The edge of our yard when I was a little girl flashes through my mind, shadowy and striped with pokeweed stems. “Not in a very long time.”
WE DRIVE INuncomfortable silence for the next half hour or more while I eat my crackers one at a time. Between bites, I sneak little glimpses of him, sucking each detail down with my food, where my stomach warms. His build is neither slim nor stout, but comfortably somewhere in the middle, with well-muscled arms and squareshoulders, a broad, toned chest. He has the look of someone who only woke up a couple of hours ago, a little disheveled without being messy, and his presence is as solid as a boulder, as if he is tethered to these mountains, a part of them. I smell fir needles in his hair, the wiry crop of beard, like a man made of the forest with tree sap running through him. It makes me want to roll in him like leaves, pick him from my sweater afterward, laughing.
“Crow Lake, huh?” he says finally. “I can’t imagine you’re here for the underrated trails with a foot like that.”
I shake my head, finishing off the last of my crackers. “Family.”
He nods, scratching at his beard. “Not much else up here, I’m afraid. It’s beautiful, but it takes a certain kind to live here.”
I wonder what he means bya certain kind.“You live in Saranac Lake?”
“I live in the area,” he says, eyes fixed to the road. “I was born in these mountains. I don’t know anything else.”
I’m quiet, trying to imagine what it’s like to know only these rocks and thickets of trees, the stillness of mirror lakes dotting the gaps. An air freshener hangs from his rear-view labeled with the fragrance Black Ice.
“You’re here at the wrong time, you know,” he adds. “You should have come earlier.”
“Oh?” I meet his eyes and have to look away. They are earnest and level and strong. They make me want to lean against him, to feel my muscles unwind one by one.
“Summer’s almost over. The temperature will start dropping in the next few weeks. These mountains will light with a fire of orange and red and yellow. It’ll be the most spectacular autumn you ever saw. Until the snow sets in. Then you’ll wish you were anywhere but here.” His tone says he speaks from experience.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Winter might be nice. It doesn’t snow where I’m from very often.”
His smile is laced with irony. He’s having a laugh behind those eyes at my expense. “And where would that be exactly?”
“Texas,” I lie. “Near Austin.”
“Well, Acacia from Near-Austin, Texas, I’m afraid you’re in for a frigid shock.” He rests an elbow on the edge of his door where it meets the window.
“You don’t like winter?” I ask him.
“Me? I love it. It’s my favorite season. It wakes you up, really teaches you what it is to be alive. But I was born and raised here. I got ice in the veins. Newcomers usually have a different reaction.” He studies me as I avoid his gaze. “But if you have family here, maybe you’ll stand half a chance. I give you till Christmas.”
I frown. His certainty makes me want to prove him wrong, to show him I’m his equal. I doubt I’ll be ready to set out on my own in less than five months anyway. I need money, work, a plan—things that take time. But the idea of moving continuously, staying several steps ahead of Henry like a shark that can’t stop swimming lest it drown, appeals to me more and more. I thought once I was out of Charleston, I would feel safe. Instead, I feel harried, a rabbit scented by wolves, never able to let down my guard.
The road turns black, the night thickening around us. Only his headlights cut through it, lighting up the pavement, the trunks of sleeping trees. I think we’re nearly there when the ginger-brown bark of a red pine comes into view, its enormous trunk laid out across the road at an angle, green needles sheeting the pavement.
“Shit,” he says, rolling to a stop. “We’ll have to turn back.”
“Turn back?” That’s not an option for me.
“Can’t pass till it’s cleared. We can try again in the morning.” Regis puts the truck in reverse and starts to back up.
“No. Stop. Just let me out here,” I tell him, panic hitching my voice, pinching my throat. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
He brakes and eyes the hulking boot on my foot. “You’re still at least ten miles out from the edge of Crow Lake,” he tells me.
“It’s fine,” I try to reassure him. “Really. I was gonna walk anyway. You saved me a lot of the trip.” I start to open the door, but he reaches for me.
Instinctively, I lean away, my hand snapping out for the glove box, the gun I know waits inside.
Regis raises his palms. “Listen, it’s really dark out here. Easy to get turned around, even with a road running before you. This is bear and moose country, you know. And worse.”
“Worse?” I quirk a brow, confused.
“There’s a serial killer running the area targeting women. We just found another body this morning,” he says.
The news report in the Syracuse bus station. The warnings. “I thought he was theSaranacStrangler?”
