"At the very least, you could act like a person whose house just burned down!"
"This is how I act, Caroline." I cross to the stove and feed two logs in, holding my fingertips close to the flames until the feeling returns. "They did it to send a message:You have nowhere to go.Getting upset about it would mean the message was received."
"Itwasreceived! I received it! I'm receiving it right now and I wasn't even the addressee!" She limps a few steps closer, butstops just out of arm's reach and hugs herself. Wolf gets up, walks over, and presses against her leg for reassurance. He's got a hell of a lot more emotional intelligence than I do, that's for damn sure.
"Okay," she muses to nobody in particular. "Okay. So what do we do?"
"We stay put," I reply. "This is a big mountain, and the hut isn't on any map. They don't know about it. We have meat now, and wood, and water. We wait them out."
"For how long?"
"As long as it takes."
She paces a small, anxious circle, favoring the bad ankle. Wolf tracks her with his eyes. I watch her, too, with guilt heavy in my gut. I'm not being kind to her right now, and this is not her world. She doesn't know how it feels to hunt and wage war, to grapple with killers. That'smydomain, not hers. But she's been thrust into it whether she likes it or not. She's been grabbed, zip-tied, shot at, frozen half to death, and she's still got her chin high and her spirit strong.
After all that, she's still standing in this miserable hut asking whatwedo. Not whatIdo. We.
Bill's daughter, indeed.
"Caroline."
She stops pacing, but doesn't turn. "What?"
"I've been unfair to you."
She whips around to gawk at me. "I'm sorry, what was that? Could you speak directly into the microphone?"
"Don't make me say it twice."
"Oh, I'm absolutely making you say it twice. Possibly three times. I want it notarized."
I almost smile. "Here's the deal," I say. "I'll tell you everything. I made a promise and I intend to keep it, even if I wish I didn't have to. But you came all this way, so you deserve the whole story. Your father, the tattoo, the envelope, all of it."
"But," she infers.
"But?"
"I knew there was a but. There's always a but with you. You're a but-based lifeform."
"You want to hear the terms or not?"
She zips her mouth with two fingers and gestures for me to continue.
"I have to tell it in pieces," I say. "Not all at once. The story is thirty years long, and parts of it connect to other parts, and if I dump it on you out of order, you'll draw the wrong conclusions and hate the wrong people. So I tell it my way. In my order. When I say so."
Her face twists in a frown. "How do I know 'when I say so' doesn't mean never? Because historically, Afon, your track record on the whole telling-me-things front has been—how do I put this legally?—hot fucking garbage."
"You don't know," I admit. "You'd have to trust me."
She laughs, short and sharp. "Trustyou?! The man who dumped me at a bus stop."
"The man who came back for you."
Her grimace deepens. "This is extortion. You're holding my own family history hostage."
"Yes. I never claimed to be a good man."
She throws up her hands. "He admits it! Openly! In front of the dog!"
