Page 33 of Poison Wood

We’ll be there.

I drive back to the interstate and head for Riverbend, my thoughts buzzing around the fact Heather did not die out in those woods.

I’m trying to make sense of it. Trying to reconcile the emotions I’ve carried with me over the years about that night, when I believed one of my classmates was murdered.

Heather never quite fit in with us. She never quite fit in with any group. She was from California originally but had been sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Louisiana when her parents died. None of us ever considered what it must have been like for her to be sent to that school in the middle of a swampy forest so soon after the loss of her parents. At least I’d had a few years to adjust to losing my mom. Heather was thrown into the mix after cliques had formed. She didn’t stand a chance with Katrina and Summer. But she and I had formed a secret friendship. Two girls who lost their mothers, watching as the others complained about theirs.

I shift the truck into drive, pull away from the curb, and an hour later I take the exit to the hospital where my dad is recovering.

It’s time for us to talk.

Chapter Nine

Riverbend, Louisiana

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

3:35 p.m. CST

Thick gray clouds skirt over me as I walk across the giant parking lot in front of the hospital. I keep my head down against the cold wind as I enter and take the elevator to the fifth floor. My body is starting to feel the strain of this day, and it’s not even five o’clock. At the rate I’m going I might be passed out by that time.

In my father’s room, a nurse who, thankfully, isn’t a former Poison Wood student is checking my father’s chart. Debby is on the sofa, staring at her cell phone. A plastic container of cupcakes sits on the tray next to my father’s bed with a teddy bear holding a red heart and a balloon tied to it that saysHappy Valentine’s Day.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, moving to his side.

He smiles up at me. His face looks only slightly less pale than earlier. “Where’ve you been?”

“Had to run a little errand,” I say.

Debby coughs, but it sounds like she may have said something too.

I pick up the teddy bear. “It’s not Valentine’s Day yet.”

“We celebrate on the thirteenth,” Debby says, looking up. “So our dinner out won’t be so overpriced.”

I set the bear back down. “Smart.”

“No dinner for us tonight, though,” he says, and I catch the look between them.

“It’s okay, hon,” Debby says.

I try to remember if he looked at my mother that way, and it bothers me that I can’t.

“This is my daughter,” my father says to the nurse.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. Then she turns back to my dad. “Okay, let’s try again.”

My father sits up, holding an odd clear plastic thing in his hand. He blows into it as the nurse watches. A little ball inside it moves up, and she makes a note of it and my father bursts into a coughing fit.

“Good job,” she says. “Better than yesterday.” She takes the equipment from him, then smiles at me as if his horrible coughing is music to her ears. “I was just telling your dad it’s time to get moving. He needs to walk two laps down the hall today to get his ticket out of here tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I say. “But what if—” I start to say, but my father interrupts me.

“There aren’t going to be any what-ifs,” he says.

The nurse looks between us. “Okay, so two laps. Got it?”

My dad nods, and the nurse leaves us alone. I walk to the side of his bed. He’s wearing a hospital gown, and his hair looks like it needs to be washed. I don’t like this look for him. It’s too ... sickly.