Page 29 of It’s You

D arcy loved the drive south from Carlisle, in the far north of New Hampshire, to Dartmouth, south in Hanover.

But all of that lush spring beauty and rich history was lost on Darcy as her thoughts and feelings courted chaos in her head.

Her heart stretched painfully as the distance from Carlisle, from Jack, lengthened.

It was as though her heart physically remained in Carlisle while her body traveled south without it, and the tendons and muscles strained against the growing expanse between them.

By the time she reached the Moore Reservoir on the Vermont border, she pulled her car over at the North Littleton boat launch for the express purpose of deciding whether or not to turn around and go home.

She looked at her flushed, cherry red cheeks in the rearview mirror, then rolled down her window halfway. The cool, mid-morning air was bracing, and Darcy took a deep breath, soothed by the view of the vast lake before her.

As tears gathered in her eyes, she put her head back against the headrest and went inside.

Darcy.

Darcy.

Darcy.

She could hear Jack’s faraway voice, but the forest was covered in thick mist when she opened her eyes, and the stark monochromatic palette was jarring to her.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up straighter against the tree trunk where she found herself.

Her legs were crossed in front of her, the edge of her white linen shift just touching her white satin-slippered feet.

Her fingers fluttered gently over something soft on the ground by her side, and she looked down to see emerald green moss in spongy bunches, growing out of hard, white granite surrounding the base of the tree.

The contrast made her blink. Vibrant green and white in a sea of mist, softness growing effortlessly out of tiny fissures in the rock.

Leucobryum, she thought absently , cushion moss.

Darcy hadn’t spoken inside for a long time, but she tried her voice now.

“Jack?” She breathed into the fog, and she saw the letters of his name in silver mist swirl from her mouth, repeating as it dispersed, until the forest echoed softly with his name before falling silent, before the silver blended forgotten into the gray around her. “I miss you.”

She watched her words disperse and disappear again. You, you, you until it was silent. Almost silent.

She realized something was coming closer. She heard the footfalls and inclined her head to the left as it came closer. Her eyes widened as an enormous black wolf made his way out of the mist, sitting at the base of a tree not far from Darcy, training its glowing yellow eyes on her.

Jack’s voice was low and deep in her head.

I belong to you.

Her eyes opened abruptly, and she squinted, blinking against the sunshine sparkling on the water before her. A heavily bearded older man was rapping lightly on the lower half of her open window.

“Girlie? You awake now? How about moving your car if you’re not launching? Trying to get some fishing done.” He hooked his thumb back toward his waiting trailer behind her.

“Oh! Yes. Sorry. I dozed off.”

“You sure were out.” He chuckled. “Beeped twice. Lucky thing I came along and not someone with untoward ideas.”

Darcy looked at his grizzled face, her stomach turning over from the faint smell of gutted fish emanating from his lure vest. She cringed, and he stepped back, offended.

“Just move your doggone car.” He stomped away, and Darcy looked after him helplessly, wishing she could apologize for her expression, but it was too late.

She put her car in Drive and made a wide turn out of the launching area, and back toward the main road. She took a deep breath, feeling better. She hadn’t seen Jack, but she’d heard his voice, and it soothed her.

The black wolf.

He appeared more and more in her soul flight, especially since Jack had reappeared.

Darcy knew that the Métis claimed a special connection to the wolf.

Willow’s favorite T-shirt growing up had been silk-screened with the original flag of the Métis people: a wolf’s head in the middle, flanked by feathers with the unity symbol underneath.

Jack’s surname bore some tribute to the wolf, perhaps making it totemic to him. She would have to ask him on Thursday.

As she pulled back onto the highway headed south, she thought about her conversation with Willow yesterday. It bothered Darcy. More and more.

Although Willow hadn’t ruled out the possibility that it was a legend she wasn’t acquainted with, Darcy knew that Willow’s depth and breadth of Métis knowledge was vast and sound.

It was unlikely there could be a whole sub-tribe of the Métis that practiced beliefs about which Willow knew nothing.

It didn’t make sense. Which left one alternative.

Jack was lying to her.

Of the many relationship deal-breakers in Darcy Turner’s life, lying was at the top of the list. She would not engage in a relationship that wasn’t built on honesty.

