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Precious And Fragile Things
Megan Hart
Gilly Soloman has been reduced to a mothering machine, taking care of everyone and everything except herself. But the machine has broken down.Burnt out by the endless days of crying children and menial tasks, and exhausted from always putting herself last, Gilly doesn't immediately consider the consequences when she's carjacked. With a knife to her throat, her first thought is that she'll finally get some rest. Someone can save her for a change. But salvation isn't so forthcoming.Stranded in a remote, snowbound cabin with this stranger, hours turn to days, days into weeks. As time forges a fragile bond between them, she learns her captor is not the lunatic she first believed, but a human being whose wasted life has been shaped by secrets and tragedy.Yet even as their connection begins to foster trust, Gilly knows she must never forget he's still a man teetering on the edge. One who just might take her with him.
Precious and Fragile Things
MEGAN HART
Precious and Fragile Things
First, to my friends and family who read this book in its many stages—thank you.
It’s a better book because of you.
To my agent Laura Bradford for not curling her lip when I first told her about the book, and for believing in it all along.
To Superman—
I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.
Thanks for catching the kids.
To my spawn—
I love you both, even if I did throw you out the window as “research.”
As always, I could write without music, but I’m ever so grateful I don’t have to. Much appreciation goes to the following artists whose songs made up the playlist for this book. Please support their music through legal sources.
“Give it Away”—Quincy Coleman
“Take Me Home”—Lisbeth Scott and Nathan Barr
“Everything”—Lifehouse
“This Woman’s Work”—Kate Bush
“You’ve Been Loved”—Joseph Arthur
“Iris”—Goo Goo Dolls
“Look After You”—The Fray
“The End”—The Doors
“One Last Breath”—Creed
“A Home for You”—Kaitlin Hopkins, Deven May
“Over My Head”—Christopher Dallman
And a special thanks to Jason Manns, whose version of “Hallelujah” wasn’t there when I started the book but was there all through the end.
Contents
January
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
February
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
March
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Acknowledgments
January
1
This was the life she’d made.
Cheese crackers crunching beneath her boots. A tickling and suspicious stink like milk that had been spilled in some unfound crack coming from the backseat. An unfinished To Do list, laundry piled and waiting for her at home, two over-tired and cranky children whining at her. This was her life, and most of the time Gilly could ignore these small annoyances that were only tiny details in the much larger overall picture. Embrace them, even.
But not today.
Please, shut up. For five minutes. Just shut up!
“Give Mama a few minutes” is what Gillian Soloman said instead, her voice a feathery singsong that belied her growing irritation.
“I’m thirsty, Mama!” Arwen’s high-edged, keening whine stabbed Gilly’s eardrums. “I wanna drink now!”
Count to ten, Gilly. Count to twenty, if you have to. C’mon, keep it together. Don’t lose it.
“We’ll be home in fifteen minutes.” This would mean nothing to Arwen, who didn’t know how to tell time, but to Gilly it was important. Fifteen minutes. Surely she could survive anything for fifteen more minutes, couldn’t she? Gilly’s voice snagged, ragged with the effort of keeping it calm, and she drew in a breath. She put a smile on her face not because she felt like smiling, but because she didn’t. Kept her voice calm and soothing, because an angry tone to the children was like chum to sharks. It made them frenzied. “I told you to bring your water bottle. Maybe next time you’ll listen to me.”
Gilly made sure she’d signed the check in the right place and filled out the deposit envelope appropriately. Looked over it again. It was only a check for ten bucks and change, but if she messed up the amount written on the envelope, the credit union could and would charge her a fee. It had happened before, unbalancing her checkbook and causing an argument with her and Seth. The numbers blurred, and she rubbed her eyes.
“Mama? Mama? Mama!”
Gilly didn’t even bother to answer, knowing the moment she said “what?” that Arwen would fall into stunned silence, nothing to say.
Fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops. You’ll be home and can put them in front of cartoons. Just hold it together until then, Gilly. Don’t lose it.
From the other seat came Gandy’s endless, wordless groan of complaint and then the steady thump-kick of his feet to the back of Gilly’s seat. Bang, bang, bang, the metronome of irritation.
“Gandy. Stop kicking Mama’s seat.”
For half a second as her pen wavered, Gilly thought about abandoning this venture altogether. What had she been thinking, making “just one more” stop? But damn it, she needed to cash this check and withdraw some money from the ATM to last her through the week, and since she’d already had to stop to pick up her prescription at the pharmacy…
“I wanna drink now!”
What do you want me to do, spit in a cup?
The words hurtled to her lips and Gilly bit them back before they could vomit out of her, sick at the thought of how close she’d come to actually saying them aloud. Those weren’t her words.
“Fifteen minutes, baby. We’ll be home in fifteen minutes.”
Thump, thump, thump.
Her fingers tightened on the pen. She breathed. She counted to ten. Then another five.
It wasn’t helping.
Last night: she fumbles with her house key because Seth locked the door leading from the garage to the laundry room when he went to bed. She stumbles into a dark house in which nobody’s left on any lights, carrying handfuls of plastic bags full of soap and socks and everything for other people, nothing for herself. She’d spent hours shopping, wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart, comparing dish towels and bathroom mugs just so she had an excuse to be by herself for another hour. She took the long way home with the radio turned up high, singing along with songs with raunchy lyrics she can’t listen to in front of the kids because they repeat everything. Scattered toys that had been in their bins when she left now stub her toes, and she mutters a curse. In the bedroom, lit only by the light from the hall so she doesn’t wake her sleeping husband, the baskets of clean, waiting-to-be-put-away laundry have been torn apart by what, a tornado? Clothes all over the floor, dumped as though she hadn’t spent an hour folding them all.
Even now as she remembered, Gilly’s fingers twitched on the ATM envelope and rage, burning like bile, rose in her throat. Seth’s excuse had been “I needed clean pajamas for the kids.” She’d gone to bed beside him, stiff with fury, the taste of blood on her hard-bitten tongue.
She’d woken, still just as angry, to the sound of Seth slamming dresser drawers and his plea to help him find a pair of clean socks, though of course they were all in the very basket he’d trashed the night before. In the shower Gilly had bent her head beneath lukewarm water that too quickly ran to chill. She’d been glad when he didn’t kiss her goodbye.
At breakfast the children each wanted something different than what she’d put on the plate in front of them. Shoes wouldn’t fit on feet, coats had gone AWOL, and every pair of Arwen’s tights had managed to get a hole. The cat got loose, and the children cried, no matter how much she tried to reassure them Sandy would be just fine.
They’d been late to Gilly’s doctor appointment. On any other day being on time would’ve meant a fifteen-minute wait. Today, the sour, scowling nurse informed them they’d almost forfeited their appointment. Arwen pinched her finger in a drawer, and Gandy fell off the rolling stool and cracked his head. Both children left the office in tears, and Gilly thought she might just start to cry, too.
The day didn’t get better. There was whining, there was fussing, there were tantrums and yelling and threats of timeouts. And of course, though she’d spent hours in Wal-Mart the night before, she’d still forgotten to buy milk. That meant a trip to Foodland. That meant children begging for sugary cereals she refused to buy. More tears. Pitying looks from women in coordinated outfits without stains on the front and well-behaved children who didn’t act like starving beggars. By the time they’d finished their grocery shopping, Gilly was ready to take them both home and toss them into bed. She’d made one last stop at the ATM.
One last stop.
“Mamaaaaaa!”
The whining rose in intensity and persistence. The kicking continued, ceaseless. Like all of this. Like her life.
Count to ten. Bite your tongue. Keep yourself together, Gilly. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.
Gilly made herself the Joker. She wouldn’t have been surprised to feel scars rip open on her cheeks from the smile she forced again. “Ten more minutes, baby. Just ten. Let Mama do this, okay? Now listen. I’ll be right back.”
She turned in her seat to look at both of them, her angel-monsters. Arwen’s eyes had gone squinty, mouth twisted into a frown. Gandy had snot dribbling from his nose and crusted goo at the corners of his lips. He’d spilled a juice box all over his pale blue shirt. They looked like the best of her and Seth combined. This was what she had made.
“I’ll be right back,” Gilly said, though frankly she wanted to start running down the highway and never look back. “You both stay here and keep your seat belts on. You hear me? Seat belts on. Do not get out of your seats.”
Good mothers didn’t leave their children in the car, but the ATM was only a few feet away. The weather was cold enough that the kids wouldn’t broil inside a locked vehicle, and she locked them in so nobody could steal them in the five minutes it would take her to finish her task. Besides, she thought as she slid her ATM card into the machine and punched in her PIN, dragging them both out into the freezing, early evening air would surely be worse than leaving them warm and safe in the Suburban.
Frigid wind blew, whipping at her hair and sending stinging pellets of winter rain that would’ve been less insulting as snow against her face. She blinked against it, concentrating on punching in her PIN number with fingers suddenly numb. She messed up. Had to cancel, do it again.
Slow down. Do it right. One number at a time, Gilly. It’ll be okay.
She deposited the check, withdrew some cash, shoved her receipt and her card into her wallet and got back in the car. The kids had been silent when she opened the door, but within thirty seconds the whining began again. The steady kicking. The constant muttering of “Mama?” Gilly swallowed anger and tried desperately to scribble the amount of her withdrawal from the ATM in her checkbook, because if she didn’t do it now, this minute, she would forget and there’d be another overdraft for Seth to complain about, but her hands shook and the numbers were illegible. She took a deep breath. Then one more. Willing herself to stay calm. It wasn’t worth losing her temper over any of this. Not worth screaming about.
Five minutes. Please just shut up for five minutes, or I swear I’ll…
Not go crazy. Not that. She wouldn’t even think about it.
Gilly put the truck in Drive and pulled slowly out of the parking spot. The strip mall bustled with activity, with Foodland getting its share of evening foragers and the office supply store just as busy. Gilly eased past some foron in a minivan who’d parked askew, brake lights on, and mentally threatened them with violence if they dared back out in front of her.
This part of the strip mall had been under construction forever—the promise of a popular chain restaurant and a couple upscale additions had made everyone in Lebanon salivate at the thought of getting some culture, but in the end poor planning and the economy’s downturn had stalled the project. They’d only gotten as far as building a new access road, slashing like a razor on a wrist through what had previously been a tidy little field. Gilly stopped at the stop sign and looked automatically past the empty storefront to her left, though all that lay at the end of the road in that direction were dirt and Dumpsters.
The passenger door opened, and Gilly looked to her right. She blinked at the young man sliding across the bench seat toward her. He slammed the door and grunted as he kicked his duffel bag to the floor. For one infinite moment, she felt no terror, only confusion. “Where did you—?”
Then she saw the knife.
Huge, serrated, gripped in his fist. She didn’t even look at his face. And she wasn’t confused any longer.
Cold, implacable fury filled her and clenched her hands into numbness. All she’d wanted to do was go home, put the kids to bed and take a hot bath. Read a book. Be alone for a few precious minutes in peace and quiet before her husband came home and wanted to talk to her. And now…this.
The tip of his knife came within an eyelash of her cheek; his other hand gripped her ponytail and held it tight. “Go!”
There was no time for thought. Gilly went. She pounded her foot so hard on the accelerator the tires spun on ice-slick ground before catching. The Chevy Suburban bucked forward, heading for the traffic light and the road out of town.
He has a knife. The press of steel on flesh, parting it. Blood spurts. There is no smell like it, the smell of blood. That’s what a knife can do. It can hurt and worse than that.
It can kill.
Gilly’s hands moved on the steering wheel automatically. With little conscious thought, she flicked her turn signal and nosed into the line of traffic. Night had fallen. Nobody could see what was happening to her. Nobody would help her. She was on her own, but she wasn’t alone.
“I’ll do what you want. Just don’t hurt my kids.”
No smile this time, but it was the same voice she’d used just minutes ago with her children. It was her mother’s voice, she thought. She’d never noticed. The realization sent a jolting twist of nausea through her.
“Mommy?” Arwen sounded tremulous, confused. “Who’s that man?”
“It’s okay, kids.” This was not her mother’s voice, thank God. It was the one Gilly used for things like shots and stitches. Things that would hurt no matter what she said or did. This voice broke like glass in her throat, hurting.
Gandy said with a two-year-old’s wisdom, “Man, bad.”
The man’s gaze shot to the backseat as if he only now noticed the kids there. “Shit.” He moved closer. He gripped the back of her seat this time, not her hair, but the knife stayed too close to her neck. “Turn left.”
She did. The lights of the oncoming cars flashed in her eyes, and Gilly squinted. Slam on the brakes? Twist the wheel, hit another car? A checklist of choices ticked themselves off in her brain and she took none, her fury dissolved by the numbness of indecision and fear. She followed his barked orders to head out of town, away from the lights and the other cars. Away from safety. Away from help.
“Where do you want me to go?” The big SUV bounced with every rut in the road, and the knife wavered that much closer to her flesh. She’d bleed a lot if it cut her. She didn’t want her children to see her bleed. She’d do anything to keep them from seeing that.
The man looked over his shoulder again. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”
The Suburban headed into farm country, past silos and barns, dark and silent. Gilly risked a look at him. She took a deep breath, spoke fast so he’d listen. “I have sixty dollars in my purse. You can have it. Just let—”
“Shut up and drive!”
No other traffic passed them, not even a car coming the opposite direction. Salt and grit spattered against the windshield, smearing it. She turned on the windshield wipers. She didn’t oblige him by driving fast.
