The long way back, p.8
The Long Way Back, page 8
Lakeside Road is exactly what it sounds like, a path that dips down from Highway 61 and Landing proper to give locals access to Black Bear Park and the long row of lakefront homes. A few are fancy, new builds that were constructed after old cottages were torn down, but the farther out the houses are, the less they’ve changed. The Morrows and the Greenes are at the very end, and heading northwest there’s not much beyond the trees of Finland State Forest on one side and the lake on the other. But driving southeast, Charlie hits a brand-new chalet-style apartment building with a view of the water, and then a succession of colorful homes on both sides of the street.
The parking lot of Stuart’s Smokehouse on the corner of Lakeside Road and Highway 61—Landing’s only real landmark—is packed as usual. Stuart really does sell the best smoked salmon and sugar-cured lake trout that Charlie has ever tasted, but just the thought of all that fish makes her stomach flip today. She drives past quickly, hoping that nobody notices when she runs the stop sign as she makes the turn into town.
Landing isn’t much, and maybe that’s why Charlie hated it when she was younger. The gas station sells five-pound bags of wild rice and maple syrup in leaf-shaped glass jars, and everything feels rugged and outdoorsy in a straightforward, unassuming way. From the chainsaw carving of a beaver on the corner by the pharmacy to the rough-hewn logs that hold up the sign for Mugs, Landing confirms every stereotype of rural Minnesota.
Mugs looks busy on a Sunday afternoon, and Charlie makes a mental note to stop later so she can talk with Eva’s boss. Of course, what she really wants to do is head to the marina and take the Summer Moon out. She knows the water like the back of her hand, and many of the little islands and outcroppings that dot the shore of Lake Superior. Surely she could feel Eva out there. Surely she could sense her daughter’s presence and follow it like some genetically connected homing beacon. Charlie knows her daughter. But the marina is no doubt still crawling with rescue workers, the Summer Moon wreathed in electric-yellow police tape.
If she can’t actively search for Eva, Charlie wants to do the next best thing: try to understand what happened and why.
Charlie might not know much about Piper Berkley—other than she’s wholesome and happy, with flaxen hair and eyes the color of the lake in winter—but she knows where Eva’s best friend lives. Months ago, when the girls were working on a school project together, Charlie had to bring Piper home.
“Thanks, Ms. Sutton,” Piper had cooed as Charlie drove the steep hill toward the swankier part of Landing. Well, considering anything in Landing swanky was a stretch, but there was one newish subdivision with a handful of expensive homes. Piper’s was the imposing brick monstrosity at the end of a cul-de-sac.
“You can call me Charlie.” She had given the girl an expansive smile. Charlie didn’t mean to be so overeager, but the fact that Eva had invited a friend over was cause to celebrate. True, they were working on a project, but a friend was a friend.
Now, pulling into Piper’s stamped driveway on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Charlie is nearly effervescent with hope. Why didn’t she think of this earlier? She has no doubt that Piper will know what’s going on. This—whatever this is—is just a part of growing up. And when the entire melodramatic story is known, Charlie will be quietly mollified that they survived Eva’s teenage rebellion. At least, she hopes.
She parks behind one of the three garage doors and hurries up the walk toward a vaulted entryway, eager to see Piper and begin the process of putting this whole godawful ordeal behind them.
The doorbell chimes prettily through the massive house, and though the front door is frosted glass, Charlie can see a shape moving behind it. A dog? A child? She will have to be gentle but firm, and she expects there will be tears. Perhaps she and Piper’s mom will eventually have coffee to discuss their daughters’ antics, and Charlie is so deep in the throes of this particular fantasy that when someone wrenches the front door open, she startles.
It’s a towheaded boy of maybe eleven or twelve. He’s wearing a Golden Gophers sweatshirt and eating what looks like a bologna sandwich. “Yeah?” he says around a mouthful.