At the hint of deceit, Darcy cut bait. As she had learned with Phillip, deceit led to secrets, to cheating, and eventually to heartbreak.

If Jack was lying to her about who he was, how he felt, and what he believed, there was no room for him in her life.

As much as it would hurt, she would rather turn her back on him now than have her heart broken in half later.

She didn’t realize she was crying until a fat drop plopped on her shirt, making a blotchy wet spot on her chest. She reached up and swiped the rest away with the backs of her hands, desperately hoping that Jack wasn’t lying to her.

Saying goodbye to him would not only be excruciating. If they were truly bound by some mystical force, there was a good chance it would be impossible.

“Mm-hmm, Darcy Turner, you are a sight for these sore, old eyes!” declared Miss Kendrick, pulling Darcy into her thick, warm, brown arms.

The aptly named Fern Kendrick had been a fixture in the Life Sciences Greenhouse for as long as Darcy had been working there.

She had started her tenure on the janitorial staff in the 1960s, but the administration had noted her fondness and care for the plants of the sciences department after a decade of extra watering, trimming, and babying of the various greenery they kept for research purposes.

Over time, her janitorial duties were phased out so that she could be the full-time caretaker of the outdoor research gardens and indoor samples.

When the modern greenhouse was completed in 1995, Annabelle Fern Kendrick not only cut the ceremonial ribbon, but was the first person to enter the greenhouse, and was often found by “Fern’s Fountain,” the affectionate name for the gurgling marble fountain set in the center of the large building where students and professors often met for impromptu lessons.

She was in her sixties now, and without the benefit of a diploma or degree, Miss Kendrick couldn’t be officially named to the Dartmouth faculty, but she owned the respect of every member and was consulted on botanical questions by educators and botanists all over New England.

“How are you, Miss Kendrick?”

“Darcy, we’ve been workin’ together these ten years. When’re you goin’ to call me Fern?”

“Never,” said Darcy, grinning at her and shaking her head. “Can’t do it. Until I know more than you, I can’t do it.”

Miss Kendrick beamed at Darcy and pulled her over to a table of samples. “Come and see your babies.”

Darcy looked at the beds of moss and lichen under the dim, lavender lights. “The Parmeliaceae lichen looks good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Did you try extracting the olivetol yet?”

“Yes, I did. And what exactly are you goin’ to do with it?” she asked Darcy with a disapproving look.

“Not synthesize it into THC, Miss Kendrick.” She rolled her eyes. As if! “But who knows what other helpful properties it might have, right? It’s the responsibility of botany to help the world, if possible.”

“Well, if you were goin’ to test the psychoactive nature of it, I’d suggest mixin’ it with somethin’ acidic, like fresh orange juice.

You could bring a reaction to the olivetol with the essential oil from an orange peel in the presence of phosphoryl chloride.

Or just react the olivetol with a-pinene, maybe. ”

“And that is why it will always be impossible for me to call you anything but Miss Kendrick,” Darcy said without a shred of irony.

The older woman chuckled. “Somethin’ else too, as long as we’re on the subject of things you can synthesize and smoke illegally…

we been so busy with your lichen sample, we been ignoring the Lycopodium, the clubmoss.

Now, I’ve been readin’ up, and this stuff is like a super drug.

Relief for arthritis, rheumatism, and other complaints. ”

She pulled a small tray closer to the front of the table, and Darcy leaned over it with a magnifying glass.

Miss Kendrick continued with a smile in her voice. “Native Americans called it Lost-in-the-Woods because, in addition to the positive implications, it gave them a fuzzy, confused head if they dried it and smoked it. Which, of course, they did.”

“Of course. What’s the common name of this one? I know it’s a Lycopodium clavatum, but…”

Miss Kendrick squinted over the sample. “Uh? That there’s called wolf’s-foot clubmoss. Also called wolf’s-paw.”

“Hmm…” All roads lead to wolves today, she thought to herself, admiring the lime-green color of the tall moss. “I have to teach in twenty minutes. Will you gather together a few samples for me? The Parmeliaceae and the Lycopodium clavatum ? I’m going to take them back with me.”

“Aren’t you stayin’ over tonight, Darcy, honey?”

Darcy took a deep breath. Although her anxiety had lessened since going inside at the launch and with the company of Miss Kendrick, she still felt a strong pull to return home.