The Cabin on Souder Hill Read online

  “What, you’re hungry?” he asked. “You don’t even like McDonald’s.”

  “I want you to pull into their parking lot,” she said. When Cliff stopped, Michelle bolted from the vehicle toward the highway. Traffic rushed past as she rounded the pin oaks at the edge of the parking lot. Cliff chased after her.

  Michelle stopped in front of the sign. Letters five feet high spelled out the words NOTHING SELLS FASTER THAN PINK. Below the headline it read: Call Pink Souder to find or sell your home FAST!

  There was a phone number and a picture of a cherub-faced man who looked to be in his forties, wearing a cowboy hat and pink shirt and a black western-style string tie. His smile seemed to be the only thing holding his heavy, round cheeks apart. His teeth were white as blocks of ice and his blue eyes followed wherever Michelle walked until she was standing beneath him. Cliff ran up behind her.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  Michelle recalled the sheriff telling her the Pink Souder story, how Pink had allegedly killed his wife and buried her on the property, and how he and his mother had disappeared soon after. Had she dreamed all that? She could still hear Fisk chuckling, recounting the tale about Mattie turning Pink into an ass and riding out of town like the Virgin Mary. There was a small rip in the billboard below Pink’s chin, and for a moment Michelle got lost in it.

  “Sheriff Fisk told me about Pink Souder and his wife, Isabelle,” she said. “She’s supposed to be dead . . . and Pink is supposed to have vanished.”

  She turned to Cliff, but he looked worried, frightened. Some part of her wanted to drive to Pink’s office to confront him, see what he would say about the cabin, the sheriff’s story.

  “You never talked to Sheriff Fisk,” Cliff said. “How could he have told you anything about anyone?”

  “Then how did I know Fisk’s name?” Michelle said. “And Deputy Bogan?” Now she remembered everything and realized that talking to Cliff was futile. He teared up anytime she tried to explain what had happened or asked him a question. He couldn’t listen. It was obvious he thought she was crazy. Michelle readily admitted something was amiss, but she couldn’t explain it. And she didn’t understand Cliff. She felt like she hardly knew him.

  “I don’t know, Michelle,” Cliff said. “Let’s just go home.”

  Michelle turned back toward the car, not waiting for Cliff. She missed Cassie. The rest of this could be figured out later. She glanced briefly back at the billboard, back at Pink Souder, then opened the door of the Rover.

  Chapter 5

  He would fire Clarence as soon as he got back to the office. “Put your eyeballs on that view out there, folks,” Pink said, pointing at the picture window in the living room. While his clients stared out at the mountains, nodding their heads in sync, Pink brushed mouse shit off the kitchen counters. “Goddamn you, Clarence,” he said under his breath.

  “Hey, folks, let me show you the deck,” Pink said, wedging himself between the elderly couple, guiding them out with a hand on each of their backs. “Breathe that air. None finer in all of North Carolina.” The woman took a short breath, while the man ignored Pink’s inducement. His attention was on the railing, more exactly, on something between the railing and the exterior wall.

  “That looks like termites,” the man said, taking a step closer to the dried mud trail between the board and the siding.

  “Not in these parts, Mr. Hodges,” Pink said. “No termites up here, not at this altitude. They can’t breathe up this high.” Pink had immediately recognized the telltale sign though. He knew termites, as pesky and ornery as they were, could probably survive on the moon.

  “Those are mud daubers. They build their nests out of mud, on walls, just like that one. Probably got little ones in there right now. Mud daubers are good for the place, keep the mice away. Something about their scent or something. Pheromones, I think they’re called.”

  Clarence had been reading a fishing magazine one day and told Pink how injured baitfish gave off pheromones that drove bass crazy. “If we get us some of those pheromones,” Clarence had said. “We could put ’em in little spray bottles for fisherman to use on their lures. Make a million dollars. I’m not kidding, Pink. We’d become goddamn millionaires!” Pink had tried to explain to Clarence that if scientists had already figured out this pheromone business, certainly they would have bottled the shit themselves. But Pink had bigger problems right now: the old man kneeling on one leg examining the mud trail.

