Heartwood

Valerie has now been lost for 11 days. Without food, Valerie finds her mind beginning to wander. She is tired, cold, and reflective. She remembers childhood Halloweens. She loses herself examining the moss around her at eye level and waits for it to rain. As she is lying in her tent, she hears her mother’s voice shouting at her to “save [her]self.” She knows that she must comply.

Today, in a show of one last effort, there will be a massive search: more people than on any previous day, more planes, and more dog teams. Bev hopes that they will find Valerie, but she has her doubts.

Bev’s sister calls, repeating that their mother is dying and that they should authorize a do-not-resuscitate order. She needs Bev’s approval, which Bev gives, knowing that there is nothing that can be done. Although she wishes that her mother had been more emotionally available, she does not fault her for anything; life dealt her mother a difficult hand, and she was unprepared to solo parent as a widow. Bev’s sister asks if she can handle this, and Bev recalls a moment of pure happiness with her mother from her early childhood.

The heat wave deepens, and Lena’s apartment is “a wreck.” She cannot clean it herself because she cannot get out of her wheelchair, but she also cannot request the cleaning crew; if the administration sees the state of her home, she’s sure that they’ll ship her straight to assisted living. She feels an overwhelming urge to go outside. There, on a bench, she stares at a line of marching ants. She thinks about the beauty that has always been the ultimate object of her observations and reflects on how unfair it felt to be accused of having failed to “see” Christine. She begins to weep.

Warren appears and sits down beside her. He asks what’s wrong, and she thinks about the pain that often accompanies observation—particularly observation of suffering. She says that she is crying about “ants,” but Warren sees through her and asks about her daughter. She struggles to explain, and he does not press her. He asks about the fate of the hiker whose case she has been following, and Lena tells him that though Valerie has still not been found, she has an idea about her whereabouts.

Valerie has not been found. Gregory approaches Bev and explains that he is going to head home and have a memorial service for Valerie. He wants to honor her. Bev is shocked, but Gregory explains that though he knows that this is not a traditional step to take, he and Valerie were not traditional people.

Lena begins an online search for Daniel Means, TerribleSilence’s real name. She damaged her own computer beyond repair when she learned the truth about her online friend, but Warren has been kind enough to let her use his. She reads through Daniel’s posts on various online platforms and realizes what she missed: He is prone to believing in conspiracy theories, expresses obsessively anti-government sentiments, and is what others have called a “shit-poster.” She scrolls back through their conversations and finds one where he informed her that he was sure that someone from the military facility kidnapped Valerie, admitted to having done something wrong, and sent a picture of a “souvenir” he took. The souvenir is one of the training facility’s signs, but wrapped around his wrist, Lena sees what she now recognizes from media photos as Valerie’s bandana.

Valerie is calm. She explains that hiking above the tree line is a uniquely beautiful, even “holy,” experience. During the best days, her hike was an opportunity to reflect while feeling part of the great oneness of nature. She realized that she had spent much of her life and career giving to others. The pandemic was exhausting for empaths and for nurses, and she was both. Moreover, while she still loves Gregory and knows that she helped him get sober, she realized that she no longer had the energy to keep giving.

Her body is beginning to fail—to “devour its own muscles” and “shrink its organs” to avoid death by starvation (251). While outside her tent vomiting, she sees what looks first like a bird, then a fairy, and finally a large Luna moth. It begins to rain, and she collects water.

The rain does not stop, and Valerie contemplates her reasons for hiking further. She knows that her mother would not want her to give up, and she readies herself to leave. The real tragedy of human life, she observes, is not that it ends but that humans feel. She feels too much and too deeply; that’s why she needed to trek through the woods.