ONE
Willa
I don’t remember much about the night I ran away.
I remember the smell of cedar, the way the dark felt thick out past the tree line. It was nothing like the dark inside the compound, where there was always someone awake, always a light on somewhere. Out here it was just black in every direction and the sound of my own breathing and the ground uneven under my feet.
I remember thinking:don't stop.
So I didn't.
I walked until the compound lights disappeared behind the hill, and then I kept walking because disappearing behind a hill wasn't the same as gone. The cash was folded flat against my sternum, tucked into the bodice of my dress, and I kept one hand pressed there without meaning to. Forty-three dollars. I'd taken a few bills at a time over two years, whenever I could, whenever the offering basket came around and I could palm something before it passed. It had felt like stealing. Maybe it was. I'd asked God to forgive me every time and then done it again the next week.
I figured He understood.
The trees got thicker and I slowed down because I had to, because roots kept catching my feet and I couldn't afford to fall. I didn't know whose land this was. I didn't know much about what was out past the eastern fence—we weren't encouraged to wonder.
At some point I found the blind.
I almost walked into it. It was up on legs, wooden, tucked back against a big live oak, and I stood there at the bottom of the ladder for a long moment just trying to think. Someone owned this. Someone would come back to it eventually.
But it wasn't tonight.
I climbed up. Pulled the door shut behind me. Sat down on the wooden bench inside with my back against the wall and my knees pulled up and my hand still pressed flat against the money in my dress.
My feet hurt. I didn't know how long I'd been walking.
Outside, something moved in the brush. I held my breath until it passed—deer, probably, or something small. Nothing looking for me.
Not yet.
I let my head fall back against the wall and closed my eyes.
Don't stophad gotten me here. I'd figure out the rest in the morning.
TWO
Forrest
It had been almost three years since Sophie died, and it still felt like I wasn’t even close to over it.
People said it would happen slowly, then all at once. That one day I would wake up, start my day…and realize I hadn’t thought about her. Hadn’t missed her. And the ache would come back, but it would be a little easier to bear.
It wasn’t. I felt…hollow. Like coffee didn’t taste as good without talking to her over those steaming mugs. Like the bed was never as warm without her in it.
I’d taken to walking with Stetson most summer mornings, mostly because my brother Sawyer insisted that I had to get out of the cottage every so often so he wouldn’t worry. Stetson was good company—quiet, didn’t feel compelled to fill the silence. It was refreshing, when I’d had so many people asking if I was okay lately.
We were already deep in the woods that morning, fog drifting around the tree trunks, the dogs trotting around and smelling every interesting thing they could find. A few months back, my cousin Wyatt and his wife Haven had found some puppies on the property—and me and Stetson had both adopted from the litter. Stetson had taken Buck, the biggest male…and Ihad little Nickel, a female. The two heelers wagged their tails, disappearing then reappearing in the morning dew.
"Seen tracks out past the east fence," Stetson said. "Big buck. Eight points at least."
"Season's not for another few months."
"Wasn't planning on shooting him." He ducked under a low branch. "Just like knowing he's there."
That was Stetson. He noticed things and filed them away and didn't make a production of it. No follow-up questions, nohow are you holding up, no careful pauses where he was clearly deciding whether to bring her up.
He never brought her up.
