Twenty-Eight
Alexandria.
The word came to me in the middle of the night.
Alexandria was listed on the title,wasn’t it?
And Tav had mentioned helping his parents move hadn’t he? ToAlexandria.
Was it related? Maybe only because Tav had been between rentals when he’d bought the car and he’d listed his parent’s home address instead of his.
I turned to the fire, warmth crackling through my veins as I clutched the ski pole in one palm. The flames licked the darkened stone of the fireplace, the loud snores of the burly trapper, Bud, in the next room oddly comforting amid all this silence.
At least I couldn’t hear the wolves howling anymore.
I shuddered again just thinking of when they’d started up this evening just as Bud had fed me some of his venison stew. I’d cringed at both: the stew and the wolves. I hadn’t really conceptualized the actual wild animals outside my window when I was perched up in the chalet, but through Bud’s paper thin walls, every yip and howl might as well have been on a loudspeaker.
I learned quickly he liked it that way.
And the stew.
I’d avoided all of the venison jerky that’d been in the boxes that arrived on Sunday, but the smell that wafted through his fur-cluttered cabin was too delicious to pass up. He was heavy on the herbs, thick on the gravy, and generous with the biscuits. Bud could have been a short-order chef as far as I was concerned. I hadn’t eaten that well at the chalet once since I’d been there.
I’d made a joke about getting out to see the neighbors more often, but Bud had only grunted, shoveled more stew into his mouth, and grumbled,“The folks out here don’t take to company.”
I sighed, thankful and yet still a little scared of the man I’d shared stew with tonight. The man whose couch I slept on as dozens of varieties of wild creatures hung on every available space of the walls.
I snuck the tiny folded photo out of the pocket in my rucksack. I ran my fingers along the edges, squinting in the firelight to make out the expressions. My mother looked dreamy, far away in her baby blue Sunday dress and short heels. Bradley was gap-toothed and joyous as he teased me about one thing or another and I laughed and pointed at something on the ground between us. A few people lingered on the steps of the church in the background, but their faces were too far away for me to even make out who they might be.
I sighed, missing Bradley as deep as the marrow in my bones.
He’d been my best friend for so long, I think I’d secretly punished him for leaving me for the military. First my mom, then Bradley, from this perspective my life the last five years felt like a series of sad events, outside of meeting Tav.
I brought the polaroid closer to my eyes, working my lips back and forth as I wondered who had taken this candid of my family.
My mother stared at the photographer dreamily, the secret of the stranger reflected only in the lights of her eyes. I wished again for her to share with me her secrets, so many questions left unasked, so many reasons I still didn’t understand.
Were they all taken by Chuck? Had he really been a part of our lives from before I could remember?
I yawned, folding the polaroid back into its well-worn grooves when a tiny smudge over my mom’s right shoulder caught my eye. I’d thought it was dirt or a sun flare, but it looked like the shape of a person. Someone broad and tall, but not yet adult.
I scanned the angles of the shadowy face in search of familiar features. Maybe I was only experiencing the sense of humanness because the shadow took so much of a human form, but in truth it could have been the angle of a tree or fence.
It could have been anything.
But then why didn’t it feel likeanything?
I slipped my fingertip along the shadowed edge, trying to determine if the hair was long or short, the jawline squared like an Ivy League star or just a smudge of nothing left to history. I could tell neither, but a shiver rolled through my veins anyway.
Was someone watching Bradley and I after all?
Or was I going crazy again?
Twenty-Nine
A creepy chill ran through me as the sunrise crested over the mountain.
I stood at the only window in the trapper’s cabin, a thick, hand-knit blanket around my shoulders and a hot cup of grainy rocket fuel in my hands. The only thing that could put a smile on my face this morning after the restless night of sleep I’d had was the smell of his coffee. Thick as mud with bite as it went down, it seemed to call Bud from dreamland because as soon as the tiny pot bubbled on the stove, the snoring stopped and he was up and moving around a moment later.