  “Don’t get stung there, Mr. Hodges,” Pink said, trying to discourage the inspection. “They won’t harm you most of the time, but if they got young’ins in there, they could get riled.”

  “Oh, Kenneth,” the wife said, “maybe you better get away from there. Besides, you’re getting your pants all dirty.”

  “Mr. Souder,” the man said, using the rail to pull himself back up. “I may have spent my whole life working behind a desk, but I know a goddamn termite trail when I see one!”

  Pink bent over and gave the rail a hard and steady look, even squinted his eyes and jiggled his head back and forth. He straightened slowly then nodded. “I would have swore on a truckload of gold hubcaps those were mud daubers, Mr. Hodges, but they aren’t. You were right, and now that I know, I wouldn’t sell you this property if you begged me. Now why don’t we hop back in my Suburban and I’ll show you and the missus some real properties, views that would make this dump look like swampland.”

  Chapter 6

  Michelle finally fell asleep on the drive back to Atlanta. When they pulled into the driveway, she rubbed her eyes and focused on the house, the green shutters, the red rock Cassie had found in Arizona on the front porch—familiar and reassuring signs. Michelle was glad to be home. She tottered a bit, unsteady from the long nap and the Xanax, as she walked to the back of the Rover. Cliff handed her a small duffle and the Playmate cooler then lurched ahead of her, pulling the big suitcase to the front porch.

  “Cassie!” Michelle called as soon as she was in the door. “We’re home.” She carried the cooler to the kitchen then rushed upstairs to check on her daughter. She heard Cliff at the bar making a scotch and water. Some things never changed, she thought.

  “Cassie?” she called again, knocking lightly on Cassie’s door. “Sweetie, are you sleeping?” She pushed the door open and padded slowly across the dark room toward the bed until she tripped over something. “Jesus, Cassie, you need to clean up this room.” Michelle got to her feet and rubbed her knee, the one she’d cut out in the forest. “Cassie? Sweetie, are you awake?”

  As her eyes adjusted to the dark, shapes in the room grew unfamiliar. Michelle groped empty air when she reached out to switch on Cassie’s nightstand lamp. She stumbled her way back across the carpet and snapped on the overhead light. The scream that shot from her throat didn’t feel like her own.

  Nothing of Cassie was left in the room. “Cliff! Come quick! Cliff!” Michelle screamed. The only piece of furniture in the room was Cassie’s dresser, pulled away from the wall, the drawers yawning open and empty. Michelle’s first thought was that Cassie had been kidnapped. But why would they take the furniture? Her clothes?

  Michelle went to the closet and threw open the louvered doors. The empty space sucked her breath away—nothing but a few hangers dangling haphazardly from the bar.

  “Cliff! Hurry!” She fixed her eyes on the dresser before she felt someone behind her. She spun around hoping to find Cassie, but it was Cliff who filled the doorway, one hand in his pocket, the other hand holding a scotch. His eyes were locked on her, seemingly disinterested in the room. It was obvious that whatever had happened was not news to him. She could feel her head shaking back and forth but couldn’t force a sound from her throat.

  Cliff sighed and glanced at the floor. “Please come downstairs, Michelle.”

  “Tell me what’s going on!”

  “Come downstairs with me,” he said, step
ping toward her, offering his hand across the empty room.

  “No. Tell me here. Tell me right now!” Michelle felt her legs grow cold and rubbery, her hands beginning to tremble. She shuffled in place giving the room another cursory look, hoping it had changed, wondering where Cassie’s bed had gone, the nightstands, the lamp. And her books, her stuffed animals, her posters of Annie Lennox and Nora Jones—where were they? Michelle felt Cliff’s hand on her arm and jerked it away.

  “All right, Michelle,” Cliff said, setting his drink on the dresser. He adjusted his slacks and sat in the middle of the floor between some boxes. He reached his hand up to hers and tugged gently to bring her down with him. She eased to the floor and sat facing him, cross-legged, the way she did when she meditated.

  Cliff reached across Michelle’s knees and took her hands in his. Cassie is dead, it sounded like Cliff had said, but there was no way she’d heard that correctly.

