Due to wildfires our house burned up, my husband got laid off, and my asthma began acting up with all the smoke and residue. The doctor said I needed to stay indoors, with an air filtration unit, at least until the baby is born—two months from now—and ideally for the next six months, until the baby’s lungs were robust.

 Mom lived in Stittsville, a two-hour drive away. Although Dad died twelve years ago, she’s still rattling around in the family house. “I’d love some company,” she said, “and the air here is clean.”

Can skylark and night owl co-exist? Mom’s an early riser and has volunteer activities that keep her out most of the day. But afternoon is when I wake up. I light a candle in my basement studio, put on mood music, and get back to illustrating a new edition of Tales from the Crypt.

When Mom comes home, we have dinner. We hook rugs or knit booties while watching Gilmore Girls. I gamely participate, but with every cute craft we tackle, I sink further into Goth-in-the-suburbs misery.

After she goes to bed, I reenter the spooky world of the Crypt. Sometimes I go for midnight walks. No neighbors, no awkward conversations. I admire how streetlights cast everything in chiaroscuro. Or I sketch the carved headstones in the local cemetery, which holds the usual share of crosses, angels, and poppies. There’s only one headstone with a dog.

***

 “You should call up some of your friends,” Mom says one night over our stir-fry and salmon.

“You forget,” I say. “I’m a recluse.”

“That’ll have to change when Gumby appears.” Her eyes flicker over my belly.

I glare at her. “Maybe,” I say. Right now, I just want to finish inking this installment before Gumby arrives.

 “How about Donna?” Mom says. “You used to hang out with her a lot. Why don’t you give her a call?”

I get up, scrape my plate and put it in the sink without making eye contact. I thought the whole town knew. “Mom, haven’t you heard? Donna disappeared a month ago.”

***

The facts of Donna’s disappearance were related to me by Coyote Bill, who works at the 7-11 in Stittsville.

 One morning, her next-door neighbor noticed Donna’s front door was open, and snow was drifting in. Donna was nowhere to be seen. Her side door, the one she regularly used, was left open too. Leading away from the house to her car was one set of tracks in the snow: only hers, clearly recognizable by the dragging left foot.

Her husband, Ted, was away at a sales conference.

“She hasn’t been seen since,” Bill said. The small oxygen tank she sometimes used, her meds, her ID—all were left behind. Now it’s “a topic of great discussion and theorizing.” Stittsville is a small town on the side of a mountain. From the air, it looks like a shiny lapel pin on the collar of a giant. We are close to wilderness here, no question. Like Coyote Bill, who was a kid playing outside by himself one day when a pack of coyotes tried to hunt him down. He has a scar on his forehead from that encounter and a nickname for life.

What can you do if the wilderness seeks to claim you?

The police are still investigating. I have a different theory.

***

 Donna and I met in Grade 5, when we were the last ones chosen for softball. In her case she had a childhood limp, a damaged left leg. In my case I had terrible hand-to-eye coordination.

Donna was no athlete, but in other ways, she had phenomenal skills. Her class projects were displayed as models. Her handicrafts were works of art. One time I was having trouble cutting out the shape of a man. I dissolved in tears of frustration. She came to my desk and, with a few snips, transformed my hacked-up cardboard into Batman.

 We grew very close in grade school. She was the girl of a thousand schemes: stories we would act out, people we could spy on. She was the ringleader, and I tried to keep up. I didn’t want to be boring—that was the biggest sin in her eyes.

She was scathing about the prettiest, most popular girl in our grade. Donna said, “Oh, Caroline is so boring!”

I said, “Why don’t we put itching powder in her gym clothes?” and we tried not to laugh as she scratched all through volleyball.

 Donna said field trips were boring. I said, “Let’s switch up the teacher’s map.” The class got lost in the woods for an hour while Donna and I took a shortcut to study the petroglyph exhibits while the class was AWOL.

***

 Things changed in middle school, when we were around thirteen, and a new kid, Enid, wormed her way into our charmed circle.

We devised small tortures for her, such as picking a jar of tent caterpillars by hand, and releasing them into the school’s vegetable garden. Or we had her gather cigarette butts and empty the tobacco so we could try roll our own. Enid seemed up for anything, as long as it didn’t involve boys.

She doted on an old, fat beagle named Snoopy. He was nuts about her, practically wagging his tail off when she got home. And she loved that dog right back, kissing him on the mouth whenever he welcomed her.

One day Donna posed a question. “You know how cats always land on their feet? Now I’m wondering about dogs. How about it, Enid?”

Enid moved her mouth open-shut-open like a fish and blinked her pale, round eyes.

“You don’t know, do you?” Donna scoffed. “Why don’t we find out, then?” She pointed at the carport, which had a nice, flat roof we sometimes dared each other to jump from. The trick was to land on nice, soft piles of autumn leaves—not the concrete pad.

