Robert and Monica Anderson owned a camping outfitter store in the tiny border town of Ely, Minnesota. According to their website, they stocked Kevlar canoes, state of the art rain gear, powdered guacamole, and anything else a Boundary Waters voyager could dream of needing for a trek into the wilderness. At 12:26 a.m. on October 5, long past the busy summer season and even the smaller burst of travelers who wanted to see the fall colors from the bow of a canoe, Monica was watching Netflix in their apartment above the store when the sound of smashing glass surprised her. She called 911 and crept downstairs with a utility knife and her phone.
Expecting to find the same kids who’d vandalized a house down the street, Monica was shocked to see a hunched figure behind the store counter, pulling open drawers, rifling through the contents, and shutting them again. Before she could report more than that to the 911 operator, a scream and a series of crashes cut off the rest of the phone call.
Robert, startled awake, grabbed the hunting rifle he kept in their bedroom closet and rushed downstairs to see a dark figure wielding a knife. He aimed into the shadows and fired, but the cry that followed the blast was too high, too familiar. He ran forward as his wife’s body was shoved at him and caught her before she hit the ground. Someone pulled the gun out of his hands and threw it across the store to the sound of more shattering glass. Sobbing on the floor, he cradled Monica and looked desperately around for a phone, a weapon, anything. When the intruder tried to dart past them, Robert lunged for his feet, tripping him. The person responded by flipping over and kicking Robert in the head until he lost consciousness.
The police took Robert’s statement from the hospital, hours before his wife slipped into a coma and died. The intruder, who’d been chased down by responding officers, had to be physically restrained during his mugshot and fingerprinting, which eventually revealed him to be a lost child from the missing persons list. Even in the cryptic language of police reports, it was obvious they hadn’t known what to do next. At nineteen, he was too old for social services to get involved and the most they could charge him with was B&E, attempted robbery, and assault. The Ely police transferred him to Duluth – complaining about extensive damage to the jail cell – and if he was anyone else the judge would have sent him to prison for a few years, but the boy who came back from the dead got a commitment order and a ticket to Congdon.
And now, after two weeks of silent violence and disregard for every human around him, he’d decided to talk. To me.
I read his entire file three times. His mother, Sarah Mason, had died of a brain aneurysm when Lucas was five. Besides his father, Josiah, his only other known relative was a maternal grandfather currently living in an Alzheimer’s unit outside Chicago. He’d attended a series of elementary schools around the Midwest before his disappearance. Good grades – better than mine, like that was a challenge. His therapy notes were less inspiring. The Congdon psychologists had tried communicating with him a dozen different ways: They’d showed him pictures of the Northwoods and of his father, played music popular from the year he went missing, demonstrated games he might have enjoyed as a child, even played the video for all entering campers about how to leave no trace of themselves when they journeyed into the wilderness. I found it on YouTube, all the rules for burying fish entrails, collecting firewood, hauling every scrap of trash back out of the woods, and saw how ridiculous it would look to someone who’d been a ghost for the last ten years, who had probably watched those campers light their choking pine needle fires and dig their shallow fish graves.
After exhausting everything in the file I left Jasper curled up in bed and went to the bathroom, the one room I’d remodeled in an attempt to breathe the Northwoods into our house. I’d refinished the knotty pine cabinets, found the driftwood that was displayed on the back of the toilet, and even convinced Dad to pay for the slate tile floor. He and Butch had been impressed by the results and wanted me to do other rooms, too – the kitchen, the living room – but I kept changing my mind about the paint color and hardware, unable to get it exactly right. Now, though, I didn’t frown at the olive-toned walls. I didn’t cringe at the drawer handles. All I could see was the contrast between my world and everything Lucas had known. This bathroom was as close to the Northwoods as Dr Mehta was to being committed. Pacing the house while Jasper snored, I wracked my brain for a connection, some pathway into Lucas Blackthorn’s head, and by dawn I’d scribbled a list of the few things I knew for sure.
