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She sagged forward, clutching the quilt in her hands to stop them from shaking and trying to calm her breathing.
And then she listened.
We listened with her.
There was the quiet, steady hum of the old fridge in the kitchen. The chorus of crickets that swelled then faded. The soft, papery flutter of aspens. The slight squeak of the bed frame as she pulled the quilt up farther around her knees.
Then, there it was: the distant, repetitive thunk of something hitting the ground. Even I hadn’t realized that the sound would carry this far. If we hadn’t been nestled deep in the forest, it probably wouldn’t have.
The sound came again: that quiet clank of metal on dirt.
April didn’t move for a long time.
She stayed sitting where she was in bed, no longer shaking. Not moving at all. Just listening. Then she wrapped the quilt around herself and padded to the kitchen, where she stared outside into the blackness.
The sound continued, erratic and ominous.
“Does she know what he’s doing? Do you think she understands?” Skye whispered, glancing back at the girls’ bedroom door.
None of us answered. There were no answers yet. We watched, transfixed, as April walked to the entryway, picked up her shoes, put them on. She ran her fingers over the girls’ shoes. James’s tennis shoes conspicuously weren’t there.
She stood motionless with her hand on the doorknob for at least a minute. The invisible sparks surrounding all of us swirled faster.
“She can’t go out there. If he knows that she knows, he’ll do it right now,” Meghan blurted. In the darkness of the cabin, I could see her hugging her arms around her waist.
Heedless of the warning, April carefully opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.
She stared into the thick bramble of trees surrounding her for a moment. And then, so slowly I knew she was bracing for what she might see, she looked over at the woodpile.
The shovel wasn’t there.
Distantly, we could all hear the soft thunk, pause, thunk.
April walked to the other side of the woodpile, scanning every inch, as if she might have missed the bulky shovel the first time. Her face was expressionless, but her fingers were clutching the quilt so hard that the tips glowed faintly white in the darkness against the embroidered pattern.
Thunk, pause. Thunk, pause.
Pause. Pause. Pause. The muffled crack of a twig came from somewhere in the distance. April took a step back toward the open cabin door.
“Oh shit,” Meghan gasped. “He’s coming. He’s coming back for them now. I can’t—”
Skye quickly reached out and grasped her hand as she went to follow April, who was hurrying back inside the cabin. “Come on. She finally gets it. Stay with me, sis.”
While Meghan and Skye followed April inside, I raced down the deer path to meet him.
He had the shovel tipped over his shoulder, as if he were returning from an honest day’s work—instead of picking his way through the woods in the dark like a wolf.
I couldn’t stop myself. I knew it wouldn’t help, but I leapt at him anyway. I tore at his ugly plaid jacket and tried to gouge the golden-brown eyes I’d been so entranced by when we first met in person. I screamed like I’d wanted to scream in my backyard, the night my voice was cut off with the extension cord in his hands. I thrashed and kicked and pummeled him with my fists the way I’d imagined doing all these years but never had. Because what was the point?
His shirt and hair whipped wildly in the sudden gust of wind that blew through the deer path but left the aspen leaves above us fluttering peacefully in the mild breeze. I knew it was me. I had done that. But, of course, it hadn’t stopped him. It was just a random burst of wind.
He shook himself a little and readjusted the shovel.
Then he kept walking.
When he reached the cabin, the front door was closed. April was nowhere in sight. Neither were Meghan or Skye. He carefully brushed a few flecks of dirt off the plaid jacket, gently leaned the shovel against the woodpile, and quietly opened the front door.
I brushed past him into the room as he sat down and took off his shoes.
