. She mounted a smile. “One sec, Bun.” She had remembered the source of the nickname. Honey Bun, she used to call him as a baby.

Abby trotted up the stairs, returning with a small silver whistle on a string. She brought the loop down over Cody’s tousled head, trying to smooth out his hair at the same time.

Cody touched the whistle in wonder, tilting his head down to see it. Folds of flesh compressed on his neck, a little leftover baby fat.

“That was mine,” Abby told him. She’d had to blow the whistle when she came to the busy street that lay between her house and school. Other kids got driven, Abby walked. If one of her siblings was home when she reached the corner, and heard the whistle, they would help her cross. Otherwise she had to make her way between the whizzing cars herself.

“Can I blow it?”

It was a mark of Cody’s earnest personality that he hadn’t emitted a shrill note already. The whistle sat on his chest, its lump concealed beneath the new yellow shirt Abby had bought him, a size up in the hope that it would last throughout the year. Bill never allowed clothes
to be bought big; they had to fit precisely. But Bill hadn’t paid for this shirt. Also, where she and Cody were going, it would be necessary to hang on to clothes for as long as possible.

“Only blow the whistle if you need to,” Abby replied, making her tone severe.

Cody mimicked her solemn nod.

“It’s for emergencies,” Abby said. “If you need to try and summon help. Or let somebody know you’re nearby.”

Even to her own ears, the words didn’t quite make sense, and she knew Cody would be unlikely to apply them to any situation he might be in.

The whistle had been just for fun, really. A first-day-of-school present to jog Cody out of his apprehension.

“Come on,” she said, taking her son’s hand. “Let’s walk down the hill.”

Abby hadn’t realized just how steep the hill in front of their new rental was, how far away its peak, until she stood at the bottom with Cody.

The bus appeared from around a bend, and Abby’s heart seemed to lift and leave her body. She swallowed around an obstruction. Her stomach was pulsing and she could hardly hear when her son piped up.

“That’s what I ride in?” Cody asked.

Abby tried to nod, but her head wouldn’t obey the command. She was a marionette with no puppet-master. Cody’s hand slipped from hers and she didn’t recapture it.

“Mama?”

He was speaking through water. They both were. Abby couldn’t answer her son.

The ancient bus pulled up, its yellow color faded and its brakes wheezing. A pair of accordion doors sighed open.

Abby had called the company after her meeting with Cody’s teacher. She’d described her situation at length, and the dispatcher had dutifully taken a report, promising that the driver would be made aware.

Abby studied the man now as Cody hung back at her side.

“Good morning, Mrs. Harmon,” said the bus driver from high up in his seat. He glanced down at a sheet of paper. “And this must be Cody.”

“Ms.,” Abby said rotely, or thought she did. “Yes. He is. Cody.”

The bus driver didn’t respond to her strange delivery, for which Abby felt grateful.

“My name is Earl. I’ll be driving the steed this year. Does Cody like trucks?”

He was an old guy with steely hair and a sharp look behind his lenses. Not someone whom Abby would have chosen to transport her son. She worried that divorce and a custody battle would be a foreign language to a man of his generation.

He’s experienced
, Abby told herself. The dispatcher had said exactly that.
You have our most experienced driver
.

Earl leaned over, shifting so that the bus gave a heave. As it settled into place he stood up, turning and facing the students, who sat up straight in their first-day-of-school outfits and kept quiet, as if stunned by reimmersion into this routine.

“Hold on, kids.”

The driver took a step down. His knees appeared to pain him; the three stairs were hard to traverse. After a moment he stood before them on the road.

“My dispatcher told me about your situation, ma’am.”

At closer glance, she saw that his gaze was indeed sharp, but only in one sense of the word, not stern so much as probing, and alert.

He crouched down with a grunt of effort. “Cody?”

Abby was surprised to see her son nod. Usually he didn’t respond to strangers, especially men.

“What do you think of my bus?”

Cody ducked his head.

The driver jerked a thumb toward the humped yellow hood. “Know what kind of engine I got under there?”

This time Cody spoke up. “Nuh-uh, sir.”

The bus driver smiled at that. “A big one.”

“Really?” Cody said. “Can I see it?”

“You can do better than that.” The bus driver got to his feet, one leg at a time, and aimed a smile in Cody’s direction. “You can hear it, and you can feel it working when the bus goes up that hill.”

Abby felt her chest clutch upon being reminded of the distance. But Cody looked eager now, and some of her fear receded. She watched her son’s slight body disappear behind the driver’s bigger form as he helped Cody mount the steps. Dimly, she heard the man assigning another child the task of helping Cody buckle in. And then the bus was laboring to life, its body bucking as it made the arduous trip uphill and disappeared from view over the rise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

T
he road you came to if you didn’t turn in at the gates, Sara had said.

Liz pulled over onto a piney shoulder, staring down at her phone, which wasn’t any help out here. A dirt trail bisected the woods over there; from here it looked like more of a footpath than a road. Liz maneuvered her car onto it, driving beneath a high-slung canopy of trees.

The road narrowed further, imperceptibly at first, but by the time it dead-ended at a vast swath of land, branches fingered both sides of the car. Liz got out amidst a stand of trees, birch leaves shivering on their limbs. She began to walk up a hill.

The slope rose steeply and Liz was soon wiping sweat-glued strands of hair off her face. It looked as if she were climbing into the sky, a banner of cottony blue. She came to the crest, and the world opened up before her. Liz took in the sight with a feeling of wonder. Who knew this much open space existed less than a mile from campus?

