Page 24 of The Woods

“What the fuck?”

He laughs and her insides ooze at the way his green eyes shine so brightly and one side of his mouth quirks up.

“I know,” he says, once he’s stopped laughing. “It’s weird. I used to have one, back when I had social media.” He looks up at the sky as though his memory of that time is in the stars. “I was on it all the time, scrolling, posting, answering texts. I was a slave.” He looks back at her. “It’s not really living, you know. Then one day it’s like I woke up. I deleted my social media accounts, got rid of my phone, and finally felt free.” He shrugs, but his expression is serious. “I understand if you think that’s too weird and don’t want to hang out. I mean, I get it.”

Without thinking she shakes her head. As though it’s involuntary, as though someone else made the decision for her. “I still want to hang out. I think it’s weird but I kind of get it.”

“Cool,” he says, nodding slowly and smiling. Strangely, she feels as though she’s just passed his test, and not the other way around.

“How will we, like, contact each other, then?” She hopes she doesn’t come across as desperate.

“I have a landline, but I’m never really at home for long to answer it.” He nods at her bedroom window and smiles playfully. “Or I could just tap three times on your window when I’m here?”

“But how will I know when you’re coming?”

He raises one eyebrow and smirks. “You won’t. That’s the fun of it.” She huffs with frustration, and he laughs. “I think this will be good for you.”

She gives him a flirtatious swat on the arm. “I’m not Rapunzel, you know. I won’t let my hair down just because you show up at my window.”

He reaches out and weaves his fingers into her hair, then gently runs them through it. The movement is so slow and soft and seductive that her breath catches. “I’ll keep trying until you do,” he whispers before taking a step back into the woods. “But for now—‘these woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.’ ”

“That sounds familiar. What is it?” Polly calls out as he continues moving away.

“It’s from a Robert Frost poem,” he calls back. “Look it up.”

She watches him go until the darkness swallows him completely. She pulls her phone out and types in “Robert Frost poem, woods dark and deep.” Google states that the overall meaning of the poem “conveys an attraction toward death.” Looking up from her phone and into the woods full of shadows, she shivers. She can’t quite tell if it’s from the cold, the lingering excitement of seeing Gray, or that now-familiar sensation that something is in there, looking back at her.

Geoff

“Do you not care about the safety of our kids?” Alice’s question hits him like a right hook just as he’s easing into bed. He should have known it was coming. Alice was cool to him all evening, her behavior set at a temperature to convince the kids that they were getting along but with a chill that only he could feel. After twenty-two years of marriage, he detects even the most subtle changes in atmosphere.

“That’s a loaded question,” he replies. “If I say I do, you’ll point out whatever I’ve done to make you think I don’t. And if I say I don’t, then I’m a monster and I’m lying.”

Alice sits up in bed. “I ask you to call Animal Control and you don’t. Then you act like my putting a trail cam up is some silly kind of overreaction. As though having our lawn littered with mutilated animal corpses is no big deal.”

He pushes himself up and shoves the covers away. The room’s stuffy from the day’s heat and he feels too vulnerable lying down while she’s leaning over him in her tirade. “I think littered with corpses is a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Don’t edit my words, Geoff,” she snaps back, her cheeks flushed. “I know you fancy yourself a writer, but you spend more time sleeping in that writing studio than anything else.”

He throws the covers all the way off his body and gets out of the bed. The sting of her words is like poison in his veins. She can get under his skin like nobody else in the world. He wants to reach over and strangle that self-righteous look off her face, which is why he knows it’s time to leave.

He goes to the dresser and pulls out a bathing suit. “I’m going for a swim,” he says.

“Are you?” she says. “Or are you going to drink bourbon in your little hideaway?”

“Good idea,” he says, turning to her with a smile. “I think I’ll do both and leave you with your hot flashes and menopausal rage.” His words cause Alice to gasp as though he’s struck her.

In a moment of vulnerability, just after Alice had turned fifty and had her first hot flash, she’d told Geoff that she was pretty sure she was in perimenopause, and it scared her. That she’d heard horror stories of women going crazy from it, changing completely, ending marriages and friendships. In the moment, Geoff had been sympathetic and supportive, but that moment passed quickly, and her concern became part of his arsenal against her, knowing the impact it would have. Not so unlike the barbs she uses about his writing when she’s looking to injure him. Marriage—an exposing of one’s soft underbelly while handing over the sharpest knife possible to slit it open.

“You’re pathetic,” she rasps. “I put everything I have into this family. Can you say the same, Geoff? Can you?”

“Of course I can’t, Alice,” he replies as calmly as he can, to counter her heightened state, another tactic that drives her crazy. “Nobody could possibly compare to you.” He leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

Pausing in the dark of the hallway to slide off his boxer shorts and put on his bathing suit, he hears Alice start crying on the other side of the door. His anger shrivels and guilt slides in. He considers going back in, apologizing, trying to smooth it all over.

“Fucking asshole.” Her words, spoken through the tears, find him out in the hall.

In retaliation, he leaves his boxer shorts on the floor outside the door.