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* * *
The days ticked by even more slowly than they had when I was alone in the mountains. There wasn’t a lot to do. No TVs or tablets to distract the girls. Just a few books and toys that were already in the minivan. And the Mountain Meals, which had been a novelty at first, were getting old fast—even at two meals a day. Everyone had the runs, which meant that the one tiny bathroom with the door that didn’t fully close was in constant use.
It would have been sort of funny if it weren’t so awful.
James stayed in the cabin most of the time, increasingly irritable. He snapped at the girls whenever they asked about mealtimes or said they needed to use the bathroom. He paced the floors back and forth, eyeing the backpack and the neat rows of survival gear and meals he’d arranged into rations and days.
Even at two meals a day, the food was going fast. So was his patience.
April managed to keep the girls occupied with what she dubbed “nature school.” Little hikes and lessons about birds and fauna. Stories and art projects made from fallen leaves and rose hips. Kimmie managed to turn a long, skinny pinecone into a doll and named it Pippa. Emma coaxed a chipmunk into eating a little granola from her hand. April smiled brightly and praised the girls’ ingenuity. She hadn’t asked about school or truancy again. And she hadn’t asked about the plan. Or the police. Or when they were going back.
On the third night after April went to sleep, James sat at the kitchen table, staring at the supplies. He stood to look at the food and touch the tarps. Then he walked to the bedroom where April was asleep. But instead of getting undressed for bed, he turned off the hall light and stood in the semi-darkness, listening to the cadence of her breath.
“He’s done. He’s getting rid of them,” I said matter-of-factly like the dread wasn’t pooling around me. “Look at his face.”
Brecia and Skye were already staring at him. His eyes were different. Calculating. He didn’t appear to be anxious, though. Just resolved.
April rolled over in her sleep, but her breathing was even and deep.
He closed the door softly and walked back to the living room, where he extracted a headlamp from the backpack, put on his jacket, and slipped out the front door.
“Where is he going? Is he leaving?” Skye asked hopefully. “Maybe he’ll take the van and go.”
But the beam of the headlamp had stopped on the shovel near the woodpile.
I watched in horrified silence as he picked it up and started walking into the forest.
* * *
He chose a spot about a quarter mile from the cabin, along a deer path. The ground was soft and mulchy enough beneath the cover of the pines that it didn’t take long for him to complete the first hole to his liking.
The three of us stood along the deer path, trying to make it make sense.
The hole was about three feet wide, six feet long, and three feet deep.
He dug in silence, looking up only when the crackle of twigs from some creature broke through the still night and the soft thunk of a shovel hitting dirt over and over again.
We stayed long enough to let the reality of what he was doing sink in. Long enough to see that the hole was, unmistakably, a grave—and that he was starting on a second.
Then we fled back to the cabin.
42. BRECIA
Cascade, Idaho
It didn’t take long to wake April.
Waking her wasn’t the problem. Getting her to listen was. And we were running out of time fast.
I had no idea exactly what happened when I spoke to her while she slept. Could she see the images of the shallow graves as I described them urgently in her ear? Could she hear me talking, distantly? Did she even remember what had happened when she woke up, or was I just a night terror, delivering a shot of pure and nameless adrenaline in the dark?
As she awoke with a jolt to an empty bed, I turned to see Skye and Meghan hovering behind me.
I already knew that these might be our last moments together. Meghan wasn’t staying. And now that I knew I had a choice, I wouldn’t be either. It was too much. And the window to do anything at all was closing. If it came down to it, I couldn’t watch. I’d already decided who I was going to find in my memories when the time came: my Aunt Nelly. She’d taken care of me when I was a little girl, and I loved her fiercely. Fresh out of college, she’d moved in with us when I was five and took care of me after preschool until she found a real job a year later. We splashed in the kiddie pool at the YMCA, made necklaces out of cereal and macaroni, brushed the manes and tails of my plastic horses, and watched cartoons together. She’d died in a car crash when I was six. Right after she moved out.
I dragged myself back to the present, in the dark room with April. If there had been any lights left blazing in the little cabin, I had no doubt they would be flickering wildly. The dark room was full of invisible sparks with nowhere else to go. I no longer had any doubts. He was going to murder his own family. He was going to leave them in the woods.
April was breathing hard, blinking to get her bearings in the dark room and rickety bed. I could see that she was biting her lip, trying not to make a sound, until she cautiously felt beside her in the bed and realized that James wasn’t even there.
