The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (60 page)

“I
WAS ABOUT TO
call the police,” Tess says as they enter the kitchen. “I went into Emma’s room and she wasn’t there. I tried to get you on your cell, but you didn’t answer.” He can see Tess has been crying. Henry wants to go to her, put his arms around her, but instead, he gently guides Emma over to her. Emma hesitates, looking down at the floor, scared she’s in trouble.

“Baby! I was so worried,” Tess says, crossing the kitchen, brushing the hair out of Emma’s eyes, kissing her forehead.

“She’s fine,” Henry says in a soft voice. “She’s right here. I’m so sorry.”

“I stowed away,” Emma says. She’s stroking the little orange kitten clamped firmly to her chest.

“What?” Tess asks. “Who is this?” she asks, petting the kitten on the head.

“I went out to the old cabin,” Henry explains. “Just to see the work Winnie had done. I’m sorry I didn’t answer my phone—you know how shitty the service is way out there. I was standing talking to Winnie when Em came rolling out of the car. She and Danner had hidden themselves in the backseat.”

Tess takes her hand away from the cat. Looks sternly at Emma. “Don’t you
ever
do that again. Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Emma nods, looks down at the kitten.

“She knows,” Henry says. “She’s promised never to do it again.”

Henry bites the inside of his cheek, wonders if he should tell Tess about the truck he saw parked along the road, near the driveway to the cabin when they finally left. There was a figure inside, hunched over the wheel. The truck followed them nearly the whole way home.

Henry’s sure it was Bill Lunde. Which means he knows about the cabin.

“I saw Francis, Mom!” Emma squeals. “The real Francis. I crawled inside him.”

Tess turns to Henry, her face twisted in confusion. “Winnie rebuilt the moose?”

Henry nods.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Tess asks.

Henry shrugs.
No worse than building the grotto.
“I’m not the one putting it back together. What I think doesn’t matter so much.”

The understatement of the year.

Tess used to care what he thought. She’d ask his opinion, include him in on every decision, from what they’d have for supper to whether or not they could afford the new Volvo. Now everything he thought seemed to be a joke to her.

How do these things happen? Was it a gradual change he hadn’t noticed, or did she just wake up one day and decide all his ideas and opinions were complete and utter shit?

“Why wouldn’t rebuilding Francis be a good idea, Mom?”

Tess’s face softens as she turns back to Emma and the kitten. “Let’s get you and your little friend to bed,” she says. “In the morning, we’ll go out and get him some bowls, food, collar, and litter box.”

“And he’ll need to go see the vet,” Henry says. “He’s probably got fleas. And worms.”

Emma shivers, hugs the cat tighter. “Disgusting,” she says.

“Cats are full of parasites,” Henry says. “Especially a stray like that.”

“Don’t listen to your father,” Tess says. “He doesn’t know a thing about cats. Never did.” Tess gives him an icy glare.
Keep your cat-hating thoughts to yourself, mister.

“Mom, there were so many of them!” Emma says, voice bubbly and bright. “There’s this really old one, named Carrot. Winnie says he’s been around since forever.”

Tess glances at Henry, eyes huge. “Carrot? Some of those same cats are still around?”

Henry nods, though he couldn’t say for sure. He could never keep track. The naming of the cats was always Winnie’s job. But Tess loved them just as much, got all caught up in their little idiosyncrasies.

Since forever.

Henry’s eyes begin to itch and water. He’ll have to start taking allergy medicine again. Fucking cats.

Tess reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. He’s surprised at first, then realizes she must think he’s crying. Like the cats got to him on some emotional level. He doesn’t correct her. He puts his hand on top of hers. Maybe it’s not too late for them after all.

He watches his wife, Emma, and the stray kitten go up the stairs to bed and thinks that maybe, just maybe, everything will be all right. There’s still a chance that he’ll be invited back into the house, into normal life. Maybe what he needs to do is bring back more cats, a whole fucking herd of them, little mangy offerings. Carrot definitely, if he can just figure out which one it is.

He rubs his burning eyes, glances out the window toward the barn just in time to see a shadow move across the yard.

A dog? A coyote maybe?

No.

What he sees is clearly a person running, clothes flowing behind, blond hair glowing under the security lights, which have just clicked on. Henry races out the door, yells, “Stop!” but the figure is gone.

Heart pounding, Henry crosses the yard at a sprint, stands at the edge of the woods, looking, listening.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

He doubles back to the house, grabs the phone in the kitchen, and punches in Winnie’s number. She picks up on the second ring.

“You’re at the cabin?” he asks.

“It’s nearly three in the morning, Henry,” she says sleepily. “Where else would I be?”

“I just saw…”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he tells her. “Go back to sleep.”

S
UZ IS KISSING HER
.

Kissing. Sucking. Biting. Chewing her lips. Scratching her skin with ragged fingernails.

Winnie, Winnie, Winnie.

We’re going to stay here forever. Can’t you feel it?

Then Suz clamps down, her teeth ripping through the flesh of Winnie’s lips, biting them off, like the bright red wax-candy lips kids chew on Halloween. Winnie screams, her mouth a fleshy, bleeding hole, while Suz goes back in for the tongue.

Winnie opens her eyes, touches her lips, dry and chapped, but whole, and the dream is gone.

“Fuck!” she yelps, rolling over.

We’re going to stay here forever. Can’t you feel it?

“Suz?” Winnie calls. She sits up, listening. Holding her breath. “Are you there?”

But there’s nothing. Just a few early morning birds. Mice rustling in the walls. The drum of a far-off woodpecker hunting for breakfast.

Winnie licks her lips, so dry and cracked they’ve begun to bleed.

