Wild Orchids Read online

  It was absurd of me and I knew I was acting like a kid, but it was the first time Ford and I had been apart since we’d arrived. Would Dessie cook something divine for him? Would she wear black toreador pants and a red blouse? Would she show a cleavage four and a half feet long?

  I gave a great sigh of disgust at myself. For someone who wasn’t jealous, I was certainly acting like I was.

  Maybe I was just bored. I called Nate’s house. Maybe he and his grandmother would like to come over for lunch, or invite me to their house. She was a nice woman and I’d enjoyed telling Ford that the grandmother was his age. Ford had replied that he wasn’t going to marry her and that Nate wasn’t going to be forced to bunk with me so I might as well stop trying. As always, we’d laughed together.

  There was no answer at Nate’s house.

  “Where is everyone?” I said aloud. Was there another tea party and I hadn’t been invited? Maybe that’s where Ford was now, I thought. Maybe he and Dessie were going to the party without me.

  I told myself that I needed to get a grip. And I needed to find something to do with myself that didn’t involve other people. Which, of course, meant taking pictures.

  For a moment I hesitated and had to work to stamp down a feeling of panic. What if I went into the woods and had another vision? Who would be there to help me if I blacked out again? And even more important, who would help me undo the horror of what I saw?

  Sitting there for a second, I lectured myself on codependency. I’d had twenty-six years before I met Ford Newcombe, so I could certainly spend an afternoon without him.

  I got up from the chair and went upstairs to my bedroom. Empty, the house seemed too big, too old, and too creaky. And it seemed that I heard sounds from every corner. The exterminators had rid the house of the bees, but now I wondered if there were wasps in the attic. Or birds.

  I checked my big camera backpack for film and batteries, picked it up and went downstairs. I didn’t know where I was going, but I certainly needed to get out of that vacant house.

  As it turned out, I only walked about a mile down a narrow road when I came to a little sign that said “trail.” It was one of those signs that looked hand carved—and maybe was for all I knew—and made a person feel as though she was about to embark on an adventure.

  The trail was wide and worn down, the bare earth hard packed, the tree roots exposed and worn smooth by many feet. Why don’t I remember this trail? I thought, then laughed at myself. I felt eerie when I did remember things and confused when I didn’t remember them.

  It didn’t take me but minutes to find flowers worth preserving forever. I mounted my F100 on the tripod, used Fuji Velvia ISO 50, and shot some Downy Rattlesnake Plantain standing in a tiny spot of sunlight. I clicked the cable release and held my breath that no wind would move a leaf and blur the picture. But it was dead still at the moment so I had hopes that the photo would come out sharpedged.

  I really loved to photograph flowers. Their colors were so gaudy that I could satisfy the child in me who still loved the brightest crayons in the box. I could look at pictures of brilliant reds and pinks and greens and still feel I was doing something “natural.”

  When I photographed people, I liked just the opposite. The expressions on people’s faces and the emotions they showed were, to me, the pyrotechnic “color” of the picture. But I’d found that color film too often drew attention to skin that was too red, or blotched with age spots, and so hid the emotion I wanted to show. And with a child, how could you look at a face when it was competing with a shirt that had four orange rhinos dancing across it?

  Over the years I’d learned to satisfy my color lust with photos of brilliant flowers taken with film of the finest grain. I could blow up a stamen to 9 x 12 and still have it crystal clear. And I indulged my love of seeing the insides of people by using black-and-white film—true black-and-white, the kind that had to be developed by hand instead of churned out by some giant machine.

  I shot four rolls of Velvia and two of Ektachrome, then packed up and headed back toward the house. It was nearly four o’clock and I was hungry and thirsty, but I’d brought nothing to eat with me. I guess that in the last weeks I’d grown used to being with Ford because wherever he went food and drink followed close behind.

  I allowed myself a great, self-pitying sigh as I shouldered my pack and headed back down the trail. But the truth was, I was feeling better. I wasn’t feeling lonely anymore, and I was no longer angry at Ford. I’d had a nice afternoon and I felt sure I’d taken some good photos. Maybe I could start a line of greeting cards and sell them to tourists passing through the Appalachians, I thought. Maybe I could—

  Suddenly, I halted and looked around me because I didn’t recognize where I was. There was a narrow stream in front of me, but I knew I hadn’t crossed a stream on my way in. Turning back, I looked for the trail I’d come in on—all the while imagining how very sorry Ford Newcombe was going to be when the National Guard had to be called out to look for me. “I shouldn’t have left her alone,” he’d say.

  I walked for about twenty minutes, but still saw nothing I remembered. I was beginning to be concerned when I looked to my left and saw the sunlight flash off something that was moving.

  Curious, but also a little frightened because I didn’t know where I was, I stepped off the path and into the forest. I tried to move as quietly as possible on the soft earth and succeeded in making little noise. The forest was quite dark; there was a great deal of underbrush, but I could see the sunlight ahead. I saw the flash again and my heart leaped into my throat. What was I going to see? Thoughts of Jack the Ripper and a flashing knife went through my mind.

  When I got to the edge and could see through the trees, I nearly laughed out loud. I was looking at someone’s backyard. On the far side was an old fence nearly broken by the weight of the pink roses that covered it. When a slight breeze came up, rose petals fluttered softly to the ground.

  The grass had been recently mowed and I closed my eyes for a moment at the heavenly smell. The forest I was in was on one side, the fence on two sides. The fourth side, to my right, had shade trees so dense that I couldn’t see the house that I assumed was farther up the hill.

  But the truth was that the White House could have been up there and I wouldn’t have seen it, because I was distracted.

  Under a huge shade tree was a wooden park bench and sitting on it was a man. A very, very handsome man. He was tall and slim, his neck resting on the back of the bench, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was wearing blue jeans, gray hiking boots, and a dark blue denim shirt, the kind with snaps down the front. His thick hair was as black as a crow’s wing and it didn’t look as though it had been dyed. The silver flash I’d seen was a cup. He was drinking something hot and steamy out of the top of a tall aluminum Thermos that stood on the ground by his feet.

  Also on the ground was a blue canvas bag with a loaf of long, skinny French bread sticking out of it. Beside the bag was—I drew in my breath and my eyes widened until they hurt—a Billingham camera bag. Billingham bags were made in England and they looked like something the duke of somewhere would carry, something handed down from his ancestors. Prince Charles once said he didn’t think anyone actually bought tweeds, that tweeds were just something people had. That’s the way Billingham bags looked: as though they’d always been there. They were made of canvas and leather, with brass buckles. Prince Charles aside, the truth was that Billingham bags could be bought, but, like tweeds, they cost dearly.

  I was standing there, skulking in the trees like a voyeur, lusting after his big camera bag, when I felt the man looking at me. Sure enough, when I looked up, he was staring directly at me, a faint smile on his lips, his dark eyes warm.

  I turned at least four shades of red and wanted to flee into the forest. Like a unicorn, I thought. But then, unicorns probably knew how to find their way out of the forest.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to pretend I was an adult as I walked toward