The Light Through the Leaves

by Glendy Vanderah

But this time she was determined. If she could get through this day without pills or alcohol, maybe she was finally strong enough to stay sober.

She’d found a used paperback of Leaves of Grass in a Montana bookshop a month after the night with Caleb. It had the same cover as his copy. She often read the poems as she fell asleep in her tent. A better way to self-soothe than whiskey.

She had her foot on the brake. She didn’t know why. She wanted to turn the car around. Go back west. All the ghosts were still there, waiting for her on the other side of the Mississippi.

The blue pony had been riding on her dashboard since last summer. Ellis had worried she might lose him every time she packed camp. She’d stuck him to the dashboard with little pieces of duct tape under each hoof. Exposure to the sun was fading his blue plastic, but nothing could erase his tireless smile.

She had no idea how much Ellis had withheld. Dani knew she’d been raised by her grandfather in Youngstown, but Ellis never talked about the trailer park, her mother being an addict and dying of an overdose, or that she didn’t know who her father was. She didn’t want any of that known to her college friends.

She didn’t lose consciousness and she didn’t get worse. Now she understood what was wrong. She was having a panic attack. She’d had mild ones in the past but never like this, never so bad she’d thought she would die.

Raven would make something special for dinner. Today was her birthday in the human world. Today she had been kissed. She felt more human than usual, as if the raven inside her was sleeping.

Promise me no doctors. Not ever.” “But what if—” “Promise!” “I promise, Mama.” Tears dripped down her cheeks.

But now the test said Jonah was her father. She felt like the news was the cascading effect of a gale uprooting trees in the woods. One tree falls and knocks over a second tree, and that one pulls down another. If Jonah was her father, Mama must have stolen her from him and his wife. And that led to the worst blow of all: Mama had lied to her about everything.

“I’m not saying the walls I put up were good, and I’m not saying they were bad. This is simply how some people survive trauma. Maybe it’s how this whole family got to where we are today.”

She was relieved to discover she wanted to embrace him. She felt no bitterness. Zane had taught her about love when her mother couldn’t. What did it matter if he had or hadn’t loved her back? “Goodbye, Zane.” “Goodbye, Ellis. You take care now.” It had taken more than thirty years, but finally she’d heard him say it.

Maybe she didn’t. Who could know their future with a person they cared about? And even if they did somehow find out something bad was going to happen with that person, would they give up on them? Let them suffer alone? Love couldn’t be removed like a thorn from a thumb.

Ellis imagined the sound rippling farther. To the woods of New York, to the Ellis River where her parents had been happy and in love, to the little campgrounds of Ohio, to every western peak she had stood upon, to the Washington creek that had brought Viola to Jackie. And there was her family, in her little Wild Wood, at the heart of all that spreading joy.