One, something or someone had driven Lucas out of the Boundary Waters.
Two, he didn’t find what he was looking for at the outfitter’s store. The police confiscated nothing from him except a few sharp rocks.
Three, he wanted to escape Congdon, and I’d bet anything he was trying to get back to the glacial waters and shadowed forests that called him home.
The next morning I wrote my first patient transfer order and brought Lucas back to the isolation ward, this time to a room with a desk and two chairs bolted to the floor. I wasn’t allowed to bring any pens or pencils, wear belts or shoes with laces, and I had to remove all the hoops from my ear.
When Stan let me into the room for our first session – take two – Lucas was limping along the far wall and rubbing his wrists. As soon as he saw me he turned, impatiently, like I was late for an appointment. Then his eyes narrowed when an orderly followed me in and took a post at the wall.
‘Hello, Lucas.’
His focus shifted back to me, but he didn’t respond.
I tilted my head. ‘It’s customary to greet people by saying Hi or Hello, followed by their name.’
Lucas nodded slightly and humor played across his features, like he was warming up to a particularly silly game. He took a long breath and tested his voice. ‘Hello, Maya.’
‘This is Bryce.’ I flapped a hand behind me. ‘He’s here to protect me. Do you understand why?’
No answer.
‘Do you remember what happened the last time we met in one of these rooms?’
‘You gave me this.’ He pointed to his leg and took a slow, uneven step.
‘I don’t think you’ – each word out of his mouth was deliberate, as if he was tasting them first – ‘need anyone to protect you.’
I repressed a smile and met his gaze squarely. ‘It’s important you understand how the institution works. Your behavior can earn you trust, and the privileges that go with that trust. Bryce or someone like him will be here until you can prove you aren’t a danger to me or anyone else. At that point you may be able to move into another ward, where you can move freely in common areas and interact with other patients and staff. You can earn grounds privileges—’
He looked confused.
‘The ability to go outside,’ I elaborated and noticed his flare of interest. ‘Walk around the yard and get some fresh air. You might also earn day trip privileges, where you go out into the town with one of us on staff.’
‘You would take me into the town?’
‘Maybe me and Jasper.’
He returned my grin with a questioning look, but I didn’t explain.
I gestured to the table and we both walked carefully toward it, watching each other’s progress, and lowered ourselves into the seats as if choreographed. I placed my hands on top of the table, palms down, and he mirrored me. So far, he was responsive, taking cues both verbally and nonverbally, and showing no hint of aggression. I didn’t hear any palate issues, no stuttering, stammering, or signs of more serious communication issues like aphasia. It was tempting, oh so tempting, to dive right into the deep end of the pool. You could see the lucidity in his eyes, the intelligence, but that’s how every cop and therapist had gotten nowhere with this patient. Instead I glanced at Bryce – who already looked bored – and gave Lucas the opportunity to direct the conversation, the kind of tiny power no one outside these walls would even notice. Inside, it was a major currency.
‘Is there anything you want to ask me before we get started?’
He leaned forward. ‘Why am I here?’
I exhaled and debated the answer. Did I go into the incident? Monica Anderson’s death? Robert Anderson’s fractured skull? We’d have to deal with those things eventually, but there were minefields everywhere and I didn’t know which step would make him explode. Slowly. I had to go slow. ‘You don’t remember what happened?’
His brow wrinkled and I couldn’t tell if he was blocking it out or he just didn’t like my reply. Whichever it was, he avoided my question, too.
‘When can I leave?’
That one was easier. ‘They don’t put a timeline on it.’
‘They?’
‘The doctors, and primarily Dr Mehta. She’ll discharge you whenever she feels you’re ready to rejoin society.’
He was quiet for a moment, processing that. At close range, his eyes looked bluer, colder. Then, so quietly I almost missed it, ‘What do I have to do?’
The million-dollar question. I took a breath and weighed my answer carefully. ‘The first and most important thing is to demonstrate you’re not a danger to others or yourself.’