  *****

  It took Cliff an hour to calm Michelle down. He had coaxed her into taking another Xanax and she finally fell asleep. Checking the bathroom mirror, Cliff rubbed his fingers over his cheek where Michelle had scratched him during their scuffle. He never knew what set of memories she would operate from upon waking, if she would mourn Cassie’s death or pretend that Cassie was up in her room listening to music. Cliff had assumed Cassie’s death would become easier over time, but it hadn’t, partly due to Michelle’s lapses into denial. “Are you picking Cassie up after practice or am I?” she’d ask. He’d thought it was some cruel form of punishment, a deliberate mocking to remind him that he’d killed their daughter. But she had shown no emotion, no hostility or sorrow. Doctors said she was experiencing temporary breaks with reality, psychological schisms. Medication helped, only to leave Michelle vulnerable to the full impact of Cassie’s death again, like tonight. A maddening and tedious cycle. Cliff wasn’t sure how much longer he could take it.

  He stood in the backyard, recalling all the times Cassie had practiced swimming laps. After a while, he went inside to straighten up the house. He thought about Michelle traipsing through the woods up at the cabin, how she’d retreated into the undamaged world she’d created, the place where she believed Cassie was still alive.

  Maybe purchasing the cabin hadn’t been a good idea. Cliff had hoped it would steer them away from their preoccupation with Cassie’s death, using the remodeling to patch the rough spots. They’d had fun tearing down old paneling, hanging drywall, building closets, taking breaks out on the deck, snacking on chips and dip, apples, crackers and cheese. In the evening they’d order pizza or play Rock Paper Scissors to see who would drive down for Chinese takeout. One night when Cliff had put out his fist and Michelle her open palm, he had been afraid to leave her alone, but she insisted she was fine and that he wasn’t going to weasel out of going into town for dinner. Loser also had to pay.

  When he’d returned, Michelle was sitting on the floor, knees to her chest, staring blankly at the darkness beyond the sliding glass doors.

  “How could you kill our daughter over that fucking whore!” she had said. “You killed our daughter over her!”

  The memory of it left him raw.

  Several times a day Cliff thought of selling the dealership, the house, everything, and moving back to Maine. He could work for his brother, sell suits. Michelle had loved Maine—beachcombing for shells, sleigh rides in winter, the gray, deserted ocean. Or they could move back to Philadelphia, where they had met when he was attending the University of Pennsylvania. She often talked of how she missed the history, the street life, the museums. A fresh start. That’s what they needed. He wished they’d done it years ago, before he’d ever met Glenda.

  That awful night, he and Glenda had been in the middle of a spat. Cliff—with a few beers feeding his superiority—had believed his actions would be invisible to Cassie and Michelle, that his agenda would fly undetected beneath their radar.

  “Dad, where are you going?” Cassie had said. “We’re going to be late for the meet!”

  Glenda had turned her cell off, shutting Cliff out. Her apartment was only fifteen minutes out of the way. “I have to see a car wholesaler,” he’d told Cassie. “It’ll only take a minute.” Cassie protested with new vigor, pointing at the clock. Speeding down the entrance ramp, Cliff never saw the truck in the outside lane. The Cherokee flipped suddenly upon impact, rolling several times before coming to a stop upside down at the edge of the median. Rescue workers pulled him from the vehicle, carried him to the side of the highway, draped a blanket over his shoulders. A fireman wrapped a towel around his left hand to stem the bleeding until the ambulance arrived. Cliff could see that the driver’s side of the Cherokee was hardly damaged, while the passenger side was crushed.

  Cliff leaned against the bookcase and studied the framed photo of Cassie. He would never forget the image of the upside-down Cherokee, lights from the fire engine flashing off the chrome wheels. He hated that the last thing he’d told his daughter was a lie.

  *****

  Michelle was tired of sitting by the pool and went up to Cassie’s room. One of Cassie’s dresser drawers stuck out, the one with the milky discoloration where Cassie had draped her wet swimsuit over the front. Michelle sat in the middle of the carpet. Cliff had assured her Cassie had been dead just over a year. Michelle didn’t know what was happening, but she knew that Cassie’s death couldn’t be among the possibilities. Before she’d gone looking for Cliff that night, Cassie had been alive. Michelle remembered the phone call, the excitement in Cassie’s voice over being named captain of the varsity swim team. Michelle had not imagined that call.

