Out of the Woods

Krista licked her fingers and pinched out the flame between them, sliding the tray under the little bench table as the shuddering ladder spawned a shadowy head. Shining a flashlight over the incoming face, Krista said, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

Eric blinked and grinned, hauling himself up into the ancient treehouse. “Hey yourself! I’m just in town for the weekend.”

Scootching over to make space, Krista said, “Okay, but why are you here, climbing rope ladders in the middle of the night?”

Folding awkwardly in the cramped space, Eric attempted a shrug. “Pot, kettle. I figured you’d be here.”

“You figured?”

“I hoped.”

“You hoped,” Krista said. “Didn’t want to call first?”

Eric grimaced. “Haven’t called you in five years?”

Krista pressed a gentle finger to Eric’s knee. “Pot, kettle. How are you?”

“Good,” said Eric. “Better. How about you? I don’t see a ring.”

“I met somebody, but it’s early days.” Krista dragged her enormous purse across the boards and fished out her cell phone. “Not ready for the full crazy. How’s what’s-her-name?”

Eric ran his fingertip over deep gouges in the worn wood frame, tracing a K, a lopsided E. “Making use of the settlement, I guess. That’s two divorces.”

"So far."

"So far."

“Any kids?”

Chilled silence descended on the timbers. Krista dug through her cavernous purse and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Eric waved it away. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“Mind if I do?” Krista yanked out the cork and helped herself to a swig. “How are your folks?”

“Oh, the same,” Eric mumbled. “Ma says to say hi to you.”

“You told her you were coming here?”

“No, she just…that’s just a thing she says,” Eric winced. “Used to say it real loud around my ex-wives. Probably have an aneurysm if you said hi back.”

After another burning swallow, Krista mumbled, “Say I said hi, then.”

Eric studied her, his chin in his hand. “Are you okay? I know it’s a hard day.”

“Oh, I’m just fine.” Krista blinked and wiped her face. “Bought a house in Bodega Bay. Volunteer at the food bank twice a week. Choir at church.”

“Good for you,” Eric said. “I like hearing you sing.”

“I feel like a fraud.”

Krista let Eric take the liquor out of her hands. He set the bottle down next to the flashlight, throwing amber shade across the walls. Krista drew her knees up to her chin, rocking back and forth on the worn boards. “I’m doing everything right, and it just feels empty.”

Reaching under the bench table, Eric discovered the tray. He turned the small cake in his hands, white sugar frosting glistening in the summer air, with a black-wicked candle on top. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve come.”

Leaning over, Krista prodded Eric with the toe of her shoe. “I’m glad you’re here. Now.”

Eric rummaged around in Krista’s purse, picking past the uncapped pens and softened receipts. “I hated leaving like that. I made a promise to you.”

“Wasn’t up to you.”

“I could’ve fought harder. Probably shouldn’t’ve punched your dad.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Me, too, but you needed better.”

Krista rested her chin on her knees. “We were just kids; there was nothing you could do.”

The lighter was nearly out of fuel when Eric fished it from the purse, friction zipping his skin as he thumbed the wheel. After a few futile sparks, he lit the wick with a soft yellow flame. Setting the little white cake on the table, Eric turned off the flashlight, snuggling in beside Krista to watch the candle in the dark.

“It was a girl.”

Welling tears lodged high and tight in Krista’s throat. “The baby was a girl. August eighth, eight pounds, eight ounces. Little Katie Eighty-Eight. And she’s eighteen today.”

Eric leaned his head on Krista’s shoulder, his arm around her waist. Her ribs heaved and shuddered in his hands. “She’s old enough to vote,” Krista breathed. “Old enough to come and find me. But what if she doesn’t? What if she hates me, because she needed her mother, and I wasn’t there?”

White wax dripped onto the crystalline icing as the candle burned lower. Eric smoothed a hand over Krista’s hair. “You’re here now,” he said softly. “And when she calls for you, you will be right there for her. And until then, I will be right here for you.”

A hollow laugh barked from Krista’s tear-stained face. “You have got to stop making promises you can’t keep.”

Eric frowned at the dancing shadows the guttering candle scattered over the walls. “No,” he said. “I have to start keeping the promises I make. You need to stop pretending you’re fine, and go full crazy.”

“That work out for your ex-wives?”

“Okay, okay,” Eric shrugged, tucking Krista’s hair behind her ear. “Beats choking on your secrets. So busy doing everything right, you don’t even know what you want. You might keep people from rejecting you for who you are, but no one gets to accept you, either.”

Krista laced her fingers through Eric’s. “Sometimes I get this urge to just grab strangers in the street and say ‘When I was fifteen, they took away my baby’. Like that’s the missing puzzle piece that’ll make me make sense.”

A heavy sigh deflated Eric’s chest. “I’m so sorry. If I had any idea it would hurt so much, I never would have…We were kids. We were friends. And I ruined it.”

Krista pressed a finger against his chest. “Takes two to tango, dummy. You forget: I asked you.”

“I didn’t forget.” Eric watched the flickering flame. “I hope you call me, if she contacts you. But also if she doesn’t. On those days when she’s all you think about, and there’s no one there. You can call me. I’ll answer.”

Trapping both of his hands between hers, Krista searched the warm shadows of his familiar face. “Let’s make a promise. And maybe we break it, but let’s make one anyway. No more secrets. No more excuses. Katie Eighty-Eight is not a child anymore, so it’s high time her parents grow the fuck up.”

Eric snorted. “Quite a thing to say in a treehouse.”

Faded paint peeled from the weather-worn timbers, circular burns from long-extinct joints next to a ladder of height-marking notches. A bigger burn from a disrupted séance had imprisoned the jeweled heads of scattered dum-dums in the defunct trapdoor. Krista knew that place so well, all the fraying seams between hardwood and fantasy. The exact radial distance anyone could hear the screams. “I hate this place.”

Stretching out his semi-asleep legs, Eric offered, “You want to get out of here?”

Krista’s glassy eyes reflected twin flames. “Not yet.”

The arson investigation would uncover the cause as a small birthday candle, with a bottle of whiskey as an accelerant. Several of the older houses on the edge of the woods were uninhabitable by the time the blaze was contained, residents who had been there for generations forced abruptly to move on.

Missed by firefighters, among the charred splinters of blackened trees, was a small, singed plank half-buried beneath the ash. Hacked into the rough wood with a pocket knife, between a jagged K and a shallow E, was a bold and hopeful 8.