Page 68 of Her Wicker Guardian

“Monster.”

My jaw tightens but I have to be honest. “Somebody will say that too.”

He turns back toward me. “What do I do?”

He didn’t ask what we should do.

My answer is already waiting. Stay out of sight. Wait for Blair. Keep everybody away. Buy us a few more hours. Every answer starts with me deciding what Locke should do before I ask him.

I stop myself.

“What do you want to do?”

Locke looks toward the unfinished bear. “I do not want to hide.”

I don’t think he should hide. But the road suddenly feels much closer than it did yesterday. So does town. Every car contains somebody with a phone. Every stranger can send Locke’s image somewhere neither of us can control.

“Okay.”

He looks back at me, maybe expecting more. I have a dozen things I could say. I let most of them stay unsaid.

“Nobody comes onto my property unless I let them. Beyond that, I think we learn this part as it happens.”

Locke considers that. “You do not know.”

“Not remotely.”

Some of the tension leaves his posture.

His attention shifts to the axe leaning against the workshop wall. After a moment, he walks over, picks it up, and carries it inside. I follow as far as the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“The boy was afraid.”

“Yes.”

He sets the axe behind the workbench, where it can’t be seen from the yard. “The next person does not need to see this first.”

There’s a difference between hiding and deciding what you want a stranger to see first.

Locke looks down at the wood chips covering Tom’s T-shirt and brushes at it once. “And this.”

“You’re changing clothes?”

“Yes.”

I nearly tell him nobody worth meeting will care if he has splinters of wood on his shirt. Then I understand. He is choosing: a clean shirt, the axe out of sight, what the next stranger who sees him might remember.

“There’s a clean green one on the table in the screened porch,” I say.

He heads that way, and I follow. He reaches for the folded shirt beside the chaise. I turn away without thinking. Privacy is his choice too. I keep my attention on the yard beyond the screen.

The dirty shirt lands softly on the little table behind me. A moment later fabric rustles again.

“Rachel.”

I glance back.