If he didn’t want money, what did he want? Her mind raced. The truck? The vehicle wasn’t the kicky, sexy sort of car she’d always assumed people wanted to steal. It was far from new but well-maintained, and had cost an arm and a leg, but she wasn’t attached to it.
“Look, if you want the truck, you can have it.”
“Shut up!” The knife again dipped close to her shoulder, close enough to brush the fleece of her jacket. The blade glittered in the green dashboard light.
He didn’t want the truck. He didn’t want the money. Did he want…her?
Both children wailed from the backseat, a sound that at any other time would have set her teeth on edge. Now it broke her heart. The road stretched out pitch-black and deserted before them. No streetlamps out here in Pennsylvania farm country. Nothing but the faint light of electric candles in the window of a farmhouse set off far down a long country lane.
“What do you want?” Her fingers had gone past numb to aching from holding on so tightly to the steering wheel.
He didn’t answer her.
“Just let my kids go.” She kept her voice low, not wanting Arwen and Gandy to hear her. “I’ll pull over to the side and you can let them out. Then I’ll do whatever you want.”
Only fifteen minutes had passed. She’d have been home by now, if not for this. The man beside her let out a low, muttered string of curses. The knife hovered so close to her face she didn’t dare even turn her head again to look at him. Ahead of them, nothing but dark, unwinding road.
“Just let my kids go,” Gilly repeated, and he still didn’t answer. Her temper snapped and broke. Shattered. “Damn it, you son of a bitch, let my kids go!”
“I told you to shut up.” He grabbed the back of her neck, held the point of the knife against it.
She felt the thin, burning prick of it and shuddered, waiting for him to slice into her. He only poked. No worse than a needle prick, but all it would take was a simple shift of his fingers and she’d be dead. She’d wreck the car, and they’d all be dead.
Just ahead, lights coming from a large stone farmhouse settled on the very edge of the road illuminated the pavement. A high stone wall separated the driveway from the yard. Though the snow this winter had so far been sporadic, two dirty white piles had been shoveled up against the wall.
Yanking the wheel to the right, Gilly swerved into the driveway. Gravel spanged the sides of the car and one large rock hit the windshield hard enough to nick the glass. She slammed on the brakes using both feet and sent the truck sliding toward the thick stone wall and concrete stairs leading to the sidewalk.
Into the slide or away from it? She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter. The truck was sliding, skidding, and then the grumble of antilock brakes shuddered through it. The truck stopped just short of hitting the wall. Gilly’s seat belt locked against her chest and neck, a line of fire against her skin. The carjacker flew forward in his seat. His head slammed into the windshield and starred the glass before he flew against the side window and back against his seat.
Gilly didn’t waste time to see if the impact had knocked him out. She stabbed the button that automatically rolled her window completely down, and with a movement so fast and fierce it hurt her fingertips, unbuckled her seat belt and whirled over the center console to reach into the backseat. Arwen was crying and Gandy babbling, but Gilly didn’t have time for speech. She reached first to the buckles on both booster seats and flung the freed seat belts with such force the metal hook on one of them smacked the window.
The inside lights had been on when they pulled into the driveway, but now the porch lights came on, too. It would be only moments before whoever lived in the house came to the door to see who was in their driveway. Gilly had driven past this house and barn a thousand times, but she’d never met its occupants. Now she was going to trust them with her children.
“No tears, baby.” She pulled Gandy back with her over the center console.
The carjacker groaned. A purpling mark had appeared on his forehead, a starburst with beading blood at the center. More blood dripped from his nose to paint his mouth and chin. His eyes fluttered.
“I love you,” she whispered in Gandy’s sweet little boy ear as she lifted him out the driver’s side window. She heard his cry as he fell to the frozen ground below, but hardened her heart against it. No time, no time for kissing boo-boos. Arwen balked and protested, but Gilly grabbed her daughter by the front of her pink ballerina sweatshirt and yanked her forward.
“I love you, honey.” She heard the man starting to swear. She’d run out of time. “You take Gandy and you run, do you hear me? Run as fast as you can inside the house!”
Gilly shoved her purse strap over Arwen’s shoulder, grateful the bag had been on the floor in the backseat. Wallet. Phone. They’d be able to call Seth. The police. Incoherent thoughts whirled.
Then she shoved her firstborn out the window, noticing the girl wore no shoes. Irritation, irrational and useless, flooded her, because she’d told Arwen to keep her sneakers on, and now her feet would get wet and cold as she ran through the snow.
Gilly had her hand on the door handle when he grabbed her again.
“Bitch!” The man cried from behind her, and she waited for the hot slice of metal against the back of her neck. Time had gone, run away, disappeared. “You’d better drive this motherfucker and drive it fast or I’m gonna put this knife in your fucking guts!”
He reached over, yanked the gearshift into Reverse and slammed down on her knee. The engine revved. The truck jerked backward. Gravel sprayed. Gilly twisted in her seat, reached for the wheel, struggled for control, fought to keep the truck from hitting the kids. The headlights cast her children in flashes of white as they clutched each other in the snow. The back door opened and a Mennonite woman wearing a flowered dress and a prayer cap planted on her pinned-up hair appeared. Her mouth made a large round O of surprise when she saw the truck spinning its wheels and hopping backward onto the road like a rabbit on acid. When she saw the weeping, screaming children, she clutched her hands together and ran to them, her own feet bare. Gilly would never forget the sight of her children in the rearview mirror as she sped away. She couldn’t see their faces, only their silhouettes, backlit from the porch light. Two small figures holding hands in the dirty, drifted snow.
“Drive!” commanded the man who’d taken over Gilly’s life, and she drove.
It took her at least a mile to realize he hadn’t stabbed her. His slamming hand had bruised her knee, which throbbed, and he still had her tight by the back of the neck, but she wasn’t cut. The truck slid on a patch of black ice and she didn’t fight it. Maybe they’d skid and wreck, end up in a ditch. She couldn’t think beyond what had happened, what was still happening now.
Her babies, left behind.
“Not the way it was supposed to go down. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
He repeated the word over and over, like some sort of litany, not a curse. Gilly followed the curves in the road by instinct more than attention. She shuddered at the frigid night air from the open window and kept both hands on the wheel, afraid to let go long enough to close it.
“Damn, my fucking head hurts.”
Blood covered his shirt. He let go of her to reach toward the floor and grab a squashed roll of paper towels. He used a few to dab at the blood. Then he pointed the knife back at her. It shook this time.
“What do you want from me?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded faraway. She felt far away, not here. Someplace else. Was this really happening?
He snorted into the wad of paper towels. “Just drive. And roll up the fucking window.”
She did as he ordered, then slapped her hand back to the wheel. They’d only gone a few more miles, a few more minutes. Ahead, a traffic light glowed green. She sped through it. Another mile or so, and she’d hit another light. If it was red, what would she do? Stop and throw herself out of the car as she’d thrown her children?
She risked a glance at her abductor. He wasn’t even looking at her. She could do it. But when she got to the light, it didn’t oblige by turning red, or even yellow. Green illuminated the contours of his face as he turned to her.
“Turn right.”
Now they were on a state road, still deserted and rural despite its fancy number. Gilly concentrated on breathing. In. Out. She refused to faint.
The man’s voice was muffled. “I think you broke my fucking nose. Christ, what the hell were you doing?”
Gilly found her voice. Small, this time. Hoarse, but all hers with nothing of anyone else in it at all. “You wouldn’t let me stop to get my kids out.”
“I could’ve cut you. I still could.” He sounded puzzled.
Gilly kept her face toward the road. Her hands on the wheel. These were things that anchored her, the wheel, the road. These were solid things. Real. Not the rest of this, the man on the seat beside her, the children left behind.
“But you didn’t. And I got my kids out.”
He made another muffled snort. The wad of bloody paper towels fell out of his nose, and he made no move to retrieve it. He’d dropped the knife to his knee. Not close to her, but ready. Gilly had no doubt if she made any sudden moves he’d have it up at her face again.
“Well, shit,” he said, and lapsed into silence.
Silence. Nothing but the hum of the road under the wheels, the occasional rush of a passing car. Gilly thought of nothing. Could think of nothing but driving.
Her mind had been blank for at least twenty minutes before she noticed, long enough to pass through the last small town and onto the night-darkened highway beyond. When was the last time she’d thought of nothing? Her mind was never silent, never quiet. She didn’t have time to waste on daydreams. There were always too many things to do, to take care of. Her thoughts were always like a hamster on a wheel, running and running without ever getting anywhere.
Tomorrow the dog had a vet appointment. Arwen had kindergarten. Gandy needed new shoes. The floor in the kitchen badly needed a mopping, which she meant to do after paying the last round of bills for the month…and if she had time she wanted to finish reorganizing her closet. And through it all, the knowledge that no matter how many tasks she began, she’d complete none of them without being interrupted. Being demanded of. Being expected to take care of someone else’s needs.
Tonight a man had held her at knifepoint and threatened to take away that tomorrow with its lists and chores and demands. If nothing else, no matter what else happened, how things turned out, Gilly would not have to heave her weary body out of bed and force herself to get through one more day. If she was really unfortunate, and a glance at the twitching young man beside her told her she might be, she might never have to get out of bed again.
The thought didn’t scare her as much as it should have.
He shifted. “I need to get to Route 80.”
“I’m not sure…”
“I’ll tell you.”
In a brief flash of light from the streetlamp, she saw his forehead had furrowed with concentration. Gilly looked to the road ahead, at the lights of oncoming cars and the lit exit signs. The man ordered her to take the exit for the interstate, and she did. Then he slumped in his seat, head against the window, and the sound of his tortured breathing filled her ears like the sound of the ocean, constant and steady.
In the silence, uninterrupted by cries and demands, Gilly let her mind fall blank again as she drove on. Her rage and terror had passed, replaced by something quiet and sly.
Relief.
2
Thud, thud. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. The truck’s wheels passed over asphalt cracks with a sound like a beating heart. For an hour or so her abductor had told her which roads to take, what highways to follow. Some were small, obscure back-country lanes, some major four-lane roads, all of them dark and fairly clear of traffic. She didn’t know if he meant to dodge pursuit, was lost, or had a plan. He’d listened to the radio for a while, switching stations, pausing at a commercial for the built-in navigation service that came with all the newer model cars.
He’d run his fingertips over the dash. “You got that?”
“No. It was only an option when we bought the truck, and we didn’t take the option.”
On the radio, the soft-voiced operator assured the sniveling woman that she was going to be just fine. The commercial narrator reminded everyone what a lifesaver the service was. The man had seemed pleased and switched the station, finally settling on the weather. They were predicting snow. His eyes had closed several miles back. His breathing had slowed, joined with the heartbeat of their passage, to soothe and lull her further into blankness.
Into quiet.
When Gilly was growing up, her best friend’s house had been full of constant noise. Danica had four brothers and a sister, plus a dog, a cat, a bird and several tanks full of fish. Her parents yelled a lot, mostly to be heard over the rest of the roar. Gilly loved spending time at Danica’s house, but she’d often come home from a visit with her head whirling, slipping into her solitary bedroom and putting her head under the pillow to muffle even the silence that almost always greeted her.
It wasn’t until she’d had kids of her own that Gilly realized noise was normal. Most families lived with it. Shouts, laughter, calling to each other from room to room. The burble of the radio, television. These were the sounds of normal families. She’d come to appreciate the noise of normality, but could never quite relish it the way she now savored the silence in the car. It had been a long, long time since she’d been in silence like this, been granted the choice to stay silent, herself.
Gilly drank the quiet like it was wine, and felt nearly as drunk from it. No whining, no complaining. Nobody asking to stop to pee or to change the radio station. Nobody ignoring directions. Nobody grumbling she was going too slow or too fast. Nothing but an occasional sigh from the man in the driver’s seat beside her, or the clink of metal to remind her he still had the knife ready at his side.
The man beside her came awake with a snort and flailing arms. The knife hissed through the air scant inches from her hand and arm, then knocked against the center console, rattling it. Gilly swerved across the center line and back, heart pounding. The man sat up and scrubbed at his face with the hand not wielding the weapon.
“Fuck!”
Gilly shifted in her seat and repositioned her hands on the wheel. She didn’t say anything. Her abductor muttered and tapped the hilt of the blade in his hands, then apparently decided to pretend he hadn’t been sleeping at all. Maybe he thought she hadn’t noticed.
“Where are we?” he blurted as if he didn’t realize she ought to be the one with the questions.
Gilly told him by tilting her head toward the road sign they’d just passed. They’d been on the road for two hours. Her thoughts drifted briefly to Arwen and Gandy. Had Seth picked them up yet? Were they home, safe in bed? It was past their bedtime, and Arwen was impossible in the mornings if she didn’t have enough sleep….
“I asked you a question!”
The rap of the knife’s blade against her shoulder made the car jerk beneath her startled hands. Gilly yelped, though he’d only tapped her with the flat of it. She steadied the massive truck, visions of rolling the huge vehicle punching any other thoughts from her head.
“Pay attention!”
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. She tried again. “Sorry.”
She told him out loud, though by now they’d passed another sign. She watched him scowl at the white letters on the green background, and wondered if he couldn’t read. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it up, turning on the map light to look at it.
“We need Route 80.” He shook the paper at her. “You didn’t go the wrong way, did you?”