Enid carried Snoopy up a step ladder, but once she got to the top, she decided she didn’t want to do Donna’s challenge. But Snoopy was whining and wriggling too much for her to bring down. She hesitated, teetering.

Then she fell. She landed heavily on dear old Snoopy with a terrible crackling thud. Then, a scream from her—and a choked yelp from Snoopy. He began to convulse under her body, his jaw opening and clamping as reddish-brown liquid seeped from his mouth.

Enid screamed at Donna to ring the nearest doorbell.

That night Mom reamed me out: “How dare you? What were you thinking?”

“It was Enid who did it,” I protested.

“But you should know better!”

***

 At the January school assembly, the principal announced, “A sad thing happened over the Christmas holidays. Please bow your heads and remember our dear friend Enid who passed away of pneumonia.”

Donna’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.

The bell rang and Donna hurried to the washroom. I trudged to geography. When I opened the textbook, I saw a picture of a dog sled team, and a cold finger of dread went down my back.

 That night I had a nightmare about Enid and her dog. I saw his bottom teeth, a row of little ivory knobs, while a rotten liquid pooled in his mouth. His doggy eyebrows were so perplexed and fearful, as if his last thoughts were anxiety that he had displeased his beloved mistress.

 I woke up, overheated and distraught. I tramped into the kitchen and knocked over the mug stand. My mother came out in her robe and pin-curls, angry and flustered. She kept me home for a week, fearing I too might develop pneumonia.

***

The next time I saw Donna, she was with another girl, who had a pouty, shifty look. My face grew hot.

“Oh, are you setting up a date?” Donna said to me, in a mocking singsong.

“A date?” I scoffed. Going out with boys was utterly foreign to our super-heated little world. I turned away in disgust and strolled into the nearest classroom as if I had a class in it. I listened intently, wondering what the two girls would say about me. Disappointment grew as I heard Donna and the girl giggling about dirty song lyrics.

***

Although it happened two months before Enid caught pneumonia, the carport incident kept replaying in my mind without warning. Worst of all were the last moments, as shock and incomprehension filled the dog’s face. Snoopy died, yet we never spoke of it. Not even to acknowledge it had happened, much less to say we were sorry.

In fact, some evenings we would walk past Enid’s place, and Donna would howl piteously and then we’d run away, shrieking with laughter.

But a small unease took root within me.

Long ago I had watched my father club to death a squirrel he had partially run over with his truck. He got out the heaviest tool from the back of the half-ton—and then delivered a fast, merciful blow.

 If only that could have been Snoopy’s lot. Instead, Enid had watched him suffer.

***

In high school, Donna and I seldom saw each other. I kept coming to school, but I felt numb, disconnected. I had trouble thinking through a sequence of things, like making a book outline. I developed a phobia about dogs. I couldn’t bear to see a dog’s open mouth, its eager tongue hanging out, a bottom row of tiny white teeth. When you live in a small town on the mountainside, dogs are everywhere, protecting property and loved ones.

I left Stittsville right after graduation, flying out like a bat from a flooding cave. In the city I made a new set of college friends. No one in my new circle had a dog. I lived the farthest away possible from a dog park.

Yet still, one night, I woke up after a nightmare about Enid and Snoopy.

 I wondered if Donna was also struggling.

***

I went to meditate at a church near campus. What I thought was a courtyard led into an old cemetery, as if I had created it from pure yearning. The oldest stones were sunken in the grass and the names nearly worn away. There was an Enid among them, buried nearly two hundred years ago. A strange feeling overcame me. I dropped to my knees, and begged forgiveness.

 Cold moisture seeped from the grass through my pantlegs. The carillon began with a tentative ping, ping, ping and then emitted a languorous trail of ethereal notes. The heavy weight I had been bearing became less heavy.

I knew what my next step should be.

***

I booked a trip to Stittsville during Reading Week. I visited the local cemetery and found the headstone with the date on it I knew too well. There was a lamb carved on that headstone — and a dog.

I kneeled there, at the grave of the Enid I knew, begging forgiveness again. I ruminated for a long time on the family’s deep sorrow.

 Afterward I felt relief, a buoyancy that I had forgotten existed.

***

I called Donna the next day and she said, “Come on over, girlfriend.” We started off very friendly. Cuddly, almost. She was proud to show off her McMansion and brag about her handsome husband. “Me and Ted both sell real estate,” she explained, “but I’m taking some time off for fertility treatments.”

She knew I was halfway through the Design & Marketing program. I’d discovered my compulsion to draw. “I feel tempted to explore darker themes.”

“Go for it,” she said, grinning. “Transgression—that’s never boring.”

