to light and guard

chapter thirty four

The forest parted around Lana, where she moved through it with her head down and stomach rumbling. That was a stupid idea, telling Frieda to make the kids do it. It was stupid. They're just kids. She bit the inside of her lip, arms loosely crossed in front of her chest through her sweater. How had her good idea gone so very wrong? Can I not have a moment's peace while I'm here? She swallowed the heat which began to bloom in the back of her throat. The birds overhead added a choir to the chaos in her mind—again, she found herself trapped beside her mother with no one else to add any padding between the two of them. "You were always the best at hiding when you were her age," her mother said offhandedly. "Where would you have gone?"

"I would've jumped in the creek and squeezed into one of the crevices under the lichen." That isn't an option now. There's no way out of the creek. She must know that. "Do you honestly think she's just hiding from us? Her siblings, too?" Lana's heart skipped a beat at the alternative, hurt or dead or lost or trapped or any combination of those, alone in the forest without her family, all because Lana had suggested Frieda experiment with hands-off parenting. Hands-off parenting gets you lost kids.

"I don't know. Terry isn't the type. But she's been through a lot today. Maybe she found a pile of moss and fell asleep. You did that once."

"It's awfully cold to be sleeping outside." The breeze rattled the tree trunks, and Lana approached the hollow beneath a fallen tree and peeked into the cave of soil below. Only the skeleton of a raccoon glared back up at her, tattered mats of fur clinging to the bleached bones. "Gross," she muttered, stepping back, away from the trunk of the tree. She slid over the round trunk and plopped on the other side of it, shoes sinking into the mud and rotting autumn leaves.

Her mother held out a hand. "Help me. I'm a little old widow." Lana took it with a tiny smile cracking her ceramic facade, not reaching her eyes. I never wanted her to be a widow. "I might as well get used to the label, shouldn't I? There's no use acting like I'm not. I'm—Well, I'm officially available again."

Lana's brow quirked. "Are you going to start dating?" It's none of my business. Still, the prospect of seeing her mother with anyone other than her father sent her belly wriggling into a bunch of strange nerves. She helped her cross the thick diameter of the tree trunk, a hand on her waist, lowering her to the earth on the other side.

"Lordy, no. One man was enough for a lifetime. You get the benefit of being attracted to women, who are typically tolerable human beings. I've never met a man who could do the first thing to provide for himself, and I'm too set in my ways to start coddling a new bachelor." Helen paused, and then she cast Lana a sideways glance. "No offense." Lana shrugged. What about that would I find offensive, anyway? That men are gross? I find no fault there. "Besides, the only available men in the area are Pastor Johnson and Fred Peyser. Reprehensible fools." Helen touched down on the other side of the fallen tree trunk. She waded through the pool of fallen leaves. This chunk of land didn't have trails like the others Lana had traversed as a child; it had grown over, leaving nothing intact, so they wandered through the barren landscape, a winter wonderland with no snow, only overcast sky in the background.

"They're hardly good-looking enough for you, anyway." Lana stuffed her hands into her pockets, paying no heed to the way the undergrowth grabbed her skirt. With the cool weather, she trusted no snakes lay underfoot for her to trample on by mistake. "Then again, I suppose John somehow managed to get Frieda..."

Helen snorted. "John managed to create eight heathens with Frieda. He did well enough. A skinny face will only harm a man so much if he has a pure heart." She picked up a long branch and used it to poke around in a large gopher hole, stirring up some of the old, wet leaves. A stench rose from below. As she drew it back, the festering corpse of another raccoon peered out from the gopher hole. "Ew. There must be something killing them. Killing, but not eating. Hm. Strange." She looked back up at Lana. "What do you know about John, anyway? If you don't like men, you can't know what's attractive."