"How do you know that name?" His voice is perfectly level, which is a million times worse than if he'd shouted.
Oh, Caroline. You absolute moron.
"I… There was a photograph. On the nightstand. I saw it last night, and the names on the back?—"
"You went through my things."
"It was poking out! I didn't go rummaging through your drawers or anything, it was justthere,and I?—"
He takes a step back from the bed. Then another. The distance between us opens like a crack in ice, and I can feel the temperature in the room plummet with it. His face has closed off completely. Whatever door had cracked open in thelast ten minutes—the shared darkness, the quiet, my mother's nightmares and his—has slammed shut with the kind of finality that makes me understand it was never really open to begin with.
"Afon, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have looked?—"
"No. You shouldn't have."
"—but I didn't mean to pry, I just?—"
"Go to sleep, Caroline."
He steps over Wolf, passes through the doorway, and pulls the door shut behind him with an angry thud.
Then another door opens—the front door. The thump of Afon's boots, the screech of blisteringly cold air, the rustle of his flannel. Then it slams shut again, and I'm left alone in the silence.
Is midnight in the snow really better than talking about Yelena with me? I guess so. Wolf lifts his head and looks at me with an expression that I would swear, on my parents' graves, is disappointment.
"I know," I whisper. "I'm an idiot. I know."
I pull the quilt up to my chin and lie there in the dark, ankle throbbing, heart throbbing harder, and listen for the sound of him coming back.
He doesn't.
Not for a long, long time.
7
CAROLINE
I know from the moment I open my eyes that today is going to be a very bad day.
Clearly, Afon didn't turn himself into Frosty the Snowman or Jack Nicholson fromThe Shining,because I can hear him moving around the cabin, the clank of the coffee pot, low grunts as he talks to Wolf. I don't know what time he came back inside after his late night temper tantrum, though.
But I also know, from the stiffness in my bones and the grit in my eyes, that I slept like absolute dogshit. Every time I started to drift off, my brain helpfully replayed the moment his face went cold—How do you know that name?—and I'd jolt awake with my stomach in my throat.
I'd really like to stay in here forever. It's nice that the bed is cozy, but it's mostly because I'm a yellow-bellied chickenshit, as my dad would have said.
I'm being dramatic, but only a little bit. What the hell am I supposed to say to Afon?Hey, sorry I went through your nightstand, found the photo of your dead brother and a womanyou clearly loved so much that you still scream her name in your sleep twenty years later, and then brought it up while you were sitting on my bed at 2 A.M. in a cold sweat. My bad! Anyway, about those envelopes?—
Safe to say that's not going to work.
I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and exhale. As bad as that whole aspect of things is, the rest of my world is… about the same or worse, actually. My ankle is a swollen, purplish disaster. The knot on my forehead is lightly thudding along. I am, in every sense of the word, a wreck.
The bedroom door opens without a knock.
Afon fills the frame. He's fully dressed—boots laced, jacket on, the Remington slung over one shoulder by its strap. His eyes are flat and opaque, like someone poured concrete over whatever was behind them.
"Get up," he says. "We're leaving."
"Who's 'we,' and where are they going?"
