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.

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.

From the dark hallway, I saw Meghan and Skye appear, standing like sentinels as all three of us watched him. Meghan backed up slowly into the kitchen as he stood up and surveyed the tiny living room, his eyes resting on the collection of survival tools. Skye held her ground, glaring at him with a fury I could feel from across the room.

He stood where he was in the living room for a few seconds, clearly weighing his options.

"Where's April?" I called to Meghan softly, hoping she wasn't gone yet. I couldn't see her anymore.

"She's in the bedroom," came the quiet reply from the kitchen. "She's pretending to be asleep."

A wave of despair pulled at me like a riptide. "What about the girls? Did she at least grab a knife or something?"

Skye shook her head miserably. "No."

James was on the move again, but he was walking toward the kitchen and Meghan—not toward the bedrooms.

He stopped in front of the wall clock, squinting at the cracked plastic in the darkness. It was 3:00 a.m.

He was standing just a few feet away from Meghan. She stood facing him, her arms still wrapped tightly around her middle as if to keep from flinging herself at him.

"If you want to jump him, do it," I told her. "I couldn't stop myself. It felt good for a second, even though it didn't do anything."

She nodded tightly but didn't look at me—or move to attack him the way I had on the trail. "We heard you out there."

He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and stretched. Then he yawned and sighed heavily. Skye made a disgusted noise. "Poor baby. Tired after staying up late digging holes."

It was true: He looked exhausted. "Maybe he'll wait," I said hesitantly, still feeling the despair threaten to pull me under. If he didn't do it tonight, he would do it tomorrow. Or the next day. There was still no indication as to what his plans were long-term, but those plans clearly no longer included his family.

It made me think of the hamster I'd had as a little girl who, when I forgot to feed her for a couple of days, ate her three babies. All that was left when I looked into the cage was a few droplets of dark blood.

I shook my head. No. He wasn't like an animal at all. At least with the hamster, there was survival on the line. He killed because he wanted to. Because he felt like it. Because he liked it. No animal I knew of did that.

He hesitated in the hallway, looking from the stash of survival objects to the bedroom door. I tried not to imagine what he was thinking about but couldn't stop the mental image of the different deadly objects at his disposal. The knives. The rope. The shovel out by the woodpile. If he wanted to do it tonight, he had plenty of tools available.

He yawned again and rolled his neck, turning to look at the neat piles of meals. He hadn't counted them for a couple of days. But the buckets still looked relatively full. Nobody was eating with the vigor they had a few days ago, given the effects on everyone's digestive system.

He sighed heavily then padded down the hallway to April's room. Skye and I followed, while Meghan hung back. Neither of us prodded her to follow.

He quietly opened the bedroom door, casting a dim square of light across the bed where April lay on her side, turned away from him. I watched her chest rise and fall. Deep breaths like clockwork. If I had to guess, she was counting with each inhale and exhale.

He stared at her for a few seconds. Then he carefully shut the door, pulled off his jeans and plaid shirt, and got into bed on the other side.