“Hi.” Charlie sticks out her hand and then quickly retracts it, eyeing the mayonnaise that oozes from between the slices of bread. “I’m Charlie Sutton. Eva’s mom?” It comes out as a question.
The boy takes another bite of his sandwich and stares at her.
“Evangeline?” Charlie tries. “Long dark hair, blue eyes. Piper’s friend. Is Piper here?”
At this he shrugs, then hollers over his shoulder: “Piper! Someone’s here to see you!”
Job done, he walks away without a backwards glance, leaving Charlie to stand on the threshold with the front door propped open. She’s not sure what to do, so she steps inside the palatial foyer and quietly closes the door behind her. The rug beneath her feet is expensive-looking, and the Hunter boots she tugged on are crusted with sand and dirt. She holds herself very carefully, willing her boots not to mar the beautiful rug.
Piper comes tripping down the stairs a moment later, dressed head to toe in Lululemon, with her hair pulled back in a high ponytail and looking just as fit and virtuous as she did so long ago. She pauses at the base of the steps as she considers Charlie, a kaleidoscope of emotions fluttering behind her eyes. Surprise wins. “Ms. Sutton. What are you doing here?”
“I’m so glad you’re home.” Charlie can barely get the words out. She feels herself slipping, all the assurance of only minutes ago seeping away as she considers the girl before her. “It’s Eva. I need to talk to you about Eva.”
“I heard,” Piper says, crossing her arms over her chest as if to ward off the terrible news. “Everyone’s saying… I mean, anyway, it’s really sad.”
She’s talking as if she already knows the outcome. “What’s everyone saying? Do you know where she is?” Charlie croaks.
Piper looks stricken. “I thought… The news said she’s missing.”
“I know. But do you know where she is?”
“No, I—”
“Did she tell you anything about what was going on? About why she would—”
“What’s going on here?” A woman in an olive-green nap dress interrupts Charlie by hurrying into the foyer. Her dyed blond hair is pressed flat on one side, and she looks as if she was indeed taking a nap.
From the way the woman rushes to Piper’s side, it’s clear that Charlie was making a scene. She doesn’t remember shouting, but she had to work so hard to get her questions out. They were thick as tar on her tongue. Maybe she was being a little loud—Charlie can hardly hear a thing over the sound of her own blood pumping in her ears.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie manages. “I’m Charlotte Sutton, Eva’s mom.”
“Jane Berkley. Piper’s mom.” She doesn’t offer her hand, and somehow the introduction feels like a challenge.
“Look, I just want to talk to Piper about Eva.”
Jane just gapes at her, and after a few beats Piper tells her mom in a stage whisper: “The girl who’s missing. The one on TV.”
“I’m here to find out if Piper knows anything about where Eva might be,” Charlie tries to explain. “I would have called, but I didn’t have your number.”
Piper tucks her arm through her mother’s and ducks her head to whisper something in the older woman’s ear. Charlie wants to shake her, but she stands her ground, belatedly registering the fact that she has stepped off the rug and is tracking grit across the hand-scraped hardwood floor.
“Ms. Sutton,” Jane finally says, “Piper has absolutely no idea what happened to your daughter. And frankly, I have no idea what made you think she would.”
This isn’t going at all how Charlie planned. Even more concerning is the fact that Piper seems almost defensive. Charlie decides to address the teen directly. “I just need to know if Eva was acting strange. Did she seem different to you? Did anything happen at school that was out of the ordinary?”
The serious look in Jane’s eyes tells Charlie that she’s getting loud again. She balls her hands into fists and digs her fingernails into her palms in an effort to wrangle back some control. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just trying to find my daughter.”
At this, Jane softens a bit, but she doesn’t move from the foot of the stairs where’s she’s wrapped around her own daughter. It’s not lost on Charlie that Piper is safe and sound—in her mother’s arms—while Eva is missing. Charlie’s hands itch with the longing to pull Eva into a hug and never let go.
“I’m so sorry about… what’s happening,” Jane says. “But I don’t think Piper can tell you anything about Eva’s whereabouts.”