He glanced at Bryce, hulking in the corner, and then slowly rolled his hands palm up on the table. See? Showing me his uncuffed wrists, the inner skin as white as a flag, he challenged me to deny his cooperation.
I gave him a moment, taking in his posture, my silent acknowledgment of what he wasn’t saying, then set a blue cloth bag on the table – the surprise bag covered with emojis that I brought to all my sessions – and started pulling tiny objects out and setting them in a careful line between us.
They were rocks, all different colors and textures, each no bigger than a quarter. Dr Mehta had cleared me to bring them; we both knew it took a much bigger rock to bash someone’s head in.
‘This is greenstone.’ I pointed to the first one and waited until he picked it up. ‘It’s been weathered down for the last two billion years. Do you know what a glacier is?’ I didn’t question his nod or how he might have received the knowledge. I didn’t look at him at all as I told the story of the ancient volcano that erupted pillows of basalt into the land that would become the Boundary Waters. How all the softer stone had been carved out by ice sheets, and the basalt itself transformed into greenstone before the ice melted into hundreds of lakes. Handing him the greenstone, I picked up the next rock and told the story of the Knife Lake slate, before moving on to the granite, and then the milky ball of quartz, as pure and unforgiving as January ice.
I’d pried the stones out of the frozen rock garden in the corner of our yard this morning. My mother, the geologist, hadn’t grown vegetables or flowers. She’d planted rocks and told me their history as if it was her own. I could almost hear her voice as I repeated it to Lucas now.
He touched them all, holding each specimen as I explained how they’d formed the home he’d known for most of his life, but the longer I spoke the more I sensed he was looking at me instead of the collection. He let me tell him about the rugged terrain, the life of the oldest exposed rock in the world, while silently studying me. I couldn’t tell if he was absorbing any of this, if he was even interested, until I finished describing the last one and began gathering them up to put them back in the bag.
Without warning he reached out and stopped my hand, taking hold of my wrist. Bryce, who’d been falling asleep in the corner, pushed himself off the wall and rushed over but not before I’d jerked Lucas’s wrist up and twisted it, forcing his arm down and crumpling his shoulder into the table. Half crouched over the top of him, I held Bryce off and locked eyes with Lucas.
He didn’t put up a fight. There was no struggle in him beyond the surprised rise and fall of his chest, the widened eyes racing over every inch of my face as if searching for something that had just skittered away. Immediately I perceived I’d overreacted, but the strange look on his face froze my grip in place. Before I could regroup, his jaw moved.
‘I know you.’
It was a whisper, the words leaked out in a rush of breath I barely heard over the thud of my own heart.
Then Bryce moved in, sinking his meaty fingers into the hospital gown around Lucas’s shoulders and finding purchase. ‘All right, man. Let her go.’
In slow motion Lucas unwrapped his fingers from my wrist, I released my hold, and we both returned to our choreographed sitting positions. Bryce withdrew a short step, hovering behind Lucas’s chair.
‘What did you say?’ I asked even though I could still feel his whisper rippling in the air. I know you.
‘Nothing.’ Less than ten seconds later, his face had changed completely. He looked worried, not making eye contact, and somehow I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the giant orderly breathing down his neck. He was . . . scared. Like he’d suddenly found whatever he’d been searching for in me and regretted looking.
Being careful not to startle him, I gathered up the rocks and dropped them into my bag. When I stood up, Lucas did, too, retreating from the table until his back touched the wall and leaning against it as if trying to will himself through the concrete.
‘How did you know all that?’
I didn’t answer right away. I watched Bryce text Stan to let him know we were done and thought about the summers I’d spent paddling the Boundary Waters with my mother. I remembered her expression as the sheer rock faces came into view, how she inhaled the Precambrian balm of those cliffs. I know you.
It took an immense effort not to lie. I met his eyes as the door unlocked behind me, sensing the current of fear still running high. ‘I used to know a geologist. She said rocks are the language of the Earth.’
Then, turning away, ‘See you tomorrow.’