The unfairness of the accusation stung her into response. “You’re the one telling me which way to go!”
She regretted her outburst when he bared his teeth, blood grimed in the cracks, and lifted the knife.
“I have a knife.” His voice was hoarse.
“I know you do.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m some kind of fucking idiot.”
If he was going to cut her, he wouldn’t do it while she was driving. He’d make her pull over first. Wouldn’t he?
“Sorry.”
“Okay.” He seemed to think they’d reached some sort of mutual agreement. Gilly didn’t know what it might be, but she wasn’t going to argue.
“We haven’t passed Route 80 yet.”
He held up the soiled scrap of paper again. “That’s where we need to go.”
“We haven’t even made it to State College,” Gilly said, not pointing out they’d have been long past there if he hadn’t made her take such a crazy, circuitous route.
Gilly waited to hear what he’d say next. He didn’t speak. The tires thudded. She felt him staring.
“We’re going to need gas,” she said at last, since even though she loved the quiet, craved it, it frightened her. “Depending on how far we’re going.”
He leaned close to her to look at the gas gauge. She expected a whiff of sweat, of dirt. An angry or scary odor, something bad.
He smelled like soap and cold air. For the first time she noticed he didn’t even wear a winter coat, only jeans and a worn hooded sweatshirt with a zipper. In the green dashboard illumination she couldn’t tell the color, but everything on him was dark. Hair, eyes, the growing scruff of a beard she could just make out. A quick glance at his feet revealed huge and battered hiking boots.
“Fuck.” He leaned back into his seat. The knife seemed forgotten at his side, but she wasn’t sure she could trust that impression. One sudden move and she could find herself with four inches of steel inside her.
Later, when it was all over and she could be totally honest with herself, Gilly would think it was that clean scent of soap and fresh air that let him keep her. That and the silence. People assumed it was the knife, and she never disabused them of that notion, but Gilly knew the truth. He smelled good, and he didn’t talk much. It was wrong…but right then, it was enough.
They drove a few more miles in the silence before he sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “How much longer before we have to stop?”
She looked at the gauge. “We have less than a quarter of a tank.”
Her captor made a muffled sound of disgust. “Next gas station, stop.”
They weren’t on a particularly populous stretch of road, but it wouldn’t be long before they found a station. He leaned forward again to punch the button on the radio and found only static. He punched the button to play the CD. The familiar words of a lullaby, albeit one unconventional and untraditional, blared from the speakers.
“What the hell is this?” He turned down the volume.
Her smile felt out of place but she couldn’t stop it. “Bat Boy: The Musical.”
He listened for a moment longer to the words, a mother’s gentle promise to nurture the unloved and unwelcome bat-child found in a cave and brought to her home. The song was one Gilly liked to sing along with, but she didn’t now. When it was over and the next song from the campy rock musical had taken over, he stabbed the button on the stereo to turn it off.
“That’s weird,” he said bluntly. “You listen to that with your kids in the car?”
She thought of Arwen, who hadn’t seen the show but loved to sing along with the songs too. “Yes.”
He shook his head. “Damn. What’s it about?”
His voice had a smoker’s rasp. He talked slowly, as if choosing each word was a mental strain, but he didn’t slur his words or use bad grammar. His voice matched the rest of him, unkempt and battered.
“It’s about Bat Boy.” Gilly’s eyes scanned the road signs, looking for one that showed an exit or gas station ahead. “It’s…it’s just fun.”
“Who the hell is Bat Boy?”
She hesitated, knowing already how the answer would sound. “He’s half human, half bat. They found him in a cave down in Virginia.”
“You’re shitting me.” Even his curses were clipped and precise, as though he was speaking written dialogue instead of his own thoughts.
“It’s a story,” she said. “From the Weekly World News. I don’t think it’s real.”
He laughed. “No shit.”
“There’s a gas station ahead. Do you want me to pull over?”
She tensed, waiting for his answer. He shrugged, leaned forward to check the gas gauge again. “Yeah.”
She signaled and slowed to exit. Her heartbeat accelerated and her palms grew moist. Anxiety gripped her, and a sense of loss she refused to acknowledge because she didn’t want to think what it meant.
Apparently he remembered the knife, for now he pulled it up and waved it at her again. “Don’t forget I have this.”
As if she could. “No.”
Ahead of them was the parking lot, busy even at this time of night. Bright lights made Gilly squint. She pulled the truck up to the pumps and turned off the engine. She waited for instructions, though normally being told what to do chafed at her. Now she felt as though she could do nothing else but wait to be told what to do. How to do it.
He leaned close enough to kiss her. His breath smelled like Big Red gum. “Give me the keys.”
Gilly pulled them from the ignition and passed them into his palm. His fingers closed over hers, squeezing. She winced.
“If you so much as flick the headlights, I will gut you like a deer. You got that?”
She nodded.
“I’ll pump.” He waited, looking at her. She saw a flicker of apprehension flash across his face, so fast she wasn’t sure she saw it at all. He held up the knife, but low so anyone looking at them wouldn’t see it through the windows. “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t do anything. Remember what I said.”
She expected him to ask for money. “I don’t have my purse.”
He made that sound of disgust again, and now he sounded contemptuous, too. “I don’t need your money.”
He folded the knife and put it into a leather sheath on his belt, slipped the keys into his pocket, then opened his door and went around to the pump, using the keyless remote to lock the door. He fumbled with the buttons and the handle, finally getting the gas to start. Then he went inside.
Gilly sat and watched him. After a moment, stunned, she realized this was the second time he’d let his attention slide from her. She sat a moment longer, seeing him choose items from the cooler, the racks of snacks and the magazine section.
From this distance she had her first good look at him. He was tall, at least six-two or -three, if she judged correctly. She’d seen his hair was dark, but in the fluorescent lights of the minimart it proved to be a deep chestnut that fell in shaggy sheaves to just below his shoulders. He didn’t smile at the clerk and didn’t appear to be making small talk, either, as he put his substantial pile of goods on the counter. He motioned to the clerk for several cartons of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds. He was spending a lot of money.
He didn’t hurry. He didn’t look nervous or wary. She could see the knife in its leather sheath from here, peeking from beneath the hem of his dark gray sweatshirt, but this was rural Pennsylvania. Deer-hunting country. Nobody would look at it twice, unless it was to admire it.
Outside, the gas pump clicked off. Gilly shifted in her seat. Inside the market, her abductor pulled an envelope from his sweatshirt pocket and rifled through the contents. He offered a few bills to the clerk, who took the money and started bagging the purchases.
This was it. She could run. He wouldn’t chase her. If he did, he couldn’t catch her.
She could scream. People would hear. Someone would come. Someone would help her.
She breathed again, not screaming. The white-faced and thin-lipped woman in the rearview mirror could not be her. The smile she forced looked more like the baring of teeth, a feral grin more frightening than friendly.
Time had slowed and stopped, frozen. She’d felt this once when she’d hit a deer springing out from the woods near her house. One moment the road had been clear, the next her window filled with tawny fur, a body crushing into the front end of the truck and sliding across the windshield to break the glass. She’d seen every stone on the street, every hair on the deer’s body before it had all become a haze.
Today she’d felt that slow-syrup of time stopping twice. The first when the man slid across the seat and pointed a knife at her head. The second time was now.
She wasn’t going back. Not to the vet appointments, the ballet practice, the laundry and the bills. She wasn’t going back to the neediness, the whining, the constant, never-ending demands from spouse and spawn that left her feeling on some days her head might simply explode. She didn’t know where she was going, just that it wasn’t back.
When he opened the driver’s side door, he looked as startled as she must have been when he made his first appearance into her life. “I…I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
Gilly opened her mouth but said nothing.
His eyes cut back and forth as his mouth thinned. “Move over.”
She did, and he got in. He turned the key in the ignition and put the truck in Drive. Gilly didn’t speak; she had nothing to say to him. With her feet on the duffel bag he’d squashed onto the passenger side floor, her knees felt like they rubbed her earlobes. He pushed something across the center console at her: the latest edition of some black-and-white knockoff of the Weekly World News, not the real thing. The real thing had gone out of publication years before.
“You care if I smoke?”
She did mind; the stench of cigarettes would make her gag and choke. “No.”
He punched the lighter and held its glowing tip to the cigarette’s end. The smoke stung her eyes and throat, or maybe it was her tears. Gilly turned her face to the window.
He pulled out of the lot and back onto the highway, letting the darkness fall around them with the softness and comfort of a quilt.
3
“Roses don’t like to get their feet wet.” Gilly’s mother wears a broad-brimmed straw hat. She holds up her trowel, her hands unprotected by gloves, her fingernails dark with dirt. Her knuckles, too, grimed deep with black earth. “Look, Gillian. Pay attention.”
Gilly will never be good at growing roses. She loves the way they look and smell, but roses take too much time and attention. Roses have rules. Her mother has time to spend on pruning, fertilizing. Tending. Nurturing. But Gilly doesn’t. Gilly never has enough time.
She’s dreaming. She knows it by the way her mother smiles and strokes the velvety petals of the red rose in her hand. Her mother hasn’t smiled like that in a long time, and if she has maybe it was only ever in Gilly’s dreams. The roses all around them are real enough, or at least the memory of them is. They’d grown in wild abundance against the side of her parents’ house and along gravel paths laid out in the backyard. Red, yellow, blushing pink, tinged with peach. The only ones she sees now, though, are the red ones. Roses with names like After Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They’re all in bloom.
“Pay attention,” Gilly’s mother repeats and holds out the rose. “Roses are precious and fragile things. They take a lot of work, but it’s all worth it.”
The only flowers that grow at Gilly’s house are daffodils and dandelions, perennials the deer and squirrels leave alone. Her garden is empty. “I’ve tried, Mom. My roses die.”
Gilly’s mother closes her fist around the rose’s stem. Bright blood appears. This rose has thorns.
“Because you neglected them, Gillian. Your roses died because you don’t pay attention.”
“Mom. Your hand.”
Her mother’s smile doesn’t fade. Doesn’t wilt. She moves forward to press the rose into Gilly’s hand. Gilly doesn’t want to take it. Her mother is passing the responsibility to her, and she doesn’t want it. She tries to keep her fingers closed, refusing the flower. Her mother grips her wrist.
“Take it, Gillian.”
This is the woman Gilly remembers better. Wild eyes, mouth thin and grim. Hair lank and in her face, the hat gone now in the way dreams have of changing. Her mother’s fingers bite into Gilly’s skin, sharp as thorns and bringing blood.
“You love them,” Gilly’s mother says. “Don’t you love them?”
“I do love them!” Gilly cries.
“You have to take care of what you love,” her mother says. “Even if it makes you bleed.”
Gilly woke, startled and disoriented. She didn’t know how long she’d slept, how far they’d gone. Didn’t know where they were. She rolled her stiff neck on shoulders gone just as sore and stared out to dark roads and encroaching trees. Steep mountains hung with frozen miniwaterfalls rose on both sides. A train track ran parallel to the road, separated by a metal fence.
Had she seen these roads before? Gilly didn’t think so. Nothing looked familiar. The man took an unmarked exit. They rode for another hour on forested roads rough enough to make her glad for four-wheel drive, then turned down another narrow, rutted road. Ice gleamed in the ruts, and the light layer of snow that had been worn away on the main road still remained here. A rusted metal gate with a medieval-looking padlock blocked the way.
He pulled a jangling ring of keys from the pocket of his sweatshirt and held them out to her. “Unlock it.”
Gilly didn’t take the keys at first. It made no sense for her to defy him. In the faint light from the dashboard his narrowed eyes should have been menacing enough to have her leaping to obey his command even if the threat of the knife wasn’t. Yet she sat, staring at him dumbly, unable to move.
“Get out and unlock the gate,” he repeated, shaking the key ring at her. “I’m going to drive through. You close it behind me and lock it again.”
She didn’t move for another long moment, frozen in place the way she’d been so often tonight.
“You deaf?”
She shook her head.
“Just fucking stupid, then. I told you to move. Now move your ass,” he said in a low, menacing voice, “or I will move it for you.”
This morning she’d stood in her closet, picking out clothes without holes or too many stains, jeans with a button and zipper instead of soft lounge pants with an elastic waist. She’d dressed to go out in public, not like the stay-home mom she was. She’d wanted to look nice for once, not dumpy and covered in sticky fingerprints.
She should’ve worn warm boots, not the useless chunk-heeled ones that hurt her feet if she stood too long. No help for it now. She’d chosen fashion over function and now had to face the consequences. Gilly got out of the car. Immediately she slipped on some ice and almost went down, but managed to keep upright by flailing her arms. She wrenched her back, the pain enough to distract her from the tingling in her drive-numbed legs.
Frigid air burned her eyes, forcing her to slit them. Her nose went numb almost at once, her bare fingers too. The padlock had rusted shut, and the key wouldn’t turn. Her fingers fumbled, slipped, and blood oozed from a gash along her thumb. It looked like ketchup in the headlights. Gilly clasped her hands and tried to warm them, tried to bend her fingers back into place, but they crooked like talons.
At last the key turned with a squeal, and the hasp popped open. She slipped the lock off and pushed the gate forward. Ice clinked and jingled as it fell off the metal. The gate stuck halfway open, grinding, and she pushed hard, her feet slipping in the icy ruts. Her palms stung against the cold metal; she had a brief vision of the movie A Christmas Story and the boy who stuck his tongue to the pole, but fortunately her hands didn’t stick. She grunted as she shoved once more. More pain in her back, her hands, her freezing face, her cramped toes. The gate groaned open the rest of the way, and the truck pulled through.