Standing beside her mother, Piper seems braver. “Eva’s nice and all, but why would I know where she is? We’re not even friends,” she says quietly.
The edge of Charlie’s vision sparks black. “What? I don’t understand. You’re Eva’s best friend. You guys hang out all the time. You pick her up from Mugs and go driving until all hours of the night. You were together Friday! She texted me from…” Charlie trails off, fumbling for her phone and the text that will prove to Piper that she was just with Eva—that they were together, having fun—only a couple nights ago. Eva told her as much. But as her fingers claw at the screen, Piper is assuring her mother that it’s simply not true.
“I haven’t spoken to Eva since we had to do that world cultures project together,” the girl says, her voice high and frantic. “That was months ago. Mr. Peterson assigned partners and she was mine. I swear we haven’t seen each other since. I don’t know anything about her disappearance. We only have the one class together and we sit on opposite sides of the room.”
Jane Berkley’s eyes are huge and glassy with unshed tears; she’s clearly torn between compassion for another mother and the desire to protect her own child. She studies Piper for a long moment and then looks up, her decision made. “I think you need to go,” she tells Charlie. “Truly, I’m so sorry that your daughter is missing, but you heard Piper: she hasn’t talked to Eva in months.”
“But—”
“You need to leave now.” Jane seems deeply unsettled by the whole situation, and conflicted about what exactly to do, but she steps around Charlie to open the door anyway.
Charlie can feel the fear radiate off them both, these women who were supposed to be her allies and friends. They’re afraid of her, of her desperation and their sudden, shocking proximity to her tragedy. But Piper is also afraid of what Charlie is claiming, and as Charlie searches the teenager’s face for any sign of deception, she understands that what Piper is saying is true: she and Eva were not friends.
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Charlie whispers around the lump in her throat. “I guess I was… I didn’t know…”
“We’ll be praying for you and Eva,” Jane says as she holds the door. There is real sympathy in her eyes.
Charlie can’t say I’m sorry or thank you or even squeak out another word. She leaves quietly, flinching a little as the door thumps shut behind her. The unmistakable click of a dead bolt sliding home punctuates her departure.
In Mack’s truck, Charlie manages to back out of the driveway and crawl to the end of the road before she has to pull over. The Berkleys might be watching her from behind their locked door, but she can’t be bothered to care. She can’t drive, not safely. If Piper isn’t Eva’s friend—the girl who she allegedly spent countless nights with: playing games in a booth at Mugs, getting ice cream from the Dairy Dandy, watching movies in the Berkleys’ basement—what has she been doing for the past several months?
And what else has Eva lied about?
INSTAGRAM POST #456
“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The world is our classroom.
Well, it’s Eva’s literal classroom, and Charlie takes more of a metaphorical approach. To say these past months on the road haven’t been chock-full of learning experiences would be the understatement of the century. Don’t misunderstand us: traditional education is important, necessary, transformative, and all the other adjectives we forgot to employ. (Please don’t @ us. We love school!) But our blend of homeschool and distance learning has opened up a world of possibilities for us both. Eva can follow passion projects and explore the topics that pique her interest (provided she keeps up with curriculum requirements as outlined by the Minnesota school board), and Charlie gets to play the part of guide and co-learner depending on Eva’s trending curiosities. Our current obsession? The writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Who knew a German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident would so capture our imaginations? We recommend Letters and Papers from Prison as well as his biography written by Eberhard Bethge, his best friend. Fair warning: it’s not for the faint of heart! We’re slowly, methodically working our way through it. Of course, it helps when the gulf waves are our soundtrack.
#dietrichbonhoeffer #everyjourney #sanibelisland #evaexplores #wherenext
Always take the long way back,
Charlie & Eva
[IMAGE CONTENTS: A dog-eared copy of Letters and Papers from Prison lays closed on the sand. Tiny calico scallop shells dot the cover and a spectacular black-and-white striped king’s crown rests on one corner. The sand is pearl-colored and fine as flour, and in the background, waves break against a Sanibel Island beach.]
