We were at a park near the center of town. Graham was scouting for a picnic table—they were all taken—and I was pushing Jack in a toddler swing, the cracked, rubber seat warm against my hand.

I looked up and realized we were stranded in a sea of skinny jeans, all worn by the men. Each of them also clad in Top-Siders or low-top Converse sneakers. Their hair graying, their hands frantic as they routinely checked their iPhones. The women all drenched in designer clothes. (And I love nice clothes myself, but on a Saturday morning? It felt forced.) And everyone keyed up on Starbucks and straining to be happy. Hovering over the children and looking downright exhausted.

Where was the wildness of my childhood? With packs of children running free through the neighborhoods, building forts in the woods? And if the parents were around—say, at a backyard birthday party—they would’ve all been congregated together, mixing cocktails and minding their own business, not swarming over the kids like bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

* * *

—

I CRACKED. I looked over at Jack and wanted something different for him.

I thought moving here would be the answer.

Mapleton, Texas. A town of fifty thousand. Small enough to feel quaint at times but big enough to have a Chipotle. A quick, ninety-minute drive due east from Dallas, but nestled deep in the piney woods so that it feels a world away. Also, a two-year stop on my mother’s endless, whirlwind march through America.

My mother, Nikki Jones. A traveling ER nurse with a man in every port. Long blond hair and brash. Perpetually bronzed from the tanning salon. Currently stationed in San Diego, and she’s made it clear that she wants to be a holiday-only, FaceTime-only grandma. And that’s fine with me. Preferred, actually.

The last selfie she sent us a few weeks ago: Nikki in a string bikini with an American flag print. I passed the phone to Graham, rolled my eyes.

“Holy shit, did she get a new boob job?” he hooted.

I yanked the phone back. Studied her springy breasts. Why yes, she had. I tapped on the photo and hit delete.

My dad took off when I was five years old, and he’s printed on my memory in smells and sounds—his broad, nicotine-stained hands that always smelled richly of oak and tobacco, his deep baritone voice making sugary promises he rarely kept. But mostly while growing up, I felt him by his absence, the void that my mother tried to constantly fill with new and different men.

Mapleton was the last landing place during my high school years. We arrived in time for my junior year, rented yet another bland house with equally bland rented furniture, and when Nikki (I’m not sure I ever called her Mom) got twitchy just before senior year, I begged her to at least stay and let me graduate. I had made some friends. Erin, for instance, whom I met in geometry class and who was one of the only girls who would talk to me.

* * *

—

YOU WOULD THINK this would make me come unglued, but the fact is, it’s made me crave stability all the more. So when Graham fell to one knee outside an Irish pub in Chicago just six months into our courtship and asked if I would marry him, I screamed, “Yes!” Squealed, actually, buzzed and giddy off my third pint of Guinness. I was happy to be absorbed into his corn-fed Kansas family, the very jovial and very Catholic O’Neill clan.

And I’m still happy. But maybe my mother’s transient nature is in me, too. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so restless.

4

I’M AT THE entrance to the trail now. The trees are so tall and the path so narrow, it feels like you’re stepping inside a cave. The temperature drops by ten degrees, and the feathery tops of the pines form a canopy, snuffing out the sunlight.

I unknot my hoodie from my waist, slip it on, and begin to jog. The trail is several miles long, and to the south, it borders spacious, sculpted backyards. To the north, a thick, tangled forest. This isn’t the Texas of legend—all steers and dusty ranches—this is deep East Texas.

I jog down the hill. My calves and lungs start to burn, but I press on and run until I’m a good mile in. Until I reach my favorite bridge that crosses a clear, shallow stream. Stopping, I bend over and take in huge gulps of air, which is heavy and moist.

The stream gurgles and coos over moss-covered rocks, and ferns the size of small children drip with moisture. This place feels ancient, sacred even. And luxurious to me after the manufactured, concrete trails that ran behind our old subdivision in Evanston.

Of course, this trail is man-made, too, but the black tar path was poured so long ago, it feels like it’s part of the earth now, the surface of it cracked and buckled like an old face.

I haven’t seen a single soul on the trail this morning, which isn’t at all unusual. I will sometimes pass the odd jogger or harried nanny pushing a chubby newborn in a stroller, but most mornings, I have the trail to myself.

“Are you sure it’s safe, you being out there all by yourself?” Graham regularly asks me.

I remind him that I used to catch the L in Chicago late at night, to get home after an event.

“I’m perfectly safe,” I always assure him. “Just me and the whip-poor-wills.”

* * *

—

THE TRAIL IS also a rich source for my Instagram feed, @sloweddownlife, except the feed’s not so rich at all at the moment—I’ve barely fed it. But this morning, I find myself snapping pictures on my iPhone—of the wild blackberry bush strangling the little bridge, the woodpecker drilling holes into the auburn pine bark—and creating mental hashtags (#foresttherapy #naturephotography #lovewhereIlive), and today when I get home, I might even post a few.

Our thinking was that in moving back here, with the lower cost of living and the money we made off the sale of our house, I could ditch my day job and raise Jack in the sloweddown way I’d envisioned. Farmers’ markets on the weekends, relaxed dinners that I’d actually have time to prepare, the three of us frolicking in a flower-studded field during lazy family picnics.

Also, I could pursue my dream of writing for myself with my blog and Insta feed that would hopefully blossom into a lifestyle picture book. I fancy myself a sort of “Pioneer Woman” without all the cast iron, a sort of everywoman’s Gwyneth Paltrow, without all the eye-rolling nonsense.

Graham was up for partner at a boutique architect firm in Chicago, but he gamely agreed to the move, and with the oil boom in Texas, he was offered an even-higher-paying job here.

And I liked it, at first. But things that felt like a blast of fresh air when we first arrived—zero traffic, near-empty stores, bottomless hours in the day—have begun, instead, to feel oppressive.

Weekends are a snap. I have Jack and Graham with me all the time. It’s the weekdays that can drag on. I can finish all my errands for the day in less than an hour, zipping around the open streets and rarely hitting a line at the market, but even with my blog and Instagram posting, there are all these endless hours to fill.

* * *

—

I SNAP ONE last shot of the trail—a wide angle of the swirling creek—before heading up the incline. I force myself into a sprint, until the hangover begins to loosen its grip, until the fog in my mind clears.

I’m near the top of the hill when I slow to a walk and notice the man standing in his backyard.

I tug my shades down and zip up my hoodie. He’s harmless, I’m sure, but he’s always out there in a pair of faded overalls, tending to something in the garden, a pair of binoculars slung across his bulging belly. His name’s Harold; I think he mentioned that the first time we spoke.

“These are for birding,” he had chortled, clapping the binoculars with his pudgy hands. “And my wife’s just got me this iPhone for Christmas, so now I can take pictures of the little guys.” He brandished the new phone from his front pocket, and passed it to me so I could examine it.

He was friendly enough, but something about him that day seemed a bit off. He’s one of those types who never breaks eye contact while talking to you, and his eyes had lingered over my chest a beat too long. Since then, when I pass by, I instinctively throw my guard up and just give him the briefest of waves.

Today I don’t even do that. I pull out my phone and fidget with it, pretending to be absorbed in a text message. But I feel the pull of his stare, and sure enough, when I’ve walked a good way down the hill, I glance over my shoulder and his binoculars are trained in my direction.

5

Thursday, March 15, 2018

IT’S MORNING. I’M sitting in my office, sipping a latte and gazing out the window while my laptop powers up. It rained last night and everything in our backyard is lush and green. I watch a red hummingbird dart in and out of the blossoms of our trumpet vine, their silky petals coral and tipped with golden yellow.

* * *

—