The once-broken TV is still blaring, and numbly, I make my way to the living room, picking up the remote from the side table. I pause to look at the radar, a large reddish-purple center hovering over Moccasin Cove.
Noah is out there in this.I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing for another sob, but the tears don’t come. Instead, my finger finds the power button on the remote, and the sound and light disappear.
I’m left with just the sound of the storm battering the house.
I listen for a few beats, feeling frozen in place.What am I supposed to do now?My eyes flutter open, just as lightning illuminates the front window. A strange shadow casts across the glass, and my throat constricts.
But I don’t startle.
I just run my fingers through my tangled hair and then head for the coat rack, grabbing my mother’s raincoat. Bullet watches me from the couch, but then rests his head down and closes his eyes.
I don’t blame him for not wanting any part of this.
I slide my feet back into my still-damp tennis shoes and then go for the front door, turning the knob. A blast of cold precipitation hits my face, splattering across my jacket.
I’m not scared of the storm.
Or the goddamned lake.
I head out into the rain, unable to hear anything except the sound of the storm. My feet are numb before I even round the house and head for the trail that leads to the lake, and my coat does nothing for the horizontal wall of water assaulting me.
I cross the meadow quickly, breaking into a run to reach the trees.
But even once I’m there, the wind tries to throw me off the path. It lifts branches like clubs and hurls them at my face, and it hisses up my sleeves and pounds rainwater into my eardrums, but I don’t stop.
I promised. I’ll never let you go, Noah.
Even if that means dragging your dead body back to the woods you loved.
My tennis shoes are so wet I might as well be barefoot, even if they’re numb. With every stride, cold water squelches up between my toes, and the mud is so deep at the base of the pines that the shoes nearly slide off my feet with each step.
The sky is torn open with lightning every minute or so, and every time it cracks I expect to see a body hanging from the trees, or standing between the trunks with a pistol pointed at me, or maybe my own shadow, skeletal and hunched, limping along like a wounded animal.
And to think, this place was once my sanctuary.
A tree root snags my right foot, and I almost go face-first into a patch of stinging nettles, but I jerk myself upright at the last second, biting back a yelp.
Fuck. Just focus, Rue.
The deeper I get, the more the wind howls. It batters the pine needles into my face until my cheeks sting, and my hair whips out in front of me, blinding me for a second, but I shove it away and keep my eyes up. I have to see.
I have to.
I make it to the final stretch of the old trail—and stop, bracing a hand against the trunk of a dead Oak. My heart beats out of my chest, and my brain erupts with the one scene Idon’twant to remember.
Fucking Matthew.
The last time I saw him alive plays like a movie. He’s half-crying, half-laughing, mouth full of blood, his hand wrapped around the knife in his gut. The sound of his breathing gurgling in his throat is louder than the wind. It echoes even now, every time the thunder cracks.
Oh god. Oh god.
Why the fuck did you have to make me do it, Matthew?
My grip on the tree tightens until the bark flakes off under my nails, pale and rotten, and the tree feels so fragile I could rip it out of the ground. My whole body is shaking now, but I force myself to breathe, to be present.
What was that thing I learned in therapy?
I force my eyes open and down at my feet. In a flash of lightning, I catch sight of my shoes buried to the laces in dark mud.