  At breakfast, Michelle asked if Cliff wanted to go back to the cabin with her.

  “Why? We just got home a few days ago.”

  She had to get back there, find Pink Souder. Sheriff Fisk said Pink was no longer in Ardenwood, but the enormous billboard indicated otherwise. If a logical answer were to be found, it would be in Ardenwood.

  “I’m going back up there,” she said.

  “Can we talk about it when I get home later?”

  After Cassie was born, Cliff had grown more stubborn and manipulative, pushing his version of reality over everyone else’s. Over the years, Michelle had felt herself being drawn into his world, like water flowing down a slope toward an inevitable precipice. Cliff was gravity itself.

  “Look, I need to go up there,” she said. “I’ll drive myself.” She watched him fill his coffee cup, spread butter on his toast.

  “We only have one car now, Michelle,” he said.

  She laughed. “Cliff, you own a fucking car lot! I’ll ride in with you and bring one—”

  “You haven’t driven in months,” he told her.

  That wasn’t true. She’d driven most of the way to the cabin this past trip.

  When Cliff finished his toast, he said, “Come take a ride with me.”

  They rode in silence. When they passed the concrete monuments marking the entrance to Roswell Cemetery, Michelle sat up and looked around. “What are we doing here?”

  “You need to see something,” Cliff said.

  The marble was convincing.

  cassie

  cassandra ann stage

  beloved daughter of

  michelle and clifford stage

  Michelle felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. The date on the stone had Cassie dead for almost thirteen months. It was impossible. Michelle fought to evoke every sensation from the night Cliff had disappeared—the rain slashing white trails across the deck, the water dripping from the sheriff’s yellow slicker, the smell of mold and decaying leaves along the ground. She recalled the sting of the cut at her knee, the leaves and sticks tangled in her hair. She closed her eyes and made it all real, made it smell and taste and burn, felt the pain in her ribs where she’d hit the tree. She looked around at the trees in the cemetery, rows upon rows of headstones, flowers
laid at the bases of some, others bare, the fresh dirt of recently dug graves. It was very convincing.

  She looked over at Cliff and saw he was crying. How could they believe such different things? She was not about to bury Cassie, yet he believed their daughter already lay beneath six feet of earth. In her world there had been no car accident, no funeral, no grief and mourning, while Cliff’s world was marshaled by tragedy, loss, and sadness. He was crippled with remorse over something that, in Michelle’s mind, had never happened.

  If she didn’t accept it, what was next? Photos of the wrecked Cherokee, a police report, stacks of insurance claims and hospital bills?

  “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Cliff. I spoke to Cassie a few nights ago.”

  “Michelle . . . that’s just not—”

  “Stop, Cliff. Please, just stop. Why can’t you just listen?”

  Michelle knelt on the grass, put her palms to the ground, feeling the moisture hidden in the soil. She closed her eyes and thumbed her wedding ring. The ceremony, the music, the reception rushed back to her. Certainly, they still shared all those things, all the days before now—Cassie’s birth, her first day of school, her chicken pox, the medal she won at her third swim meet—the ordinary marrow of life. They still shared the memory of buying the car dealership, the celebration they’d had that evening after putting Cassie to bed, making love out on the patio, Cliff excited over his plan for the pool, pacing it off in his robe, marking the corners with Budweiser bottles, laying the step ladder on the grass where the diving board would be. “Cassie will be an Olympic swimmer,” he had told her. “And you, well, you’ll just sit around the pool in your bikini looking gorgeous.”

  “Do you remember the night you planned out the pool?” Michelle asked Cliff, raising her eyes toward him. He squatted down next to her on the grass.

  After a moment, Cliff nodded. “Yeah. I do,” he said. “We were both really drunk that night. Cassie was five. I dug that stupid trench, remember? Ended up destroying half the backyard.”