It didn’t stop right away and for one panicked moment Gilly thought he was going to leave her behind. Then the red glare of the taillights came on, bathing everything in a horror-show haze. Once open, the gate wouldn’t close. Gilly pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over her palms to get a better grip and protect her hands, but that only made them slip worse. She tugged, hard, and fell on her ass.
The truck revved. Gilly got to her feet, slipping and sliding. He hadn’t stabbed her. He wasn’t going to drive away and leave her here to freeze, either. She ran anyway as best she could on frozen toes. Her fingers slipped again on the door handle. Gilly climbed back into the truck and slammed the door.
He drove for another thirty minutes along a road so twisted and potholed Gilly had to grip the door handle just to keep herself upright every time the truck bounced. Trees pressed in on them. Some branches even snaked out to scrape along the truck’s side. At one point, the battered driveway took a steep pitch upward. The tires spun on loose gravel. They were climbing.
At last, the man stopped the truck in front of a battered two-story house, bathing it in the twin beams of the bright headlights. House was too flattering a term. It was more like a shack. A sagging front porch with three rickety steps lined the front. Green rocking chairs, the sort with legs made from a single piece of bended metal, lined the porch. Gilly had seen chairs like that in 1950s pictures of her grandparents vacationing in the Catskills.
He turned off the ignition. Darkness clapped its hand over her eyes. Gilly blinked, momentarily blind.
“Get out,” the man said without preamble.
He opened the door and stepped into the glacial night air, then shoved the keys into the pocket of his ratty sweatshirt, slammed the door shut and headed toward the house without hesitation. He quickly blended into the dark.
Without the light of the headlamps to guide her, the distance from the truck to the front porch became instantly unnavigable. She already knew the ground here was frozen and hard. At best she’d fall on her ass again. At worst, she’d end up with a broken leg.
Gilly put her hand on the door. Tremors tickled her, and her fingers twitched on the handle. Her feet jittered on the duffel bag. Only her eyes felt wide and staring, motionless while the rest of her body went into some strange sort of Saint Vitus’ dance.
She was dreaming. Was she dreaming? Was this real? In the dark, the silent dark, Gilly had to press her twitching fingers to her eyelids to convince herself they were open. Like a blind woman she felt the contours of her face, trying to convince herself that it was her own and uncertain, in the end, if it was.
The slanting shack began to glow from the four windows along its front. The light was strange, yellow and dim, but it gave her the courage to open the door. The meager glow was just enough to allow Gilly to make her stumbling way to the front porch steps, and then through the door he’d left open.
She entered a small, square room with a sooty woodstove on a raised brick platform between the two windows along the back wall. Now she could see why the light coming from the windows seemed so odd. Propane, not electric, lights illuminated the room. She wrinkled her nose against the smell, which reminded her of summer camp.
Despite the stains and dirt on the carpet she could see it was indisputably green. Not emerald, not hunter, but mossy and dull. The color of mold. The furniture grouped around the woodstove was faded brown plaid with rough-hewn wooden arms and feet. The two long sofas facing each other across a battered coffee table looked in decent enough condition, but the two chairs beside them had seen better days. Time or rodents had put holes in the plaid fabric, and stuffing peeked out here and there. The scarred dining table had four matching chairs and a fifth and sixth that didn’t match the set or each other. Someone long ago had tried to make it pretty with an arrangement of silk flowers, now dusty and only sad. A larger camping lantern, newer than the wall sconces but unlit, also sat upon the table.
To her right Gilly saw the kitchen, separated from the living room by a countertop and row of hanging cabinets. Through the narrow gap between them she saw another table and chairs. Off the kitchen she thought there might be a mudroom or pantry. She glimpsed the man standing at the refrigerator, mumbling curses. Maybe at the emptiness, maybe at the stench of mildew and age that she could smell even from here.
Gilly closed the door behind her with a solid, remorseless thud.
“Smells like a damn rat died in the fridge.”
Gilly wasn’t positive he spoke to her or just at her. She swallowed her disgust at the thought and looked around the room again. Through the door immediately to her left she spied a linoleum floor and the glint of metal fixtures. A bathroom. The doorway farther back along the wall hinted at a set of steep, narrow stairs. That was it. Upstairs must be bedrooms.
“I need to take a piss,” he told her matter-of-factly. Carrying a large battery-powered lantern, he brushed past her and into the bathroom. Next came the sound of water gushing, then a toilet flushing. At least the facilities worked.
Her own bladder cramped, muscles that had never been the same since her pregnancies protesting. When he came out, she went in. He’d left her the lantern. She peed for what felt like hours. At the sink, washing her hands, a stranger peered out at her from the cloudy mirror. A woman with lank hair, dark to match the circles under her eyes, and skin the color of moonlight. She looked like her mother.
She’d run away just like her mother.
She tried for dismay and felt only resignation. Her eyes itched and burned, and not even splashing cold water helped. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, her stomach lurching. She didn’t puke. Eyes closed, Gilly gripped the sink for one dizzy moment thinking she would open them and find herself at home in front of her own mirror, all of this some insane fantasy she’d concocted out of frustration. Wishful thinking. Maybe crazy would be better than this.
When Gilly came out of the bathroom, she found the man sitting at the dining room table. He’d lit the lamp there and spread out a bunch of wrinkled papers. He held his head in his hands like the act of reading them all had given him a headache.
Gilly cleared her throat, then realized she hadn’t used her voice since they’d stopped for gas. Four, five hours ago? Less than that or longer, she had no idea. She waited for him to look up, but he didn’t.
He ran his fingers again and again through the dark lengths of his hair, until it crackled with static in the cold air. Gilly waited, shifting from foot to foot. Awkward, uncertain. Even if she did speak, what could she possibly say?
He looked up. Under the thin scruff of black beard, his face had fine, clean lines. Thick black lashes fringed his deep brown eyes, narrowed now beneath equally dark brows. He wasn’t ugly, and she couldn’t force herself to find him so. With a shock, Gilly realized he wasn’t much younger than she was, maybe three or four years.
“My uncle,” he said suddenly, looking up at her.
Gilly waited for more, and when it didn’t come she slipped into one of the battered chairs. She folded her hands on the cold wood. It felt rough beneath her fingers.
He touched the pile of papers, shoving a couple of them toward her. “This was my Uncle Bill’s place.”
Gilly made no move to take the papers. She found her voice, as rusty as the gate had been. “It’s…quaint.”
His brow furrowed. “You making fun of me?”
She expected anger. More knife waving. Perhaps even threats. Anger she could handle. Fight. She could be angry in response. Instead she felt hollow shame. He’d spoken in the resigned fashion of a man used to people mocking him, and she had been making fun.
“Was it a hunting cabin?”
“Yeah.” He looked around. “But he lived here, too. Fixed it up a little at a time. I used to come here with him, sometimes. Uncle Bill died a couple months ago.”
Condolences rose automatically to her lips and she pressed them closed. It would be ridiculous to express sorrow over a stranger’s death, especially to this man. Her fingers curled against the table. Surreal, all of this.
You’re not dreaming this, Gilly. You know that, right? This is real. It’s happening.
She knew it better than anything and yet still couldn’t manage to process it. She stared across the table. “He left you this cabin?”
“Yeah. It’s all mine now.” He nodded and gave her a grin shocking in its rough beauty, its normality. They might’ve been chatting over coffee. This was more terrifying than his anger had been.
She looked around the room, like maybe it might look better with another glance. It didn’t. “It’s cold in here.”
He shrugged, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt down over his fingertips and hugging his arms around himself. “Yeah. I could light a fire. That’ll help.”
“It’s late,” Gilly pointed out. She’d been about to say she needed to go to bed, but she didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Fear flared again as she watched him run his tongue along the curve of his smile. He was bigger than she was and certainly stronger. She wouldn’t be able to stop him from forcing her.
“Yeah” was all he said, though, and made no move to leap across the table to ravish her. He blinked, cocking his head in a puppyish fashion that might have been endearing under other circumstances. “Let’s go to bed.”
Stricken, Gilly didn’t move even when he pushed away from the table and gestured to her. Her throat dried. Lie back and enjoy it, she thought irrationally, remembering what a friend of hers had said a blind date gone horribly wrong had told her to do. Gilly’s friend had kicked the would-be rapist in the nuts and run away, but Gilly had given up the chance for running back at the gas station. Even if she ran, now, where would she go?
He went to the propane lamps and lowered the flames to a dim glow, then jerked his head toward the steep, narrow stairs. “Beds are upstairs. C’mon.”
On wobbly legs she followed him. She’d been right about the stairs. Dark, steep, narrow and splintery. Festooned with cobwebs and lit only by the lantern he carried.
The stairs entered directly into one large room that made up the entire upstairs. More propane sconces, wreathed in spiderwebs furry with dust, lined the walls beneath the peaked roof. The windows on each end were grimy with dirt and more cobwebs. A waist-high partition with a space to walk through divided the room in half widthwise. A low, slatted wall protected unwary people from falling down the stairs.
“Beds.” He pointed. “You can have the one back there.”
He meant beyond the partition. Gilly realized he didn’t intend to follow her when he handed her the lantern. She passed the double row of twin beds, three on each side of the room, then went through the open space in the middle of the partition. On the other side were a sagging full-size bed, a dresser, an armoire and an ancient rocking chair. A faded rag rug covered the wooden plank floor.
“Cozy,” she muttered and set the lantern on the dresser.
The man had already crawled into one of the beds on the other side. Gilly, mouth pursed with hesitant distaste, pulled back the heavy, musty comforter. The sheets beneath were no longer white, but still fairly clean. Nothing rustled in them, at least nothing she could see.
She unlaced her useless boots and slipped them off with a sigh, wriggling her toes. She hadn’t realized how much they hurt until she took off her boots. Without removing her coat, Gilly crawled into bed and pulled the knobby cover up to her chin. The thought of putting her head on the pillow made her cringe, and she pulled her hood up to cover her hair.
His voice came at her out of the dark. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Gillian. Gilly.”
“I’m Todd.”
She heard the squeak of springs as he settled further into the mattress. Then exhaustion claimed her, and she fell asleep.
4
What finally woke Gilly was not a warm body burrowing next to hers and the stench of an overripe diaper. Nor was it the sudden blaring of a television tuned permanently to the cartoon channel. What woke her this morning was the numbness of her face.
She hadn’t slept without nightly interruption for more than five years but now her eyes drifted open slowly. Gradually. Bright morning sunshine dimmed by the dirt on the window glass filled the room. She’d rolled herself into the covers, cocooned against the bitter winter air. Her hood, pulled up around her hair, had kept her head warm enough. Her face, though, had lain exposed all night. She couldn’t feel her cheeks or her nose or her lips.
The night rushed back at her. Her heart thumped, and her mouth behind the frozen lips went dry. Gilly sat up in the sagging double bed, fighting to untangle the covers that had protected her through the night.
She managed to push them off. On stiff legs she got out of bed and hugged her coat around her. Her boots were gone.
Everything in the dusty attic room shone with an unreal clarity that defied the fuzziness of her thoughts. How long had she slept? The sudden, panicked thought she might have slept for more than just one night, that she’d been gone for days, forced her into action.
In the light of day she could no longer take solace in the dark to hide her actions, to excuse her decisions. She’d made a terrible mistake last night. She could only hope she had the chance to fix it.
Gilly pounded down the stairs, breath frosting out in front of her. She hurtled into the living room and stumbled over her own feet. She caught herself on the back of the hideous plaid sofa.
From the kitchen, Todd swung his shaggy brown head around to look at her from his place at the stove. “You all right?”
She didn’t miss the irony of his concern. “Yeah. Thanks.”
By the time she walked across the living room and entered the kitchen, her stomach had begun to grumble like thunder. The last thing she’d eaten was half a granola bar Arwen had begged for and then refused because it had raisins in it. Gilly swallowed against the rush of saliva.
“Hungry?” A cigarette hung from Todd’s mouth and wreaths of smoke circled his head. He lifted a spatula. “I’m making breakfast. Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”
Gilly wrinkled her nose at the stench of smoke and didn’t laugh at what he’d obviously meant to be funny. With her stomach making so much noise she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t hungry, though she didn’t want to admit it. “I’m cold. What time is it?”
Todd shrugged and held up a wrist bare of anything but a smattering of dark hair. “Dunno. I don’t have a watch.”
Her stomach told her she’d slept well past eleven. Maybe even past noon. It grumbled again, and she pressed her hands into her belly to stop the noise.
Gilly looked around the kitchen. The propane-powered appliances were old, like the chairs on the porch, straight out of the 1950s. Green flowered canisters labeled Flour, Coffee, Sugar and Tea, and a vintage table and chairs set stuck off in one corner prompted her to mutter, “You could make a fortune on eBay selling this stuff.”
Todd swiveled his head to look at her again. “What?”
“Nothing.”
From the stove in front of him came the sound of sizzling and the smell of something good. A wire camping toaster resting on the table held two slices of bread, a little browner than she preferred. Her stomach didn’t seem to care.
“Toast,” Todd said unnecessarily. He pointed with the spatula. “There’s butter and jelly in the fridge.”
