Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke - 48

The next morning, Mary packs quickly. I watch as her hands fly in and out of the little sack I’ll take with me on my journey. Two canteens of water, a chunk of my own shitty homemade bread. Four strips of salted fish. A big can of preserved peaches.

“Aren’t the peaches a bit heavy?”

“You’ll be happy for the sweetness,” she says, and though I’d rather not carry that weight, I can tell it matters to her that I take them, and so I say nothing. While she moves around the kitchen, I sit at the table, trying to memorize her face.

Something I’ve realized, in the moments since I began to pack: I will never step foot in this house again. I’ll do my best to help Maeve, I’ll try to find the doctor—really, I will—but I’ll kill myself before I ever return to this place. Which means I’m saying goodbye.

“You’ll stick to the woods,” Mary says. “Do you hear me? Stay out of sight.”

“But what about the traps?”

She doesn’t look at me when she says, quietly, “There’s—well, there’s only just that one.”

I breathe in quickly. “ Mary. ”

She gives me an agonized look. “If you’d known that, Mama, you would have run away again, you were in such a mood, those were such bad days, and I just—” She lets out a frustrated groan. “I was just trying to keep you safe! Is that really so terrible?”

I could have escaped months ago. Before the weather turned cold. Before I was pregnant. All this time, while I’ve been staring out at the woods, imagining dozens or maybe hundreds of booby traps—there was nothing. Just leaves. I want to slap Mary, I want to kill her, but also, I feel a rushing tenderness for her, too.

Look at how soft I’ve become. A pile of jelly. I think it’s because I’m leaving, and because I will never see her face again, that I’m able to feel so much love for her. Silly, stupid girl, I think fondly. You trapped me here so easily, you clever child, you unbelievable bitch.

There it is, on the tip of my tongue: an instinct to say I love you.

It’s true. I love her. I love her very much, this strange young woman. Maeve, too, and the boys. I’ve never said that to any of them. I consider saying it now.

Instead, I say, “Tell me where to go.”

This is what Mary has been keeping from me.

There are trails all around us. Well-trodden and marked and maintained by Old Caleb and the neighbors. The markings I should look for are triangles, carved into the bark of the birch trees. Those will lead me straight to the neighbors’ house. (Amazing: in a single sudden stream of language, Mary has turned the labyrinth of this world into a neatly organized map.) It will take several hours, she warns me, maybe much longer. The last time she went, she was younger, and it seemed to take forever to get there. She doesn’t trust her own concept of time, and anyways, I still walk very slowly. I should plan to be gone for the rest of the day, at least. “I’ll shut the bedroom door and tell Pa you have a fever, too. He won’t want to catch it—he’s terrified of illness. That’ll give you at least a day, maybe longer.”

“So you’ve been there before? The neighbor’s house?”

“Once,” she says. “Or I think I have.” She pauses, frowning. “I remember a house like this one, only different. It was nicer. It must have been theirs.”

On the porch, Mary says, “You’re going to come back, right?”

I turn to look at her. Her eyes are bright and wet. So she knows, or at least suspects, what I’m thinking. I wonder what will happen to her once I’m gone. What will happen to all of them. What will happen to the chicken, and the cow, and the horse. The sock puppets. The kitchen knives. “Of course,” I say. “Of course I’ll come back.”

“Good.” She’s suddenly busy tying the straps of my pack. “Because Maeve would miss you terribly if you went away.”

I close my eyes. A tear falls down my cheek. I hope these girls are not hallucinations. And also, just as fiercely: I hope they are.

A finger brushes the tear from my cheek.

“Go,” Mary says.

I open my eyes. I do as she says: I go. Down the steps, past the chicken coop, then the barn, and suddenly the entire ranch is behind me. I’m past the patch of dirt where Old Caleb slapped me, and then I’m past the base of the hill where Noah ran screaming from me, and then I’m farther than I’ve ever been. I don’t turn around, but I feel Mary watching me. Willing me forward with her gaze.