She gets up, throws a sweater on to ward off the early morning chill, and heads down the ladder to make herself coffee. The cabin is neat and tidy. The faded old Indian tapestries with their concentric, mandalalike designs that once formed the walls around the bed she shared with Suz are gone. Taken to the dump with a dozen other trash bags full of relics: old sneakers, rusted cans of pork and beans, the honey-bear bong, the aquarium.

She thinks of the tiny frog skeletons, the stench of rot and ruin.

Metamorphosis, babycakes. It’s a beautiful thing.

Yeah. Fucking lovely.

Winnie shivers. Walks past the table with four chairs spaced carefully around it, set up as if they’re just waiting to be filled, for another meeting of the Compassionate Dismantlers to take place.
Break out the tequila! We’ve got a new mission to plan!

On the table are some wildflowers she picked and put in a canning jar. A candle in an old wine bottle. Four gallon jugs of water. And the notebook she uses as her journal, pen left on top. To the left of the notebook, a paper grocery bag, the top folded closed. She walks toward it, then changes her mind, steps back.

“Not yet,” she tells herself. Later. She’ll open it up later. After coffee. After she’s cleared the cobwebs and nightmares from her brain.

She stumbles into the kitchen, puts water to boil in a little aluminum pan on the propane camp stove. Measures grounds into the single-serving coffee filter.

Open the bag, Winnie. Take a look.

Winnie gives in, sets down the coffee filter, goes over to the bag, opens it with trembling hands.

Good girl
.

H
E’S SWIMMING OUT TO
the center of the lake, his arm around Suz’s limp body. He’s on his back, looking up at the stars, wondering about heaven, about time and space, if he’s really a cow in a field having a dream that he’s human.

He kisses her hair, lets her go. He’s stuffed her clothing full of rocks so she won’t float back up.

Down she goes, the lake taking her into its deepest, darkest place.

Her hands are the last to go under, floating like white starfish. Under the surface, he can still make out her face.

She opens her eyes, smiles, says something to him underwater.

His body goes rigid.

He’s made a terrible mistake.

This is not Suz at all.

It’s Emma.

The one word, “Daddy,” floats to the surface, a bubble of sound.

He dives, trying to reach her, but she’s gone.

H
E WAKES SOAKED IN
sweat (lake water), lungs screaming for air. The phone is ringing. Rolling over, he grabs it, makes a choking sound.

“Henry, you okay?” Winnie asks.

“Mmm,” he mumbles. “Just getting up.”

“Can you come out here today? There’s something I need to show you. Something I just found this morning.”

“What is it?” he asks, closing his eyes, imagining his daughter’s body floating to shore.

Stop, he tells himself. Enough.

“It’s better if I show you in person,” Winnie says.

“Tess has stuff going on, so I’ve got Emma all day.”

“Bring her. We’ll have a picnic. She can help with the moose sculpture. Maybe we can go swimming.”

Henry stiffens, chomps down hard on the inside of his cheek. “No. No swimming. I don’t want her to go anywhere near the lake. But we’ll come out. Around lunchtime. I’ll pack a picnic.”

“Perfect,” she says. “See you then.”

Henry hangs up, and slides out of bed. The dream is still fresh in his mind.

Daddy.

“D
O YOU THINK YOU’LL
ever have kids?” Henry asked Suz. They were swimming to the rocks on the other side of the lake. Henry thought the tops of the rocks poking out of the water looked like the backbones of a dragon, curled and waiting.

Suz laughed. “I’m not exactly mommy material,” she said. “And I didn’t have the greatest role model. Not like you—born and raised in a quaint little Vermont town with Mr. and Mrs. Apple Pie.”

Henry splashed her. He hated her vision of his life. That she
saw him as being so very ordinary. So predictable. He hated the condescending tone she took; the implied judgment that she was somehow better than he was, that he could never really understand her because her family was fucked up and his wasn’t. “It wasn’t like that,” he said.

“Oh, sure it was,” Suz said, rolling over to float on her back, staring up at the sky as she spoke. “And you’ll appreciate it one day, when you settle down with your own little bundles of joy.” She studied the clouds as if his future was laid out up there, unfolding as the breeze blew in from the north.

“What makes you so sure I’m going to have kids?” Henry asked her, getting pissed off now. One of these days, he’d find a way to show her that he wasn’t nearly as simple and predictable as she thought. “Maybe I don’t even want them.”

Suz smiled. “I think…I think there are a lot of things you want that you don’t even know you want. And there are things you think you want that you wouldn’t really be all that happy with.” She was treading water now, looking straight at him.

“That’s not true,” Henry said, shaking his head, frustrated.

I’d be happy with you.
He thought the words, opened his mouth to say them, but they didn’t come.

Suz laughed. “You’ll have kids, Henry. Trust me. And just think, babycakes—think how fucking lucky they’ll be. I wish I had a time machine and could jump into the future right now. I’d pat those buggers right on the head. I’d say, ‘God dealt you a good hand making this guy your daddy. You watch him, listen to him, and everything’ll turn out just fine.’”

Henry watched as Suz held her breath and went under. She surfaced almost two minutes later, nearly at the rocks. Suz could hold her breath forever and swam faster underwater than she did on top.

“Face it, Henry,” she said when he’d finally caught up with her and they were resting on the rocks. “I swim like a fucking submarine.”

“What about me?”

“You? You’re something slow and steady. Dependable. An aircraft carrier maybe.”

Henry shook his head. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

“Pretty much, babycakes,” she said, leaning in so that her lips were resting on his neck, the words buzzing against his skin, her breath this hot liquid thing that made him forget he’d ever been mad at her. “Pretty much,” she said.