These Silent Woods

The following night, as Cooper tends to the chickens, he remembers his time in Kabul. On his third tour, he, Jake, and others set out to find two missing soldiers. They found their comrades’ bodies strung up but realized too late that this was a trap. Jake stepped on an IED and was severely injured. As they hunkered down in the basement, Cooper quoted Psalm 23 to his friend, but Jake responded by quoting from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, leading Cooper to ask him to talk more about Victorian poetry. After they ran out of water, Cooper went to the top floor of the building and saw two people approaching the door. He rushed downstairs to find them looking over Jake; Cooper shot them both. After they died, he realized that one was a woman, and she was carrying a cake. Over the years he has tried to convince himself that they would harm Jake or would have alerted someone else to their presence, so they needed to die, but this does not make the memory any easier to bear.

The sound of a car motor snaps Cooper out of his reverie. He grabs a pistol and searches for Finch as a blue car pulls up to the cabin.

Cooper finds Finch hiding behind the cabin as the woman exits her car and looks around. Finch points out that they can’t stay there all night, so Cooper comes out with his gun raised. The woman tries to retreat, saying that she is looking for a man and his daughter. Cooper questions her and finds out that she is Jake’s sister, Marie. Cooper lets his defenses down slightly, still wary that it may be a trick. However, he encourages Marie to come have dinner and stay the night if she wants. Marie confirms that Jake has died. Finch warms up to her, asking her questions about her life and telling her how pretty she is.

After dinner, Marie reads to Finch the page on the Eastern Phoebe from The Book of North American Birds. When Finch goes to bed, Cooper and Marie talk about Jake’s final illness and death. Cooper and Marie inadvertently touch, and he feels a “shiver and sting” (145), reminding him that he has been lonely since Cindy died. Marie tells him about her life. Her parents and Jake are dead, and she divorced her husband seven months earlier. As Cooper registers his attraction to Marie, he once again thinks about the fragility of his solitude. Marie—as well as the trip to Walmart and the girl in the woods—has made Finch realize more and more what she is missing out on, and it makes Cooper question whether keeping her at the cabin is the right thing. He pushes the thought aside and realizes that he needs to detach himself from Marie. He tells her good night—to her disappointment—and goes to bed.

Marie had planned to leave the following morning, but they wake up to a snowstorm. Cooper is shocked to find Marie in the kitchen already cooking breakfast. He reflects that no one has ever used the stove but him. He struggles with his feelings of attraction for her as well as what she provides: companionship for him and a mother figure for Finch. He is both annoyed by Marie’s presence and the danger it poses to their way of life but also grateful that she is there.

Cooper recalls an incident that happened just after he returned from Kabul, before Cindy was pregnant with Finch. When he came home, he had nightmares of his time in war. His Aunt Lincoln had died while he was in Kabul, so he was staying on her farm and attempting to clean it up. Because he was in the middle of nowhere and alone, he thought little of the nightmares or how his PTSD would affect his life among other people.

One day Cooper was in a diner when two men came in, triggering a flashback to Afghanistan. Cooper imagined that the men were armed, so he pulled out his pistol and threatened them. As everyone in the diner hid, the server talked to him, which brought him back to reality. Later that day, Judge—Cindy’s father—came to see him. He told Cooper that no one in the town was mad at him because they see him as a war hero, but they wanted him to get proper help, so it does not happen again. He suggested taking Cooper to the VA hospital to get help, but Cooper interpreted the offer as Judge trying to control the situation and look like the hero, while Cooper himself would be a threat. He refused to seek help. Judge got angry and threatened Cooper. He told him to stay away from Cindy because he is not good enough for her. Cooper grew angry, largely because Judge voiced what Cooper had been thinking about himself—that he was not good enough for Cindy.

Although Cooper never had another incident like that, he uses what happened in the diner as justification for fleeing with Finch. He believes that Judge—and by extension the police and CPS—saw him as extremely dangerous and never would have listened to his side of the story or let him keep Finch.

Finch, Cooper, and Marie spend the day playing in the snow. Near the end of the day, Scotland shows up. He presses Cooper on whether Marie knows why he fled to the cabin in the first place and asks whether Cooper will tell her. Cooper dismisses him, and Finch intervenes to make Scotland take a ride on her sled. Marie says that Scotland seems nice, and Cooper says that he is—but he puts Cooper on edge. She says that he is probably just lonely and Cooper begrudgingly agrees.

Finch gets upset at Cooper because he will not let her go back to the valley where they saw the girl taking photos. That night, she sits with Marie and shows her drawings while Cooper listens in. When they come to the picture she has drawn of the girl, Finch tells Marie that they are friends, and that she sometimes goes to visit her. She makes Marie promise not to tell Cooper, but Cooper overhears. Cooper tells Finch that she needs to stop “obsessing” over the girl in the woods and worries about how she “blurs the line between reality and make-believe” (182). When Finch goes to bed, Cooper listens to Marie talk about her parents and ex-husband, while also remembering, though not articulating, his wartime experiences with Jake. Before Marie goes to bed, she puts her arms around Cooper, who pulls back, despite the desire he feels for her. She kisses him on the cheek. Lying in his own bed, Cooper wonders why he pulled away.

The following day, Cooper, Marie, and Finch go out to get a Christmas tree. They bring it back to the cabin and decorate it. After Finch goes to sleep, Cooper and Marie sit together on the couch. After talking, they begin to kiss. However, Marie pulls away, telling Cooper that she wants to be sure she likes him and is not just lonely. She says that the last thing she needs right now is to feel bad about anything else. Marie tells Cooper that she should leave when the snow melts. Part of Cooper wants her to stay, but part of him knows that it would be better if she left. He suggests that she stay, but she says that she cannot abandon her job back home and agrees to come back and visit.

On Marie’s sixth day at the cabin, the snow is melting, and she is preparing to leave. As they sit and eat breakfast, the sheriff’s car pulls up outside. Cooper and Finch rush into the root cellar and Cooper begs Marie to say she is there alone. The sheriff—the same sheriff from the gas station—and his deputy question Marie about how long she has been there. They tell her that a 17-year-old girl, Casey Winters, has gone missing. She is a photographer and was in the area taking photos but has not been home in almost a week.

In the cellar, Cooper listens to the sheriff and his deputy move around the cabin and talk to Marie. Cooper realizes that the missing 17-year-old is the girl they saw in the woods. Although Casey did not see them, she did take photos in their direction. As the sheriff explains that they have SD cards with thousands of photos to go through for evidence, Cooper realizes that they may be in one of the photos.

They are suspicious of the amount of wood that has been stored for the winter, and the deputy notices a copy of the children’s book Tuck Everlasting—a strange choice of reading for an adult woman alone in a cabin. Marie struggles to keep her cool. Although the sheriff thinks something is wrong with Marie, she convinces them that she is alone and has not seen anyone.

Cooper recalls the day he took Finch from Cindy’s parents. He went over to their house and accused Mrs. Judge (as he calls Cindy’s mother, Mrs. Loveland) of setting him up with CPS. When she replied that she only wanted to help, he pulled his gun on her and her husband. He told her to put Finch down and go down into the basement. Cooper followed them into the basement, as Judge angrily told him that he was making a mistake and that there was a better alternative. When Mrs. Judge tried to touch Cooper’s arm, he reacted by striking her in the face with the gun. He regretted it immediately but reminded himself he was doing it for his daughter. He taped their mouths shut and bound their hands and feet, then left with the baby.