I suddenly felt reluctant to disclose my weakness, my pursuit of healing for the ache I felt.

***

The woman who met me at the door looked remarkably like the girl I remembered, especially when she blinked her pale, round eyes.

“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Everett said. “Let me take you to her room.”

I felt I had no choice as she ushered me upstairs. I entered the room of a teen girl circa 2005. A bulletin board with Black Eyed Peas and young Gwen Stefani. Cartoon posters of Snoopy.

“I saw fresh flowers on her grave,” she said. “Did you put them there?”

I nodded and said, “I was very sorry about Enid’s passing.” My voice sounded strange and husky. “I was too cowardly to come alone. Until now.”

Mrs. Everett cocked her head, as if weighing the truth of what was being said.

“So you were one of her…”—here Mrs. Everett hesitated—“friends, were you?”

“I’ll never forget the assembly when Principal Gorius announced Enid had died of pneumonia.” I stared at the collection of Schulz paperbacks.

 Mrs. Everett demurred. “I beg your pardon? Did the principal say my daughter died of pneumonia?”

 “Yes, that’s what he said.” I frowned. Had I misheard or misremembered? Conflation of memories, where you mix up two stories by accident, is a thing.

 “She died by suicide.” Mrs. Everett’s phrased it with clinical precision. No doubt rehearsed hundreds of times.

 I shuddered. “He definitely did not say that.” I spoke too loudly and too defensively—the shock of the moment.

Mrs. Everett said “I’ve had what? A half dozen of you miserable kids coming here over the years. Every one of you claiming to be a friend or her best friend. Yet no one, not one of you, told me the lie that Principal Gorius spread. What an asshole!”

 Hearing a woman of my mother’s age and status curse like this was like seeing a rat climb out of a fruit bowl. I am no friend of Principal Gorius, who once suspended me for reading “occult trash” (Harry Potter books) but in fairness, I had to defend him. I said, “He’s responsible for hundreds of vulnerable kids. He could hardly tell them the truth. You’ve heard of suicide contagion, right?”

She stared coldly at me.

I felt wretched. Her revelation made Donna’s and my role in Enid’s death frighteningly more significant. We’d never spoken about the assembly, but all these years I had believed Enid’s death was random coincidence. We accidentally caused her to accidentally kill her dog. Then she accidentally caught pneumonia.

Yes, that was the fairy tale I’d concocted.

 Now the evil of our deeds was breathtakingly clear. It was evil to bring her into our destructive little clique when she was so terribly malleable. Evil to prey on her obvious affection for her dog. Evil to set a dangerous challenge.

Guilt upon guilt piled in my mind, the accretions happening so rapidly, so fiercely, that I forgot to breathe. I covered my eyes, hot with unshed tears.

 But stop. I had come here to atone. I tore my hands from my face.

I had to seek forgiveness for my role, no matter how Enid had died.

“Mrs. Everett,” I said. “I have something to say to you. I believe my actions, when I was a girl and a friend of Enid’s, contributed to her death. I humbly… beg… your… forgiveness.”

 The big ask, the one I had practiced so many times. It took all I could not to bawl my eyes out. But no way did I want to act the diva—shine the attention on me. This moment was about Enid. And Mrs. Everett.

 She blinked. She took a step closer and peered at my face. She quoted my words back to me. “Contributed, to her death, you say?” I saw her bony shoulders rise and fall. “What? You didn’t let her sit at your lunch table?” she said, sarcasm dripping. “You wrote bad words on her locker? You mocked her skinny body in gym class?”

 I felt her hot breath on me. I smelled its tang of old coffee and cheese. I trembled. I had not considered drilling down this far—to the rotten, throbbing root—to the follow-up questions that would be asked of me.

“We—we were the ones who said—said to take the d-dog up the ladder with her.” I was stuttering like crazy.

 “Who’s we? Was that a half dozen of you bullies who destroyed my baby’s life?” Mrs. Evertt’s eyes were red and wet. She smeared the back of her hand across her nose and then on her pants.

“Just two of us.” I focused on her eyes, to control my stuttering. As I spoke the number, I felt the depravity of what I had done. Six bullies urging Enid to take the dog up a ladder meant each person would share one-sixth of the guilt. But no, it was just the two of us, Donna and I, sweet-talking Enid.

Mrs. Everett took a deep breath. Then she yelled, “Get out of my house!” She raised her hand to me. “I will never, never, never forgive you, as long as I live! May God give you a child, an only child! May God strike down your one and only child in the most reprehensible way imaginable!”

 I backed my way out of the house, bowing and scraping. As if she had done me a great service.

 Because in a strange way, she had done me a service. I had faced the worst of her anger. The adamantine wall of her unforgiveness.

It was a hard lesson to learn, that seeking forgiveness didn’t mean I would get it.

The End