She walked through a meadow, switchgrass and speargrass knifing her calves. Although she couldn’t detect any hint of habitation, no house or driveway anyway, this place looked as if the model in the Urban Planning and Design department had come to life. Liz passed a pond densely surrounded by reeds—these were the phragmites—and
speckled with algae on the surface. When she bent down, she saw clouds of tiny shrimp rapaciously nibbling. The bodies of golden fish whisked back and forth in the murky depths. A creek led away from the pond, and Liz followed it to its source, where a crystalline stream of water was deposited into a pool.

Off in the distance, groves of fruit, hoop houses, and rectangles of crops sent out shoots toward Liz’s own soul. She wandered toward the fecund acres, scenting ripeness in the air.

“Who goes?” The voice was earnest, without humor.

Liz turned.

He was a tall, rangy guy, with hair that fell past his shoulders and a cloud of beard that hid half his face. The facial hair made his age hard to determine, a contrasting blend of boyish eagerness in the eyes and sun-creased, leathery skin.

“Who goes?” he said again, like some medieval palace guard.

“Are you Jeffrey Matters?” Liz asked. She got no response. “Um, I mean Tree?”

“Sure am.” A pause. “Hey, are you from
Global Living
? Or the
Today Show
?”

Liz frowned. “No.”

Tree dropped his head for a moment. “Oh, shoot, thought I might’ve gotten a nibble.” But then he took a look around, pride settling into his stance. “I’ve done all the local media, and the big guys should be interested now that I’ve converted the Experiment in Alternative Living dorm to humanure. But no one’s been out yet.”

Liz’s head felt caught in a swirl. She could just about keep up with what this guy was saying—slips of things she’d caught over the years from Paul—but she was taken off guard by the disconnect from Sara’s description. Liz had been anticipating an abrasive rub of arrogance, but this guy’s worst trait seemed to be a youthful excitement not quite in keeping with his age.

“I’m not a reporter,” Liz said. “Sorry.”

A frown appeared above the beard. “I usually give tours on scheduled days, but I can show you around if you like.”

Liz squared her shoulders. “I’m not here for a tour either. My name is Liz Daniels. I’m Professor Daniels’s wife.”

As soon as she said the name, the eagerness receded from his eyes. “What can I do for you? I imagine Paul didn’t send you.”

Anger at her husband had solidified into a small, hard stone inside Liz, but she still blanched at this guy’s palpable dislike, mostly because she knew what it would’ve meant to Paul. As far as she knew, no one had ever felt that way about him.

“How do you and Paul know each other?”

Tree rolled his shoulders back and forth. “We don’t really know each other.”

Liz followed his gaze to a distant rim of forest. “But you’ve met?”

He hesitated. “Once. At a dinner. I don’t come down from here very often, but I was—well, I was being honored.”

Honored? Sara had made it sound as if the guy were an interloper at the faculty dinner.

“You’re a professor here?”

“Not exactly. I have a DEP grant. And my father went to Eastern Ag.”

Liz nodded uncertainly. Some environmental funding from the state, she figured.

Tree’s expression darkened. “Farming nearly killed him. No, it did kill him. He died from a rare form of cancer caused by the pesticides he was using, though no one could prove it in court.” Tree had fisted his hands; now he forced them to unroll. “That’s what made me want to bring this work to Eastern Ag. And its time has come—even the administration knows it. So they gave me this piece of land, which no one was using. I have to reapply every year, but I’ve gotten it four years running now so I think I’m in pretty good shape.”

Four years. To reach this point.

“Paul does, too,” Liz said abruptly.

“What?”

“You said even the administration recognizes the value of this kind of work. So does Paul. So I don’t understand …” She trailed off.

“I think I’m the one who doesn’t understand,” Tree said. “Why did you come out here to talk to me about Paul?”

“Because he’s missing,” Liz replied.

Tree’s look of surprise was genuine.

“He’s left and he’s taken our children,” Liz said, feeling faintly embarrassed by the pitch of her voice, but helpless to control it, “and I have no idea where he’s gone!”

Tree frowned. “I didn’t know. Sorry. But I still don’t see what that has to do with me.”

Liz turned away, the bright sky stinging her eyes. “Probably nothing.”

Tree looked as if he had no idea what to do next. Liz felt almost sorry to have put him in this position. He was half hermit, half genius, and neither role was well suited to awkward social encounters. How had Paul never mentioned this guy or his work?

“Hey,” Tree said. “Would you like to see where I live?”

The open space gave way to trees, and when they came to a particularly large one, an old-growth fir, Tree stopped. The majesty of the tree spoke to Liz; there weren’t many of these left in the East, with trunks so big four men wouldn’t span them. Liz heard herself gasping when she looked up. A structure was entwined in the thigh-thick branches toward the top. It was built of the same wood in which it resided, and its roof was composed of solar panels, high enough that nothing else competed for sun. There was one south-facing window, a long run of glass.

“Zero energy loss, net gain on heat, and best of all, zero waste,” Tree recited. “The first year, I restricted my trash to a single mason jar. Now I don’t even need that.” His face shone. “Would you like to go up?”

Liz shook her head. Suddenly she had no idea what she was doing out here, viewing some experiment in sustainable living when her children were missing. Tim’s voice—asking why she’d been out in the gardens—drifted back on a current of breeze. For a moment, Liz wished Tim were here to provide direction, but then realized she had one already.

The coach might know something about what Paul was doing. The timing was too coincidental: Paul’s flight, Allgood’s release from prison.

“Thank you,” Liz said. “For the unscheduled tour.”

Tree met her eyes. “I hope your husband comes back with your kids.”