All this as casual as coffee, she thought. All of this as though there was nothing wrong. She might’ve woken at a friend’s house or a bed and breakfast. She shuddered, stomach twisting again. She fisted her hands at her sides, but there was nothing she could grab on to that would stop the world from turning.
“Christ, move your ass! Put it on the table,” Todd said, voice prompting as if she was an idiot.
She jumped. The command got her feet moving, anyway. Not from fear—he didn’t sound angry, just annoyed. More a point of pride, that she wasn’t so scared of him she couldn’t move, or so stupid she couldn’t figure out how to eat breakfast.
Remembering his comments the night before, Gilly hesitated to open the refrigerator. She expected to recoil from the smell of dead rodents and had one hand already up to her nose in preparation. The interior of the appliance was not sparkling; age would prevent that from ever being true again. But it was clean. The caustic but somehow pleasant scent of cleanser drifted to her nostrils. Food filled every shelf, crammed into every corner. Jugs of milk and juice, loaves of bread, packages of bologna and turkey and deli bags of cheese. The freezer was the same, bulging with packages of ground beef and chicken breasts. No vegetables that she could see, but plenty of junk food in brightly colored boxes, full of chemicals and fat. The sort of food she bought but felt guilty for serving.
“You went shopping.”
“Even bastards gotta eat,” Todd said.
Gilly pulled out the jumbo-size containers of jelly and margarine, not real butter, and set them on the table. She shifted on her feet, uncertain what to do next. She wasn’t used to not being the one at the stove. The bare table beckoned, and she opened cupboards in search of plates and cups, pulled out a drawer to look for silverware. The tiny kitchen meant they needed complicated choreography to get around each other, but she managed to set the table while Todd shifted back and forth at the stove to give her room to maneuver.
When at last she’d finished and stood uncertainly at the table, Todd turned with a steaming skillet in one hand. “Sit down.”
Gilly sat. Todd set the skillet on the table without putting a hot pad underneath it, but Gilly supposed it wouldn’t matter. One more scorch mark on the silver-dappled white veneer would hardly make much of a difference.
Todd scooped a steaming pile of eggs, yellow interspersed with suspicious pink bits, onto her plate. Gilly just stared at it. She smelled bacon, which of course she wouldn’t eat, and which of course he couldn’t know.
Instead she spread her browned toast with a layer of margarine and jelly and bit into it. The flavor of it burst on her tongue, igniting her hunger. She gobbled the rest of the bread and left only crumbs.
A teakettle she hadn’t noticed began to whistle. Todd left the table to switch off the burner and pull two chipped mugs from one of the cupboards. Into each he dropped a tea bag and filled the mugs with the boiling water, then pushed one across the table at her.
He took his chair again and settled into the act of eating as naturally as if he’d known her all their lives. He ate with gusto, great gulps and lip smacking. His fork went from the plate to his mouth and back again, with little pause. Watching him, Gilly was reminded of the way their dog crouched over his bowl to keep the cat from stealing the food. Her stomach shriveled in envy. One piece of toast wasn’t going to be enough.
He paused in his consumption long enough to look up at her. “You not eating? There’s plenty. I made extra.”
The sudden loud gurgle of her stomach would make her a liar if she said no. “Maybe some more toast.”
The smooth skin of his brow furrowed. “You don’t like eggs?”
Gilly pointed to the skillet. “Ah…they’ve got bacon mixed in with them.”
Todd licked his lips. The gesture was feral and wary, as though she was trying to trick him and he knew it, but wasn’t sure how to stop her. “Yeah?”
“I don’t eat bacon,” Gilly explained. Her stomach gurgled louder. She’d no more eat the breakfast he’d cooked than she would kick a puppy, but the smell was making her mouth water.
“Why not?”
“I’m Jewish,” she said simply. “I don’t eat pork.”
Todd swiped his sweatshirt sleeve across his lips. “What?”
Gilly was used to having to explain herself. “I don’t eat bacon. I’m Jewish.”
Todd looked down at his plate and shoved the last few bites of pig-tainted eggs around with his fork. When he looked up at her, she noticed his eyes were the same shade as milk chocolate. “You don’t look Jewish.”
The comment, so ripe with anti-Semitism, was one she’d heard often and which never ceased to rankle. “Well, you don’t look crazy.”
He cocked his head at her, again lining the rim of his lips with his tongue. From any other young man the gesture might have been sensual or even aggressively, overtly sexual. On Todd, it merely made him look warily contemplative. Like a dog that’s been kicked too many times but keeps coming to the back door, anyway. Mistrustful, waiting for the blow, but unable to stop returning.
“Uncle Bill always made the eggs that way up here,” he said finally. “He called them camp eggs. But I can make you some without bacon, if you want.”
She wanted to deny him that kindness, to keep him as the villain. Her stomach gurgled some more, and she couldn’t. “I’ll make them.”
She pushed away from the table, heat stinging in her cheeks. Why should she feel guilty? He was the bad guy. He’d held a knife on her, kidnapped her, stolen her vehicle. Put her kids in danger.
“Can you use this skillet, or…” His voice trailed off uncertainly from behind her. “Or do you need one that didn’t have pig in it?”
Again she thought of a kicked dog, slinking around the back door hoping for a moment of kindness, and the heat burned harder in her face. That she doubted there was any utensil in this cabin that hadn’t at some point touched something non-kosher didn’t really matter. He was trying to be considerate. This, like his concern when she’d tripped, was scarier than if he’d shouted and threatened. This made him…normal.
And if he was normal, what did that make her?
“No, I can just wash it out. That one will be fine.”
He scraped the remains of the skillet onto his plate and handed it to her. She washed it, then opened the fridge and pulled out the cardboard carton of eggs. She opened two cupboards before she found a bowl and rinsed it free of any dust that might have gathered. She cracked the first egg into it, checking automatically for blood spots that would make it inedible.
The skin on the back of her neck prickled. He was watching her, and of course. What else would he look at but this woman in his kitchen, a stranger he’d stolen? Gilly broke another egg with crushing fingers, bits of shell falling into yellow yolk.
“How long have you been Jewish?”
It wasn’t the question she’d expected. “My whole life.”
Todd laughed. “I guess that’s about how long I’ve been crazy.”
Crazy.
She’d thrown out the term offhandedly, the way most people did, not meaning it. The way Todd had, himself. His tone had told her he didn’t think he was crazy. Not really. Gilly didn’t think he was crazy, either. Gilly knew crazy.
Crazy was having a chance to escape and ignoring it, not just once, but many times. Crazy was wanting to escape in the first place.
Her stomach lurched into her throat, bile bitter on the back of her tongue. She swallowed convulsively. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She beat the eggs anyway and poured them into the skillet along with some margarine. The smooth yellow mess curdled and cooked. Gilly knew she wouldn’t be able to eat it now no matter how hollow her stomach. She removed the eggs from the stove and turned off the flame.
She sipped in a breath, forming her words with care, keeping her tone light and easy. Casual as coffee. “Where are we, by the way?”
“My uncle’s cabin. I told you last night.”
Keeping her back to him, Gilly gripped the edge of the counter. “No. I mean…where are we? We drove a long time. I fell asleep. I don’t know where we are.”
A beat of silence. Then, “I’m not telling you. Jesus, you think I’m stupid enough to do that?”
Last night he’d held a knife to her and she’d been angry; this morning, faced with the kindness of breakfast and his sullen but nonaggressive tone, Gilly had to dig deeper than her fear to find even a thread of fury. She drew in a breath and then another. She gripped the counter so hard her knuckles turned white and one nail bent and cracked.
She turned to face him. “Todd. That’s your name, right? Todd, you have to take me back. Or take me someplace. Let me go.”
He wasn’t looking at her. He shook his shaggy head and got up from the table to stalk to the living room with a handful of paper napkins he used to build up the fire in the sooty woodstove. He went to the table and picked up a bulging folder, then took it to the woodstove where he crouched in front of its warmth, sifting through the papers. Every so often he threw one of them into the blaze.
“Please,” Gilly said from the kitchen.
Todd ignored her, bent to his task with a single-minded self-absorption. He muttered as he worked, but she couldn’t make out the words. Gilly moved to the living room, wanting to draw closer to the fire’s warmth but feeling as though it was up to her to keep a proper distance between them. There had to be something for her to say or do to make him listen.
If she ran away now, would he chase her? Gilly’s head felt fuzzy, her thoughts mangled, but everything in the cabin seemed too sharp, too clear. Looking at things straight on hurt her eyes. She couldn’t blame exhaustion since she’d had the longest night’s sleep she’d had since before being pregnant with Arwen.
She’d felt this way before, when the pain of childbirth had made time stretch on into an unfathomable and interminable length. When the drugs she’d been taking for a sinus infection had made her feel as though she were constantly floating. Now it was the same, every minute lasting an hour, her head a balloon tethered to her shoulders by a gossamer thread that could snap at any minute.
You did this to yourself, Gillian. You know you did. Now you pay the price.
It was her mother’s voice again, stern and strong. Gilly thought of the dream she’d had while driving. Roses and thorns and blood and love.
The fire warmed the room and she shrugged out of her coat. She hung it on the back of a chair. “Todd.”
Todd shuffled his pile of papers together and held them out to her. “Read this.”
Her first instinct was to say no, but wouldn’t it be better to do what he wanted than to antagonize him? Gilly sat on the plaid couch and took the offered papers. The first was a bank statement. The name at the top of the account was Todd Blauch. The previous balance was for a little more than five thousand dollars. One withdrawal had been made a couple weeks ago for the entire amount. That explained the envelope at the minimart.
She explained what that meant. He gave her that look again, the one that said he knew she mocked him, he just wasn’t sure how cruelly. “I know that.”
“You told me to read them.”
“I know that one,” he said. “I need help with the ones under that one.”
She took a look. The legal-size sheets would have been incomprehensible to her even without the crumpling and staining. It was some sort of legal document. A will. All she could really make out were the names Bill Lutz and Todd Blauch. There was a bunch of mumbo jumbo about property lines and taxes. Deeds.
“Is it the will saying you’ve inherited the cabin?”
Todd sighed. “Yeah. But there’s too many words on that paper. Lots of little words always mean there’s something they can catch you on.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s all it says,” Gilly told him. “But I’m not a lawyer.”
“That would’ve been my luck,” Todd muttered. “To get stuck with a lawyer.”
“You’re not stuck with me.”
Todd stuffed the papers back in his folder. “Shit, Gilly.”
“You took my boots.” It wasn’t a question.
He stared at her sideways, head cocked and his thick dark hair hanging over one eye. “Yeah.”
“So I couldn’t run away.”
He shrugged but didn’t answer.
Gilly screwed up her courage with a deep breath. She lifted her chin, determined her voice would not tremble. “Do you want sex?”
He looked as stunned as if she’d slapped him across the face. Her words propelled him from the couch. Todd turned from her, facing the woodstove, his shoulders hunched.
“Jesus. No!”
“If that’s what you want,” she continued, her voice a calm floating cloud that did not seem to come from the rest of her, “then I will let you do whatever you want…if you let me go….”
He whirled around, and to her surprise, his tawny cheeks had bloomed the color of aged brick. “I don’t want to fuck you!”
Gilly shook her head, immensely relieved but inexplicably offended. “What do you want me for, then?”
“I didn’t want you at all, I just wanted the fucking truck. Jesus fucking Christ. Shit!” He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand with each invective. “What the hell?”
She pressed her hands tightly together to prevent them from trembling, but nothing could stop the quaver in her voice. “I just thought…”
He tossed up his hands at her, forcing her to silence. He lit a cigarette, staring at her while the smoke leaked from his nose in twin streams like the breath of a dragon. The steady glare was disconcerting, but she forced herself to meet it.
“You think I stole you?” Todd said slowly. “I mean, you look at me and you think I’m a guy who takes women?”
“You did take me!”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “I didn’t mean to.”
I didn’t mean to.
It was one of the things Seth said when he wanted to sound like he was apologizing but really wasn’t. Gilly hated that phrase so much it automatically curled her lip and made her want to spit. The noise forced from her throat sounded suspiciously like a growl.
“How could you not mean to? I was in the truck. You got in with a…with a knife!” Her words caught, her voice hoarse. “How was that an accident? What happened? Did some big wind come up and just blow you into my car?”
“I didn’t say it was an accident. I just said I didn’t take you on purpose!”
“There’s no difference!” Gilly cried.
Todd stared at her long and hard. “There is a fucking difference.”
Shouting would solve nothing and might, in fact, make things worse. Gilly made herself sound calm and poised. “I want you to let me go, Todd.”
“Can’t.”
His simple answer infuriated her. “What do you plan to do with me, then?”
He shrugged, sucking on the cigarette until his cheeks hollowed. “Hell if I know.”
“Someone will find me.”
He stared at her, long and hard, through narrowed eyes. Todd didn’t look away. Gilly did.
“I don’t think anyone will find you,” he said. “Not for a while, anyway, and by then…”
“By then, what?” She stood to face him, but he only shrugged. She softened her tone. Cajoled, tempting that boot-kicked dog closer with a piece of steak. “Look. Just give me my boots. I’ll hike down to the main road and…hitch a ride. Or something. Find a gas station.”
He snorted laughter. “No, you won’t. You’d never make it. Christ, it’s…” He stopped himself, wary again, as if telling her the distance would give her any sort of clue where they were. “It’s too far.”
“I’d make it,” Gilly said in a low voice.
“No,” Todd said. “You wouldn’t.”
