NOW
I can tell Everett’s gone before I open my eyes, so I don’t. Instead I lie on the ground, feeling the warm sun on my face, listening to birds chirp and tree branches swish in the breeze. When I finally do look, I find a bright morning, strikingly peaceful in the wake of last night’s storm. Two sprigs of heal-all rest where Ever’s body did, and beside them are the wordsMy house, tonightwritten in the dirt. I pick up the flowers, fingering the cone-shaped heads and delicate purple petals, running them like silk over my skin. They’re used to make a healing salve, according to Mr. Wilkes. To put broken things to mend.
I place them on my chest and let my eyes drift shut. Ever loves me. I’m not alone, and never will be.
My eyes fly open at the sound of twigs snapping. To my right, tall bushes shake. There’s something large in them. My adrenaline spikes. More shaking—branches cracking—
A narrow-snouted black bear pushes out of the bushes. I gasp, then slap my hand over my mouth, terrified to have made a sound.
It towers above me, black fur studded with motes of dust that glisten in the sun. It lowers its head and our eyes lock. The bear’s eyes are surprisingly beautiful, amber ringed with black. My body is rigid,immobile—except for my heart, which pounds so hard I can barely breathe around it.
All those warnings my mother gave me about the creatures in the deep woods, how they could sneak up on you, lash out, and kill. Inhuman, with no capacity for reason or logic, only an instinct to hurt. I look at the bear’s claws, long as my fingers and thick with mud. The potency of my fear makes my vision hazy.
It creeps closer. Even my pulse freezes.
The bear lowers its head to the side where Ever laid and sniffs. I stifle a sob, squeezing my eyes closed, as its soft nose brushes my waist.
Then it stops.
I crack open an eye. The bear lets out a breathy sigh that smells of musk and, strangely, berries. It rubs the flat of its head against my stomach and—too fast for me to scream—opens its yellowed jaws and snatches one of the flowers off my chest, chomping it back in a single gulp. It eyes me again, then turns and shuffles away.
I lie still. Long after I’ve stopped hearing it move, my body remains frozen. Finally, a bird chirps high and searching through the trees, and when it’s answered by another, I burst into tears.
Before I know it, I’m laughing and weeping. My body shakes, first with disbelief, then joy. Squirrels scamper in the trees above my head and I rock with delight. A bee swoops low about its business, an ant crawls up my arm, and I’m gasping, wiping away tears.
The truth breaks wide open. I belong here on this good green earth. I’m part of it. Not a sinner or a saint—just another creature. Mud and pollen and teeth and sinew. If there is a God, some higher power, it’s here in these woods. In the beautiful strangeness of being a human, an animal wandering the world with soul-deep yearning. I belong here, and nothing can take that away from me.
I climb to my feet, put on my muddy dressing gown, and start for home.
42
NOW
I’m nearing my porch when the screen door bangs open and Barry bursts out of my house.
“Ruth,” he calls, then stops short at the sight of me.
“What are you doing here?” He must’ve parked his truck in the back where I wouldn’t see, but how he got inside when I’ve never given him a key is a mystery. My arms spike with goose bumps.
“I came to warn you.” Barry’s resplendent this morning in his deputy uniform, his metal badge and swooped brown hair gleaming. Though he’s older than me, I suspect he’ll always look like this, like a boy. And such a good one, too. A Boy Scout officer, upholder of all the rules. He squints as I step onto the staircase. “What happened to you?”
I look down. I’m wearing nothing but my dressing gown, of course, which is caked in dried mud, with matching streaks along my skin. My hair forms a wild, tangled nest, twisted with leaves. I must look like I clawed my way out of a grave. “I was in the woods,” I say simply.
Barry’s hazel eyes widen—then narrow. “With him?”
“Yes.” There’s no point denying it. But even though I’m taking pains to appear nonchalant, I don’t climb any higher up the steps. I don’t know how Barry will take this.
“Shit—I mean—Christ,” Barry growls, frustrated at his inability to swear in my presence. “Please tell me you got evidence. A confession—something.”
“I told you I wasn’t doing that.”
Barry presses his hands to his mouth and roughly exhales. “You mean to tell me you’ve come home lookin’ like that from the woods, where you were with aserial killer, and you don’t even…” A light comes on in his eyes. “Why you barely dressed, Ruth? Why do you look like you been tumblin’ round in the grass? You are my fiancé, recall?”
“I don’t recall giving you an answer,” I say, cool on the outside, but I swallow a lump. “Let me remedy that now. Thank you for the offer, but I decline.”
“You—what?” From the look on his face, Barry never imagined declining was an option.
“I’m saying no,” I repeat, and steel myself for his pleading.
