Inside I locked the door, turned on the sink to make noise, went over and pressed the toilet handle down, lifting the window as it flushed. I stepped out onto the thin ledge and jumped across to the lower roof above the dining room. I landed on my hands and knees, feeling the scraped burn on my right knee. I prayed they hadn’t heard the thump. I moved down the roof to where its lowest point met the ground and jumped again. I landed on my feet and sprinted straight up through the woods. The trail was ahead.

24

At Forge Mountain Drive, I crossed the road and slipped into the woods instead of going up the road. This section of the trail was less defined than the one behind our house. When it rained, a small stream ran through it, and in heavy downpours it could wash out, its shape shifting, boulders carried several yards, loose shingle dumped in sheets and the water redirected, gouging even deeper into the earth.

I walked close to thickets and trees, avoiding the gully that had swallowed the path. In front of me were sycamores; I could feel the strips of fallen bark underfoot. The American sycamore sloughs off its bark like a snake. Ghosts of the forest, they’re called, for their spooky white-gray branches. There had been a lawn we took care of in Penn Valley with sycamores all across the front, and as the lawn mower chopped up the fallen strips of bark, the dust would catch in my throat and stay there for days.

The waxy leaves of rhododendron brushed against my bare legs. I thought about copperheads nesting under the rocks below me, feeling the vibration of my footfall, coiled like springs, waiting to strike. There was movement in the underbrush beside me, and I jumped. Whatever it was, I could hear it moving away in the thicket, a deer or fox that I’d startled. Could it be a coyote? Once Thomas and I had heard a high wailing sound in the woods. Not one animal but like a chorus of howls and cries. “Are they dogs?” I’d asked. Thomas thought coyotes. He said there were increasing numbers of them throughout Pennsylvania, but not to worry, because they didn’t bother humans.