Images of a mass grave, multiple rotting bodies, filled her brain. Gilly swallowed hard. Fear tasted a little like metal, but she had to ask the question. “Are you going to kill me?”
Todd started. “No! Jesus Christ, no.”
There was no counting to ten this time, nothing to hold her back from rising hysteria. “Because if you are, you should do it now. Right away! Just do it and get it over with!”
Todd flinched at first in the face of her shouting, then frowned. “I didn’t bring you here to kill you. The fuck you think I am, a psycho?”
Gilly quieted, chest heaving with breath that hurt her lungs. Her throat had gone dry, her mouth parched and arid. Todd stared, then shook his head and laughed.
“You do. You really do think I’m crazy. Fuck my life, you think I’m a fucking psycho.”
Gilly shot her gaze toward the front door and expected him to step in front of her, but Todd just tossed up his hands.
“Go, then,” he said derisively. “See how far you get. People die all the time in the woods, and that’s ones smart enough to have the right gear with them. You don’t have gear, you got nothing. See how long it takes your ass to freeze.”
“The police,” she offered halfheartedly. “They’ll be looking for me.”
“Where?”
He had a point, one she didn’t want to acknowledge. “They can trace things. The truck, for one.”
“The fuck you think this is, CSI?” Todd shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Gilly looked again to the door and then at the floor in defeat. “Please. I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“You can’t give me what I want,” Todd said.
Gilly went to the front windows and looked out at the yard. Her truck was there, but she had no keys. The forest ringing the patchy, rocky grass looked thick and unwelcoming, the road little more than a path. He was right. She wouldn’t get far. Running out there would be stupid, especially without shoes.
She had to be smarter than that.
“I need to clean up,” Gilly said finally. “Brush my teeth, wash my face…”
She trailed off when he walked past her. He picked up a plastic shopping bag from the dining room table, and for the first time she noticed there were many of those bags on the chairs and beneath the table. He tossed her the first one.
It landed at her feet, and she jumped. Gilly bent and touched the plastic, but didn’t look inside. He’d bought more than groceries.
“Go ahead.” Todd poked at the other bags on the table. “Look.”
“What’s all this for?” Gilly sifted through a stack of turtleneck shirts, one in nearly every color.
Todd pushed another handful of bulging plastic sacks toward her. “I had all my stuff with me. You didn’t have anything.”
Gilly pulled out a pair of sparkly tights. She said nothing, turning them over and over in her fingers. They were her size. She didn’t even know they made sparkly tights in her size. She looked up at him.
Todd shrugged.
She let the tights drop onto the rest of the pile and wiped her now-sweating palms on her thighs. Her heart began to pound again.
“All of this… You bought enough to last for months,” she said finally.
Todd stubbed out his cigarette in a saucer on the table and lit another, flicking the lighter expertly with his left hand. He sucked deep and held it before letting the smoke seep from between his lips. “The fuck am I supposed to know what a woman needs? You needed shit. I bought it.”
Gilly steadied herself with one hand on the back of a chair. “I won’t be here for months.”
Todd flipped the lid of his lighter open and shut a couple of times before sliding it back into his pocket. Without answering her, he stalked to the woodstove and piled a few logs on the fire it didn’t need. His faded flannel shirt rode up as he knelt, exposing a line of flesh above the waist of his battered jeans.
If she could stab him there, he’d bleed like any other man. The thought swelled, unbidden, in her mind. She could run at him. Grab his knife. She could sink it deep into his back. For one frightening moment the urge to do it was so strong that Gilly saw Todd’s blood on her hands. She blinked, and the crimson vanished.
Gilly sifted through the contents of the bags. He’d bought soap and shampoo, toothpaste. Shirts, sweatpants, socks, a few six-packs of plain cotton underpants in a style she hadn’t worn in years. No shoes, no gloves or scarf, no hat.
She rubbed her middle finger between her eyes, where a pain was brewing. It seemed he’d thought of just about everything. Nothing fancy, all practical, and probably all of it would fit her. She thought she should be grateful he hadn’t bought her something creepy like a kinky maid’s outfit. She thought she should be happy he’d bought her clothes and wasn’t going to skin her to make a dress for himself, that’s what she should be grateful for.
Gilly gathered as many of the bags as she could. “Is there a shower?”
“Outside. There’s a tub in the bathroom.”
The plastic shifted and slipped in her fingers as she took the bags and went into the bathroom. She shut the door behind her. There was no lock. The room’s one small window slid up easily halfway, but then stuck. She would never fit through it. And if she did, where would she go? How far would she get with no coat or gloves and nothing but socks on her feet, with no idea where she was or how to get anywhere else? Todd was right, people died all the time in the woods.
“You didn’t bring any water?” This comes from Seth, looking surprised. “But you always bring everything.”
Not this time, apparently. Gilly shifts baby Gandy on one hip and watches Arwen toddle along the boardwalk through the trees. There are miles of boardwalk and lots of stairs at Bushkill Falls, and who knew it would take so long to walk them, or that there’d be no convenient snack stands along the way? Gilly’s thirsty too, her back aches from carrying Gandy in the sling, her heart races as Arwen gets too close to the railing.
Gilly is the planner. The packer. The prepared one. Seth is accustomed to walking out the door with nothing but his wallet and keys, and if he slings the diaper bag over his shoulder it’s without bothering to look inside. He trusts her to be prepared. To have everything they could possibly need and a lot of stuff they won’t.
“I can’t believe you didn’t pack water,” Seth says, and Gilly fumes, silent and stung, her own throat dry with thirst.
That had been an awful trip. Walking for miles to see the beauty of the waterfalls that she’d have enjoyed more without the rumble of hunger and a parched mouth distracting her. And that had been along set paths, no place to get lost, in temperate autumn. What would happen to her if she set out without shoes into the frigid mid-January air and tried to make her way down a mountain, through the forest, without having a clue about where she was going?
No. She had to plan better than that. Be prepared. Because once she started, there’d be no going back.
First, she’d get cleaned up. The tub, a deep claw-foot, was filthy with a layer of dust and some dead bugs. The toilet was the old-fashioned kind with a tank above and a pull chain. It would’ve been quaint and charming in a bed-and-breakfast.
Gilly set the bags on the chipped porcelain countertop and pulled out a package of flowery soap. Her skin itched just looking at it. Further exploration brought out a long, slim package. A purple, sparkly toothbrush. The breath whooshed from her lungs as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Gilly let out a low cry, holding on to the sink top to keep her buckling knees from dropping her to the ground. Shudders racked her body, so fierce her teeth clattered sharply.
He’d bought her a toothbrush.
The simple consideration, not the first from him, undid her. Gilly pressed her forehead to the wall, her palms flat on the rough paneling. Sobs surged up her throat and she bit down hard, jailing them behind her teeth. She cursed into her fists, silent, strangled cries she didn’t want him to overhear. She didn’t want to give him that.
Count to ten, Gilly. Count to twenty if you have to. Keep it in, don’t let it out. You’ll lose it if you let it out.
You’ll lose you.
Gilly clutched at her cheeks and bit the inside of her wrist until the pain there numbed the agony in her heart. He’d given her opportunity to escape, and she hadn’t taken it. Had been unable to take it.
She was crazy, not him. She was the psycho. It was her.
Quickly, she ran water from the faucet. It was frigid and tinged with orange, barely warming even after a minute, though it did turn clear. She splashed her face to wash away tears that hadn’t fallen. When she could breathe again she forced herself to look in the mirror. Her eyes narrowed as she assessed herself.
She’d dreamed of her mother speaking words she’d never said. Never would’ve said. Gilly didn’t need a dream dictionary to parse out what the dream meant, her mother with the flowers that had sometimes seemed to mean more to her than her family. Blood. The responsibility of roses.
Looking at her face now she saw her mother’s eyes, the shape of her mother’s mouth. She’d heard her mother’s voice, too.
“I am not my mother.” She muttered this, each word tasting sour. She didn’t believe herself.
Her ablutions were brief but effective. Staring at the clothes in the bags, Gilly felt herself wanting to slip into disconnectedness again. It was tempting to let the blankness take over. She forced it away.
She changed her panties but kept her bra on. Apparently he hadn’t thought to buy her one. She put her own jeans back on, her own shirt. She didn’t want to wear the clothes he’d bought her. She wanted her own things, even if the hems of her jeans were stiff with dirt and her shirt smelled faintly of the juice she hadn’t realized was spilled on it. She folded the rest of the clothes and shoved them back in the bags.
Gilly combed her hair and tied it back with the ponytail holder from her jeans pocket. It was Arwen’s. Her fingers trembled as she twisted the elastic into her hair. They’d stopped by the time she finished using the sparkly toothbrush.
Todd had put more wood in the stove, and now the room was almost stifling. He sat on the couch, staring at nothing. Smoking, tapping the ashes into an old coffee can set on the table in front of him.
“Feel better?” he asked without looking at her.
“No.”
Todd sighed. “I’m not an asshole, Gilly. Or a psycho. Really.”
She didn’t say anything.
He looked at her, anger smoldering in his dark eyes. The sight made her step back toward the insignificant safety of the bathroom. Todd got up from the couch and made as though to step toward her.
“You afraid of me?”
She shook her head, not quite able to voice the lie. She was suddenly terrified. In her hands the plastic crinkled and shifted, and she clutched the bags in front of her like a shield.
“Shit,” Todd said. “This is all a bunch of shit.”
Then he stormed to the front door and out, slamming it behind him. A few minutes later she heard the truck’s engine roar into life. Gilly dropped the bags and ran to the window, but he’d already pulled away.
5
Gilly had always prided herself on keeping cool in an emergency, but now she flew to the door, flung it open, ran out onto the freezing front porch. The truck had disappeared. She ran after it anyway.
She couldn’t even hear it by the time she crossed the snowy yard and reached the gravel that began the rutted road. Rocks dug into her sock-clad feet and she hopped, slapping at her arms to warm herself in her long-sleeved but thin shirt. She ventured a few steps down the road, which grew immediately shadowed by the trees.
A layer of snow, perhaps two inches deep, interspersed with rocks and ice, blanketed the ground. It hadn’t been a good winter for snow. Bitter-cold temperatures had abounded since late October, and one large storm had closed schools across the state, but that was all. None of it had melted, and piles of it were still all over the place, but no more had fallen. Gilly looked at the moody gray sky, clouds obscuring the sun. This spot was up high. Close to the sky. The wind pushed at the trees and lifted the tips of her hair. Was she going to run?
She looked again down empty road and knew she wasn’t. Not like this, anyway. Not unprepared. Sparkly tights would not protect her feet. He hadn’t bothered to tie her up when he left, but he hadn’t needed to.
“Moss,” she muttered aloud, turning back toward the cabin. “Something about moss.”
Growing on a side of a tree. Something about finding and following a stream. She knew snippets of information about how to find her way out of the woods, but nothing useful.
The smartest thing to do would be to steal the truck and drive away, something she’d have to do when he got back. With that in mind, Gilly headed back into the cabin. She closed the door behind her and looked down at her muddy socks. She stripped them off and dug around in the plastic bags until she found another pair. They had kittens on them. Sparkly, glittery kittens.
Socks in hand, Gilly sank onto the floor and cradled her face in her hands. She didn’t cry. Her feet and hands were cold, and she shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The floor was filthy, but she couldn’t seem to care. How had she ended up here, in this place?
Quiet. Everything was quiet around her. Her knees ached, her thighs cramped, and a chill stole over her in the overheated room. Still, Gilly didn’t move. She had nowhere to be, nothing to do, nobody tugging on her for attention. She was still. She was silent.
She sat that way for a long time.
Without a watch or a clock, Gilly had no way of knowing how long Todd had been gone. At last she could no longer stand even the luxury of idleness. She had to do something.
With nothing to keep them occupied, her hands opened and shut like hysterical puppets. Gilly paced the room, step by step, measuring her prison with her footsteps. There had to be a way, some way to take advantage of his absence. In the end, she could think of nothing, could make no decision.
She understood without hesitation she was breaking down, that she’d broken down the moment at the gas station when she’d stayed in the truck instead of escaping. Her split from reality was shameful but not surprising; that she’d wondered for years if she would one day step off the deep end did not, now, make her feel better about having taken the dive.
She was too strong for this, damn it. Had always forced herself to be too strong. No fashionable Zoloft or Prozac for her, no trips to the therapist to work out her “issues,” nothing but sheer determination had kept her functioning. And yet now…now all she could think about was her mother.
Gilly had grown accustomed to hearing her mother’s voice. Dispensing advice. Scolding. She knew it was really her own inner voice. She hadn’t realized until a day ago that she’d used it out loud, too.
She thought of her mom now, not hearing her voice but remembering it, instead.
“We’re normal,” her mother says. “You think we’re not, but we are. Other families are just like this, Gillian. Whether you believe it or not.”
Gilly doesn’t believe it. By now she’s spent too much time at Danica’s house. She understands that most other people’s mothers don’t spend days without showering or brushing their teeth, without getting out of their nightgowns. Most mothers are able to get up off the floors of their bedrooms. They don’t cry softly, moaning, over and over and over again while rocking. Most people’s mothers wear bracelets on their wrists, not scars.
