Free The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan Page B

and forests. A folder of pictures she had drawn, several of her family standing all together in front of their little white house. She wasn’t best at drawing people but she did the house very well, taking great care with the swing on the front porch, the fanlight over the door. Through the front windows, one up, two down, she sketched hazy shapes in one of the pictures, a glimpse of what was inside. Try as she might, Alice can’t make out what the shapes are supposed to be.
    Although she took away the books and papers, she couldn’t bring herself to touch Rachel’s chair, but Alice began to see that it was not the best thing to have it there, so solidly empty, when the children took their places around the table. Shenoticed how careful they were not to touch it as they went by, and one Saturday she moved it up to her bedroom too, placed the other things neatly on it. But still no one fills that space at the table.
    Rachel was the easiest child; sunny-natured, curious and quick to learn. In the first days after the murders, Alice was appalled to find herself thinking that there were others it would not have been so tragic to lose. She didn’t know the family well, didn’t really know them at all. Words exchanged on the church steps, in the street. They seemed a solemn group, Mr. Heath’s stern face and his wife in her layers of black, Lilian’s small voice and downcast eyes. But knowing Rachel as she did, what she was like, Alice had to believe that it had been a contented home, maybe a happy one.
    It was difficult for a time after, the children inattentive and skittish, and Alice herself unsure of the best way to proceed. They had all known death, in their families or among friends and neighbors, but nothing like this and it clutched at her heart as she looked at their faces, noticed the dark smudges under Eaton’s eyes, and thought that they were right to be afraid. She knew that it would be callous to expect them to carry on with their lessons as if nothing had changed and that first day she led them out the door, through the leaf-littered streets, and they spent the afternoon walking in the wood at the edge of town, where maple keys spiraled down all around them. The children found their voices in the wood, and once Lucius ran ahead, jumped out from behind a thick trunk and made the girls shriek. Alice had them gather up all the different leaves they could find, and brittle keys and acorns, and she asked them if they knew that Emden, with its streets and stone buildings, the houses wherethey lived, had once been forest just like this, and not so very long ago. Nina said she thought it would be nicer if the trees had stayed and they could all live in them, and for once no one laughed at her. Bella asked why every acorn didn’t make a tree and Alice told her that she didn’t really know, only that from the hundreds that fell in the wood only some would take root and grow, and sometimes it took years to even begin.
    Then Eaton asked how old the maple tree was.
This one
, he said, slapping it with his hand.
Very old
, Alice said, looking up at the thick, spreading branches.
But how old?
Eaton said, and there was a roughness in his voice that she hadn’t ever heard.
How would you know how old it is?
Eaton said, and Alice told him, told them all, that when a tree was cut down rings were visible in the stump, that you could count the rings and know the age of the tree.
But then it’s dead
, Eaton said, and she could tell that he’d already known about the rings, that for some reason he’d wanted to hear her say it.
If you cut it down it’s dead
, Eaton said,
so how can it even matter?
    •  •  •
    Reporters from the city paper had come knocking, as they were sitting down to their evening meal. Alice’s mother led them in to the front room, and the one with the lazy eye prowled around, picking up ornaments as if he were in a shop or in his own house; he even crossed the hall and poked his head into the