I set down my fork. "You're right. I'm not."
She stands up hard enough to scrape the chair legs against the floor. Wolf lifts his head and whimpers at the display of anger. Caroline grabs her plate, limps to the sink, slaps it down, and then limps past me toward the couch without another word.
The rifle leans against the wall, two feet from my right hand.
Outside, the snow keeps falling, burying everything.
But they're waiting in the woods. I know they are. The question is…
Why?
5
CAROLINE
The problem with the silent treatment is that it gets boring very, very quickly.
By noon, I've counted the logs in the woodpile through the window twice. I've cataloged every item on Afon's kitchen shelves: canned beans, canned beans, and more canned beans. I've folded the blanket many times over, paced every available inch of this cabin, and even tried to go outside to frolic in the snow with Wolf. He loved it; I froze my booty off.
Afon, meanwhile, has spent the morning doing what Afon does best: pretending I don't exist.
He's at the table now, cleaning something. A fishing reel, it looks like. The small metal parts are spread across an old rag in neat rows. He's got fingers like overcooked bratwursts, but they're somehow managing watchmaker-level delicacy.
He hasn't spoken to me since breakfast. Not a word. Not a grunt.
I don't think I'm going to win this war.
"That's it then?" I blurt from the couch, where I'm propped up with Wolf's enormous head on my lap. "Are we just not going to talk for the entire day? Is that the plan?"
His eyes remain fixed on his work. A tiny screwdriver turns between his fingers.
"Because I should let you know," I continue, "that silence is actually physically painful for me. I'm not exaggerating. I once paid a therapist three hundred dollars an hour to tell me I have an anxious attachment style, and one of the hallmarks of that is a pathological inability to tolerate conversational voids."
Nothing.
"Dr. Levinson—that's my therapist—she says I use verbalization as a self-soothing mechanism. So really, when you think about it, by refusing to talk to me, you're actively harming my mental health."
Afon sets down the screwdriver and I perk up with hope.
Then he picks up a different one and continues.
"Which, like, sure, yeah, fine," I press on, undaunted. "You're within your rights. But I want it on the record that this is a hostile environment."
"Noted," he says without inflection.
"Oh! He speaks!" I throw my hands up and Wolf startles, lifting his head to give me a disgruntled look. "Sorry, buddy. False alarm. This was not actually a therapeutic breakthrough."
Afon glances up. Just his eyes, though. The rest of him remains perfectly still. "Are you always like this?"
"You're going to have to be more specific."
He waggles the screwdriver at me. "Relentless."
"Yes," I say. "I am. And it only gets worse when I'm trapped, injured, and being stonewalled by a surly coward who makes promises he has no intention of keeping."
I know I've hit a nerve because his jaw tightens under the beard and his hand pauses—just for a beat—before resuming its work.
Good. I hope he's uncomfortable! I've been uncomfortable since I set foot in these godforsaken mountains. Turnabout is fair play.