A cliché has prompted her mother to say it. Spilled milk, a puddle of it on the table and the floor. Gilly knocked it over with her elbow and would’ve cleaned it up before her mom even noticed, but it’s one of the days Marlena has made it out of the dim sanctuary of her bedroom. She weeps over the spill, gnashing her teeth and pulling at her hair as she gets on hands and knees to mop up the spill with the hem of her skirt.
“This is normal, Gillian,” her mother mutters over and over. “You think this isn’t, you think we aren’t. But we are!”
Gilly had stood watching as blank faced as she felt now.
This is different. You’re not her. This isn’t like that.
But it was worse, wasn’t it? What Gilly had allowed to happen, no, what she’d chosen to do was worse than anything her mother had ever done. Because Gilly couldn’t blame any of this on being crazy. She’d worked too hard against insanity.
A plastic bag tangled in her ankles as she paced, and Gilly paused to kick it away. She looked at all the things he’d bought her and kicked those, too. Scattering the brightly colored turtlenecks made her feel better for a moment, gave her some power.
She gathered up the clothes and stuffed them back in the bags. Gilly looped the handles over her arms and took all the stuff upstairs. She was moving on autopilot, but having something to do made her feel calmer. Allowed her to think.
She pulled open the top drawer on the dresser and prepared to put away the clothes. Inside she found a sheaf of photographs, some in frames but most loose. She picked up the top one.
A dark-haired boy stared out at her. He stood beside a tall, bearded man wearing a blaze-orange vest and holding a gun. The boy was not smiling. Gilly traced the line of his face with one finger. It was Todd.
He was in other photos, too, in some as young as perhaps eight and others as old as sixteen. It was the younger faces that grabbed her attention. Something about him as a boy seemed so familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite figure out why.
Gilly put the pictures away and used the other drawers to store the things Todd had bought for her. In the chest at the foot of the bed she found sheets, blankets, pillowcases. These were cleaner than those on the bed and fragrant with the biting scent of cedar. She stripped the bed and made it up again. Smoothing the sheets and plumping the pillows gave her hands something to do while her mind worked, but when the task was over her mind was as blank as it had been before.
In the kitchen, she opened cupboards and saw the supplies he’d bought in the hours she’d been asleep. Beneath the sink she found bottles and cartons of soap, sponges, bleach. They weren’t new, but they’d work. She rolled up her sleeves and bent to the task.
The day passed that way, and Gilly lost herself in the work. At home, Gilly was lucky if she got to fold a basket of laundry before being pulled away to take care of some other chore. Floors went unmopped for weeks, toilets went unscrubbed, furniture went undusted. Gilly hated never finishing anything. She’d learned to live with it, but she hated it. She felt she could never sit, never rest, never take some time for herself. Not until she was done, and she was never done. Later in her life, with spotless floors and unrumpled bedspreads, she might look back to this time with wistful nostalgia. But she doubted it. She hated never finishing anything.
Most of her girlfriends complained about it incessantly, but Gilly liked cleaning. Not just the end results, but the effort. Making order out of chaos. For her, it was much the same feeling she’d heard long-distance runners or other athletes describe. When she was cleaning, really working hard, Gilly could put herself into “the zone.”
Everything else faded away, leaving behind only the scent of bleach and lemon cleanser, the ache of muscles worked hard and a blank, serene mind. It wasn’t a state she often reached. Always, there were too many distractions, too many interruptions. Too many demands on her time.
Now, today, the dirty cabin and time reeled out in front of her without an end to either of them. By concentrating on one small part at a time, the task didn’t seem so daunting. Todd had cleaned the fridge before loading it with groceries, but the rest of the kitchen was a disaster. Gilly started with the counters, then the cupboard fronts, the stove. She cleaned the scarred table of as much grime as she could. She discovered the pantry, as fully stocked as the fridge and cupboards, and through it the door to the backyard. She scrubbed the floor on hands and knees and dumped buckets of black water off the back porch, forming a dirty puddle that quickly froze.
Early-falling dark and the grumbling of her stomach forced her to stop. Gilly surveyed her efforts. The kitchen would never be fresh and new, but it was now, at least, clean. Her back ached and her fingers cramped, stiff and blistered from the scrub brush, but satisfaction filled her. She’d accomplished something, even if it was irrelevant and useless to her situation.
She went to the windows. Snowflakes flirted through the sky, promising a storm. As she watched, the soft white flakes grew thicker. Maybe they weren’t just flirting after all.
She thought of Arwen and Gandy. Who was with them? Did they miss her? And Seth, dear, sweet Seth who couldn’t find his own pair of socks…what must he be going through?
She thought of the stack of bills waiting to be paid and the poor dog missing his vet appointment. Laundry, baskets of it overflowing, and dishes piled in the sink. The house would be falling apart without her.
When Gilly was pregnant with Arwen, her grandmother had given Gilly a sampler. Embroidered in threads of red and gold, it read simply: “There is a special place in Heaven for mothers.” Gilly had thought she understood the sentiment, but it wasn’t until after Arwen’s birth, as her daughter grew from baby to child and Gandy came along, that Gilly really did understand. She’d embraced motherhood with everything inside her, determined to be the kind of mother she’d always wanted but hadn’t had.
Good mothers cooked and cleaned and read stories to their children before bed. They sang songs. They played the Itsy Bitsy Spider until their fingers fell off, if that was the game that made their babies giggle. They changed diapers, filled sippy cups, sewed the frayed and torn edges of favorite blankies to keep them together just another few months. They gave up everything of themselves to give everything to their children.
Good mothers did not run away.
Gilly pressed her fingertips to the cold glass. She’d wanted to run away. How often had she thought about simply packing a bag, or better yet, nothing at all? Just leaving the house with nothing but herself.
Gilly understood having children meant sacrifice. It was the only thing about motherhood she’d been certain of before actually becoming a mother. Impromptu dinners out, going to the movies, privacy in the bathroom, had all become luxuries she didn’t mind foregoing, most of the time. She didn’t even mind the grubby clothes, which were far more comfortable than the pinching high heels and gut-busting panty hose she’d worn when she worked. Gilly cherished her children. Lord knew, they drove her to the edge of madness, but wasn’t that what children did? Staying home to raise them had become the most challenging and rewarding task she’d ever undertaken. She’d conceived her children in love and borne them in blood, and her life without them wouldn’t be worth living. It was just the constant never-endingness of it that some days made her want to scream until her throat burst.
She loved Seth, the solid man she’d married more than ten years before. Seth did his share, when he was home, of bathing and diapering and taking out the garbage. Yes, he needed reminding for even the simplest tasks and no, he never quite managed to complete any of them without asking her how to do it, but he tried.
She had a good life. Her children were healthy and bright, her husband attentive and generous. They lived in a lovely house, drove nice cars, went on vacation every year. She had as many blessings as a woman could want. If there were still days Gilly thought she might simply be unable to drag herself out of bed, it wasn’t their fault.
They were her life. They consumed every part of her. She was a mother and a wife before she was a woman. Feminism might frown on it, and Gilly might strain against the shackles of responsibility, but when it came right down to it, she’d lost sight of how else to be.
The hours of cleaning had cleared her mind. Everyone would believe a knife to her head had made her toss her children out the car window, and nobody would question that fear for her life had kept her moving. Only Gilly would ever know the real and secret truth. She’d wanted to escape, but not from Todd. From her precious and fragile life. From what she’d made.
Gilly opened the pantry door and surveyed what she found. She ran her hands along the rows of canned spaghetti, the jars of peanut butter and jelly, the bags and cartons of cookies and snacks. He’d bought flour, sugar, coffee, pasta, rice. Cartons of cigarettes, which she moved away from the food in distaste. He’d stocked the cabin with enough food for an army…or for a siege.
Gilly took a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce from the shelf and closed the pantry door behind her. He’d already told her he didn’t plan to let her go and warned her of the risks of trying to leave on her own. Two choices, two paths, and she couldn’t fully envision either of them. Yesterday she’d been ready to toss her kids out a window to get away from them, and Todd had appeared. Now she felt tossed like dandelion fluff on the wind.
Gilly slapped the box of pasta on the counter. She found a large pot and filled it with water, then a smaller one. She lit the burners on the stove with an ancient box of matches from the drawer and set the water boiling and the pasta sauce simmering. She stood over them both, not caring about the old adage about watched pots. The heat from the stove warmed her hands as she stared without really seeing.
There was a third choice, one she’d already imagined even though now her mind shuddered away from the thought. If she could not manage to convince Todd to voluntarily let her go, and if she couldn’t somehow be smart and strong enough to escape him, there was one other option. And, of the three choices, it was the one Gilly was sure would work.
Some pasta sauce had splashed on the back of her hand, rich and red. She licked it, tasting garlic. The water in the pot bubbled, and she opened the box of spaghetti, judged a handful, then tossed in the whole box. Dinner would be ready in a few minutes, and Todd was likely to return soon.
If she couldn’t change his mind or break for an escape, Gilly thought she might just have to kill him.
6
Todd walked in the door just as Gilly finished setting the table with a red-and-white-checkered cloth and a set of lovely, Depression-era dishes and silverware she’d found in the drawer. Though the silver was tarnished and several of the plates cracked or chipped, she could only imagine what pieces like this would sell for in an antiques shop. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. He paused in the doorway to sniff the air. Again, he reminded her of a hungry, loveless dog hanging around the kitchen door.
“Smells good.” He jingled the pocket of his sweatshirt, then took out her keys. He tossed them on the counter.
Gilly purposefully kept her eyes from them. “I hope you’re hungry,” she said flatly. “I made a lot.”
Todd pulled out his chair with a scrape that sent chills up her spine, like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Fucking starving.”
Gilly poured the spaghetti into the strainer she’d put in the sink. Clouds of steam billowed into her face and she closed her eyes against it. She scooped some onto a plate and went to the table, taking the seat across from him.
Todd didn’t serve himself, just stared at her expectantly. With a silent sigh she got up from her seat and took his plate to the sink, plopped a serving of spaghetti on top and splashed it with the sauce. She tossed a piece of garlic bread beside the spaghetti and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” At least he did have some manners.
They ate in silence interrupted only by the sounds of chewing and slurping. Surreptitiously Gilly watched the movement of his mouth as he gobbled pasta. A few days’ worth of beard stubbled his tawny cheeks, the dark hairs glinting reddish in the light from above.
“This is good.” He wiped his mouth with the napkin she’d folded next to his plate. “Really good.”
“Thank you.” Cleaning had made her hungry. She’d polished off a large plateful herself and now sat back, her stomach almost too full.
Todd burped loud and long, the kind of noise that at home would have earned a laugh followed by a reprimand. Gilly did neither. She sipped some water, watching him.
“Where did you go?”
“Out.”
She hadn’t really expected him to tell her. She sipped more water and wiped her mouth. Todd eyed her, his mouth full. He chewed and swallowed.
“Why’d you do this?” Todd twirled another forkful of spaghetti but didn’t eat it.
“To be nice,” Gilly said. There was more to it than that.
Todd’s eyes narrowed. He knew that. “Why?”
Only honesty would suffice. Gilly took a deep breath. “Because I’m hoping that if I’m nice to you, you’ll let me go home.”
Todd sat back in his chair, tipping it. “I can’t. You know my name. You know where we are. You’d tell someone. They’d come.”
Desperation slipped out in her voice. “I don’t know where we are, remember? You could blindfold me. Take me someplace far away, dump me off.”
Todd shook his head.
Her voice rose with tension. “I won’t tell anyone your name. Or anything. I’ll say I don’t know anything, I swear to you. If you let me go, I’ll…”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t ever let you go now. Not ever.” His hands clutched the tabletop. His face twisted in loathing. “Don’t you get it?”
“No! I don’t! You don’t want me here, so just…” Her voice broke, softened, slipped into a murmur. “Please, Todd. Please.”
Again, he shook his head. His voice got lower, too. “You say you won’t tell them anything, but even if you mean it, I know you will. You’ll have to. They’ll keep at you and keep at you. It’s what they fucking do, Gilly.”
“Who?”
“Them. The cops. Your therapist. Your fucking husband, I don’t know. Someone will want to know where the fuck you were, and with who, and you can’t tell me you won’t break down and tell them. You’ll spill it all, and I’ll be totally fucked. And I’ll tell you something,” Todd said, voice lower still, his body stiff and tense, “I won’t go back to jail.”
Gilly wasn’t surprised Todd had been to jail. He must’ve seen the lack of shock in her expression, because he looked first ashamed, then defiant. He lifted his chin at her.
“I mean it. Not going back. Ever. I can’t.”
“You should’ve thought of that before,” Gilly said under her breath but loud enough for him to hear her.
“You think I fucking didn’t?”
Gilly shrugged. “I don’t know what you thought. But you have to see that no matter what happens, you’re going to get caught, Todd. Whether you let me go or I get away.”
He studied her, dark eyes pulling her apart and leaving big gaps in the seams of her composure.
“No. I’ll do…whatever I have to.” The words were clipped and tight, his expression hard.
Gilly had thought the same. Whatever she had to, to survive. To get away from here and back to her family. If Todd was as desperate as she was—but she couldn’t let herself think about that right now. Couldn’t let herself be afraid.
Time spun out as they stared each other down. From the corner of her eye, Gilly spotted a glint of metal on the counter beside them. Though she tried not to let her eyes flicker, something in her gaze must have given her away. She saw it in his eyes, the sudden wariness that showed he knew what she was thinking.