Florida was humid. So humid that when they woke up in the morning, everything was wet and sparkling. Water pooled on the hood of the truck, collected on the palm fronds that edged their campsite, and puddled on the picnic table. Eva took the side of her hand and swooped it off, spraying sheets of water that made tiny rainbows in the bright slant of early sun. Charlie and Eva were perpetually damp, tendrils of hair clinging to the sides of their necks, and it was in Fort Myers that Charlie decided to chop it all off.
“Are you sure?” the hairdresser asked, holding the warm heft of Charlie’s long waves in her hands. “I can’t glue it back on.”
Charlie looked at her reflection in the mirror, at Eva standing just over one shoulder, and nodded. Eva had always been her little copy, and Charlie was grateful that her daughter didn’t look much like the man who shared her bed for a couple of weeks in her early twenties and then disappeared to the East Coast. But she didn’t want to be mistaken for Eva’s sister anymore. The months on the road had been kind to Eva, and their outdoor lifestyle had contoured her body and turned her skin golden in all the ways Charlie knew it would. Her daughter was sturdy and strong, with more than a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and a lopsided grin that was toothy and infectious—and somehow it didn’t feel right for Charlie to match this new, growing up version of Eva.
So the hairdresser wrapped an elastic band around the hair at the base of Charlie’s neck, and hacked off her thick, sable mane. She clipped close to the scalp beneath Charlie’s ears, then added a few face-framing layers, and in less than an hour Charlie emerged from the salon a completely different version of herself.
“You look like a movie star!” Eva enthused, practically dancing around Charlie as they headed to the truck.
“I was going for rock star.”
Eva walked backwards, framing Charlie in a rectangle with her fingers and squinting. “I’d buy it. All you need are a few tattoos.”
“Nah.”
“Temporary,” Eva countered. She’d been begging for a tattoo for months, and practicing with a set of custom designs that they’d received from an upstart company. The motifs were all boho chic, mandalas and arrows and crescent moons. Eva was currently sporting a tiny feather on the inside of her left wrist. It was beginning to flake off. “Just try one. You’re going to love it. We could get matching ones. You’d be the coolest mom ever.”
“I’m already the coolest mom ever, and I’m not letting my fifteen-year-old get a tattoo,” Charlie said.
“Buzzkill. Spoilsport. Party pooper.”
“Check, check, check,” Charlie punctuated each word with a flourish of her finger.
She had given Eva freedom, independence, and a life crammed to bursting with incredible experiences, but Charlie had to draw the line somewhere. Tattoos could wait until Eva’s frontal lobe was fully developed. Still, Charlie felt a prick of remorse when Eva avoided her for the rest of the day, opting instead to join a pickup game of volleyball at the campground’s sand court, and then walking away deliberately when Charlie came to watch.
It was then that the niggling doubts crept in. Would it really be so bad if Eva got a little tattoo? Something small and understated to remind her of their travels?
By suppertime, Charlie had almost convinced herself that the tattoo was a good idea. Eva had even suggested matching ones. What fifteen-year-old wanted to get a matching tattoo with her mother? Charlie smiled to herself as she threw hamburger patties on their charcoal grill and sliced a ripe tomato nice and thin, just the way Eva liked it. They were out of buns, but they had plenty of romaine, and with some sautéed mushrooms and onions she reasoned they wouldn’t miss the carbs one bit. Thinking of her daughter and cataloging all the ways Eva was extraordinary had made Charlie soft and sentimental, anxious to love her girl in some tangible way, and her favorite burgers fit the bill.
But when the sun began to dip low in the sky and paint the downy clouds watercolor pink, Eva was nowhere to be found. The hamburgers were starting to blacken at the edges, the tomato limp and seeping on a well-worn plastic plate. Scout was moody and restless, complaining at passersby in a rumble that was just shy of a growl.