Todd launched himself across the table as Gilly pushed back in her chair so hard it toppled to the floor. His fingers, not clenched now but stretched into grappling talons, scratched at her neck but didn’t gain purchase.
Gilly would’ve hit the floor if the wall hadn’t been so close behind her. Instead, she cracked the back of her head hard enough to see stars. She rolled along the short length of wall until she reached the opening to the living room. Her feet twisted on themselves and she almost fell, but her hand, grasping, found the edge of the counter, and she stayed upright. Her fingers clenched over the bundle of keys.
Todd moved fast, with swift, athletic grace, but Gilly had the thoughts of her children to fuel her. She turned, swiftly, as he grabbed at her. Keys bristled between her knuckles, and she sliced at him, hard. The metal slashed his cheek. He clapped a hand over the wound, which gushed bright blood.
He caught her just inside the living room and knocked her feet out from under her. Gilly hit the floor on her hands and knees, the keys still gripped tight in her fist. With a low growl, Todd grabbed her ankles and yanked her closer, scrabbling at the back of her shirt but not quite able to catch her.
Gilly rolled, kicking, as he loomed over her. Todd’s eyes glittered, fierce, the blood on his face like war paint. He grabbed the front of her shirt, tearing it.
She kicked him in the nuts. Her foot didn’t connect squarely, hitting part of his thigh, but it was enough. Todd went to his knees with a strangled groan.
Gilly got up and ran.
Adrenaline exhilarated her. She flew to the front door and leaped through it, leaving it hanging open. She’d misjudged the stairs and the icy ground beyond, and so went sprawling onto her hands and knees. Rocks tore her pants and her skin. She didn’t drop the keys even though the sharp metal sliced her.
Gilly got up, palms bloodied, and ran for the truck. She heard Todd shouting and cursing on the porch behind her. She didn’t stop to look around.
The lightly falling snow had turned into thick, soft blankets of white, hiding the treacherous ice beneath. Gilly slid but kept herself from falling this time. She hit the driver’s side full on, hard enough to send spikes of agony into her shoulder and dent the door. The keys scratched the paint like four claws as she grabbed the door handle to keep from falling. He’d locked it. Her numb fingers fumbled with the key-ring remote.
“Don’t do this!” Todd cried from the porch. A sudden gust of wind tore his words to tatters.
Gilly ripped open the door and pulled herself into the driver’s seat. Her palms stung as she gripped the wheel and plunged the keys into the ignition. She had to do this now, because she hadn’t before. Because she’d been crazy before, crazy stupid. She’d let this man drive her away from her home, her husband, her children.
The Suburban roared into life. Gilly kept her foot steady on the accelerator. Her right knee, already bruised from when he’d hit her there before, had taken the worst of her fall and now throbbed with every motion. Blood slicked her palms and her hands slipped until she forced her frozen fingers to curl. She yanked the gearshift into Reverse and the truck revved backward, narrowly missing the tree that loomed in her rearview mirror.
Drive.
Her wet feet slipped on the gas pedal and light from the headlights swung wildly as she forced the truck through the snow. She hadn’t realized it had gotten so deep. The vehicle slid a little, bouncing in the ruts when she jammed the gas pedal.
Her heart hammered. Everything in front of her was black, and the headlights weren’t helping much. She tried to remember how long this road was, where it turned, how far to the gate, and couldn’t. All she could do was drive.
On her left, the mountain. On the right of the narrow, ice-slick road, a steep incline. A line of trees reared up in front of her as the road bent. Gilly braked, forgetting in her panic everything she’d ever learned about driving. The truck went into a long, slow slide. It seemed impossible she’d actually hit the tree row, not in slow motion.
Her mind was in slow motion. Her reactions. too. But not the truck. It mowed down the trees with a vast and angry crashing that pounded Gilly’s ears. The big vehicle tilted, throwing her against the door, and slammed back to the ground with a thud that jarred her to the bone. She had time to think she was going to be okay before she looked out the side window and saw the side of the mountain reaching for her.
The Suburban veered into the wall of rock. Metal screeched. Gilly, not wearing a seat belt, was flung forward into the steering wheel hard enough to knock the breath out of her. It didn’t end there—the truck shuddered and groaned, sliding on ice and snow.
She was going over.
Gilly had no breath to scream. She did have time to pray, but nothing came but the sight of her children’s faces. That was prayer enough.
The Suburban jolted off the road and over the edge, nearly vertical at first and then with a huge, thumping slam, it came to rest with the hood crumpled against a tree. The airbag didn’t even go off, something she only noticed when she could see, very clearly, the bent and broken trees barely managing to keep the truck from sliding down the mountain. The horn bleated and died. The interior lights had come on and the pinging noise signifying an open door sounded although all the doors were closed.
Everything blurred. She tasted blood. Warmth coated her lap and dimly, Gilly was embarrassed to think she might’ve wet herself. It wasn’t urine but more blood gushing from a slice in the top of her thigh. She groaned, the sound of her voice too loud.
The door opened. Gilly screamed, then, thin and whistling but with as much force as she could muster. In the next minute Todd yanked her from the driver’s seat, shoving her against the metal. Gilly swung and missed.
“Let me go!”
“You crazy dumb bitch! The fuck you think you’re doing?” Todd shook her.
Beside them, the truck groaned. The trees snapped. The metal behind her back shifted and moved, and Todd yanked her a few steps toward him. Gilly fought him but couldn’t get free.
Nothing seemed real. The pain in every part of her wasn’t as bad as knowing she’d tried and failed to escape. She fought him with teeth and the talons of fingernails Arwen had painted pale blue only yesterday.
Todd dodged her swinging fists and her teeth. He slapped her face, first with his palm. Then, when she didn’t stop flailing at him, with the back of his hand so hard her head rocked back. Gilly fell into the snowy brush and was instantly soaked. Red roses bloomed in front of her eyes.
“You dumb bitch,” Todd said again, this time into her ear. He’d lifted her though she was suddenly as limp as a rag doll.
He’d hit her. Nobody had hit her that way in a very long time. Blood dripped from her mouth, though everything was so shadowed she couldn’t see it hit the snow.
Todd’s fingers dug into her arms as he jerked her upright and shook her. Everything was dark and cold around them, and the sound of creaking branches was very loud. The lights from the truck abruptly dimmed.
“Wake up. I can’t get your ass up this hill if you’re deadweight.”
Gilly blinked and struggled feebly. “Don’t…hit me…again.”
“I don’t want to hit you, for fuck’s sake.” Todd sounded disgusted. “Just get your ass moving. What happens if that tree won’t hold, huh? You want to get wiped out by that truck when it goes crashing down the rest of this hill? Look up there, how fucking far we have to get back up to the lane!”
Gilly didn’t look. She couldn’t, really. Turning her head made bright, sharp pain stab through her. Besides, it was too dark. The headlights were pointing the other way, down the steep slope, and as she watched they guttered and went out, followed an instant later by the ding-ding alert of the interior light cutting off.
“Ah, fuck,” Todd muttered in the sudden silence. “Just stay still. Don’t move.”
As if she could’ve moved. Gilly, limp, went to her knees when Todd let her go. The snow was soft and thick but not deep enough to cradle her. Rocks and bits of broken branches stabbed at her.
“All right. Let’s go. Get up. I can see,” Todd said, and jerked her by the back of her collar.
Gilly couldn’t. Everything was still black. She scrabbled along the slope with Todd yanking her hard enough to pull her off her feet a few times.
This was a nightmare. It had to be. Right? Pain and darkness and fear.
They got to the top of the slope and Todd paused, breathing hard. Now instead of rocks and broken trees, gravel bit into Gilly’s skin as she went to her hands and knees. It was easier to get to her feet, though, when Todd yanked the back of her collar again.
Somehow they made it back to the clearing and the cabin, still ablaze with light that hurt her eyes after so many long minutes in darkness. Gilly was beyond fighting him by then. She barely made it up the front steps and into the living room. She definitely didn’t make it up the steep, narrow stairs to the second floor. Todd, cursing and muttering, did that by yanking and pushing her.
With rough hands he forced her toward the bed she’d slept in. When he tried to take off her shirt, Gilly found the strength to fight him again. Todd shouted out another slew of curses.
“Stop fighting me!”
But she would not. If this was a nightmare, she was going to keep swinging and scratching, even though every movement made her cry in pain. Todd, finally, ripped her shirt completely down the front, pushed her onto the bed and yanked at her pants, too.
Gilly kicked out as hard as she could. Maybe Todd dodged it, maybe she missed. She couldn’t tell. All she knew was he grabbed her by the upper arms, fingers digging deep into her flesh, to yank her to her feet.
“I’m trying to help you!” Todd shouted into her face, breath hot and spittle wet on her cheeks. Then, “Oh, shit. Don’t you pass out on me, Gilly.”
But Gilly did.
7
Gilly woke up blind. She lurched upright, clawing at her face. “My eyes!”
Her eyes were merely gummed shut, not blind. Her head ached in the dull, persistent manner that meant no amount of aspirin would stop it. The cold air stung a long gash on her cheek. She put trembling fingers to it and felt that the wound’s curve from the left side of her jaw all the way to the corner of her eye. The crash had taken its share of skin and blood from her face, which felt puffy and tender. Her chest ached from impact with the steering wheel, but, though she sensed bruises, nothing appeared to be broken.
She wore a thick flannel nightgown that had rucked up about her thighs. She hated nightgowns for just that reason. She touched the soft fabric with her jagged, broken fingernails and shivered with distaste.
Gilly tested her limbs one at a time, cataloging aches and pains that ranged from mild to agonizing. Her neck hurt the worst. The pain when she looked to the left was excruciating enough to twist her stomach. The gash on her thigh proved to be shallow but ugly, sore to the touch and still oozing blood and clear fluid.
Still, she was alive. There was that.
A shuffle of feet from the stairs told her he was coming. She spoke before she saw him. “What time is it?”
“Does it matter?”
He’d paused at the top of the stairs but she could see him through the partition. Gilly rubbed at her temples but the throbbing didn’t ease. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”
Todd took a few steps closer. “How are you?”
“Bad.”
“You’re a mess,” he said flatly. “You know that?”
Gilly shrugged slightly. It was the greatest motion she could make without ripping herself open. It wasn’t slight enough; she ached and more pain flared.
“The fuck were you thinking?”
She looked at him. “I want to go home.”
“Yeah, well, I want a million dollars.”
Gilly blinked at this attempt at…humor? Sarcasm? He’d said it with a straight face, so she couldn’t be sure. “My head hurts. My neck, too. I think I strained something. And this cut on my leg needs stitches.”
“No shit. You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt worse. That was some crash.” Todd let out a low whistle. “Nice shiner.”
Gilly got out of bed and went to the dirt-encrusted attic window. Her entire left side felt rubbed raw. She winced at every step but could walk.
Everything outside was white. Snow piled against the cabin in drifts that looked nearly waist high. One giant drift reached almost to the windowsill.
No. Oh, no.
“All of this in one night?” she cried, incredulous. She put her hands to the cold glass.
Todd moved to her side. She shrank from him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He leaned forward to peer out the window.
“It snowed all night and all morning, too. It stopped about an hour ago. Sky’s still gray. I don’t think it’s finished yet.”
“The truck?”
He shrugged. “Totaled. Halfway down the mountain, unless that tree broke. Then that bitch is all the way at the bottom, and you can forget about ever getting it back.”
She knew that already but let out a gusting sigh that became a small moan. “Oh, no.”
“Hope you have good insurance.”
Another joke Gilly didn’t find amusing. She pressed her face to the glass, eyes closed, and let out another small, despairing sigh. “Does that even matter now?”
Todd laughed and moved away from her. “Probably not. You shouldn’t have tried to run away. That was stupid.”
Gilly looked at him. She searched his face for sign of a threat, but what would she do even if she saw it? Run? Fight? She’d failed miserably at both.
“You gave me no choice. I have to get home to my kids. My husband’s probably worried sick.”
Todd shrugged. “Neither one of us will be going anywhere until this snow melts. Not without the truck. We’re pretty much fucked.”
Gilly went back to the bed and sat. “I want to go home.”
His face went hard, the soft, dark eyes bitter. He threw her own words back at her. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before.”
Don’t lose it…
But it was already lost.
“Fuck you! You think I don’t know that? Fuck you, Todd!” Gilly shrieked, lurching to her feet with fists flailing.
If she’d aimed for his face she probably wouldn’t have hit him, but one of her wild swings caught him just under the eye. Todd stumbled back, muttering curses. The wound she’d inflicted on him earlier broke open, oozing blood. Gilly stood her ground, fists clenched and teeth chattering, ready to batter him again.
He reached out, quick as a cat, and grabbed her shoulders. He shook her like one does a naughty child, or a pet, each shake emphasizing a word. “That’s twice. Don’t do it again.”
“Or what?” she cried. “What could you possibly do that’s worse than what you’ve already done?”
Todd stared at her with a flat black gaze for too long before answering, “I could do worse.”
He let her go so suddenly she stumbled back, her aggression puffed out like a breath-blown match. They were at a standoff. Gilly rubbed the sore spots his fingers had left, just a few more to add to the plethora already aching all over her.
Without another word, Todd went down the stairs. She went to the window again and stared out at the vast expanse of blankness. Even the trees had been covered in heavy quilts of white, blurring their lines and making them nothing more than vague humps. She wasn’t going anywhere until that melted. Perhaps as early as March or as late as April, but April was three months away.
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