Chapter 4

4

Sara sat on the edge of the bed and let herself cry. She was so overwhelmed by emotion that she actually sobbed. There had been so much stress leading up to the wedding. They'd had to postpone the ceremony by a month so she could get the cast off her broken wrist. She'd had to cancel orders and move around schedules and juggle work projects and postpone cases. Then there was the circus act of juggling cousins and aunts and uncles and making sure everyone had a hotel reservation and a car and food they would like and places they could go because some of them had flown across the ocean and had decided to stay for the week and wanted to know what they could do and see and Sara was apparently their personal Lonely Planet guide.

Her sister and mother had helped, and Will had done more than his fair share, but Sara had never been so relieved to have something over.

She looked down at the rings on her finger. She took a deep, calming breath. Sara deserved an Academy Award for not losing it this morning when Will had said they would start their honeymoon trip after taking a hike. Two hours away. In the mountains. When the airport was twenty minutes from his house.

Their house.

She had tried not to fret about it. Not while they were loading up their backpacks. Not when they got into the car. Not when they left the city limits. Not when they parked at the trailhead. Will was in charge of the honeymoon. Sara had to let him be in charge of it. But then they'd stopped for lunch in a field and she'd noticed that time was slipping away and she'd panicked that he was going to surprise her with some sort of camping situation.

Sara hated camping. Despised would be a better word. The only reason she had endured Girl Scouts was because she had been driven to earn all the badges.

Which was the story of Sara's life. She had always pushed herself to the extreme. She'd graduated a year early from high school. Raced through undergrad. Battled to the top of her class in medical school. Gone balls to the walls during her residency. Then there was pediatrics practice, her transition to becoming a full-time medical examiner. She had always used her education in service to other people. To take care of children in a rural area and then at a public hospital. To give family members of crime victims some closure. And she'd looked after her little sister along the way. Taken care of her parents. Offered companionship to her aunt Bella. Supported her first husband. Grieved his death. Worked so hard to build something meaningful with Will. Survived his toxic ex-wife's intrusions. Navigated his weird relationship with his boss. Became close friends with his partner. Fallen in love with his dog.

When Sara looked back at her life, what she saw was a woman who was constantly moving forward, always making sure that everyone was okay.

Until now.

Sara looked at her open suitcase. Will had downloaded all of her books on her iPad. He'd updated the podcasts on her phone. Her sister had packed exactly what she needed down to the right toiletries and hairbrush. Her father had included one of his hand-tied fishing lures and a list of very bad dad jokes. Her aunt had donated a large straw hat to protect Sara's ghostly pale skin from the sun. Her mother had given her a small pocket Bible, which had felt a bit overbearing at first, but then Sara had realized that a page was bookmarked. Her mother had used a light pencil mark to highlight a section from Ruth 1:16:

… for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people … thy God will be my God.

Reading the passage had sent Sara over the edge. Her mother had perfectly captured Sara's feelings for Will. She would go wherever he took her. She would lie with him wherever he chose. She would treat his family of choice as her own. She would've even pretended to like camping if that's what it came down to. She was totally and completely devoted.

Which was how weeping had given way to crying, crying had given way to sobbing, and she had sunk down onto the bed like an overwhelmed Victorian. Sara couldn't help it. Everything was too perfect. The wonderful wedding ceremony. This beautiful lodge. The gifts from her family. The thoughtfulness Will had put into everything. He'd even asked for her favorite yogurt to be put in the small fridge in the kitchen. Sara had never felt so well-cared for in her life.

"Come on," she chided herself. Falling apart time was over. Will would be back soon.

She found the box of tissues on the back of the toilet so she could blow her nose. There was a small selection of bath salts by the deep soaking tub. For Will's sake, she chose the least perfumy one before turning on the tub faucet. She checked herself in the mirror. Her skin was red and blotchy. Her nose was practically glowing. Her eyes were bloodshot. Will was going to come back from the main house expecting steamy bathtub sex and find her looking like an escaped lunatic.

Sara blew her nose. She let her hair down because she knew that Will liked it that way. Then she went to the bedroom and finished unpacking their clothes. Her little sister hadn't been completely altruistic. Tessa had jokingly packed a sex toy inside the bottom of the suitcase. Sara was zipping it back in the bag when she heard a loud voice outside the front window.

"Paul!" a man called. "Would you wait the hell up?"

Sara walked into the front room. The windows were open. She stayed in the shadows as she watched two men arguing on the path below. They were older, very fit and clearly frustrated.

"Gordon, I don't care what you think," Paul said. "It's the right thing to do."

"The right thing to do?" Gordon asked. "Since when do you care about the right thing?"

"Since I saw how she fucking lives!" Paul yelled. "It's not okay!"

"Hon." Gordon wrapped his hands around the man's arms. "You've got to let it go."

Paul slipped out of his grasp. He started jogging down the path toward the lake.

Gordon ran after him, yelling "Paul!"

Sara pulled the sheers closed on the window. That was interesting. On the hike in, Keisha had said that the app guys were named Gordon and Landry. Sara wondered if Paul was another guest or someone who worked at the lodge. Then she made herself stop wondering because she wasn't here to figure other people out. She was here to have steamy bathtub sex with her husband.

Husband.

Sara felt herself smiling as she walked back into the bathroom. She had seen the look on Will's face when she'd called him her husband for the first time. It had matched the absolute delight she'd felt when he'd called her his wife.

She looked out the large picture window behind the tub. No sign of Gordon and Paul. The cottage was at a much higher elevation than the path. She couldn't even see the lake. The view was trees and more trees. She checked the water temperature, which was just right. The tub was going to be full a lot faster than she'd anticipated. Sara was a plumber's daughter. She knew her way around water flow. She also knew her husband. She might just manage to distract him from the fact that she'd been crying if Will found her nude and waiting. Which was exactly what happened when he walked into the bathroom five minutes later.

Will dropped the pillow he was holding. "What's wrong?"

Sara lay back in the tub. "Get in."

He glanced out the window. He was shy about his body. Where Sara saw the lean muscle and sinew, the contour of his gorgeous abs, his beautiful, strong arms, Will only saw the scars he'd carried since childhood. The puckered, round cigarette burns. The hook of a wire hanger. The skin graft where the ripped tissue had been too damaged to heal.

Sara's eyes started to sting from tears again. She wanted to go back in time and murder every single person who had ever hurt him.

"You okay?" Will asked.

She nodded. "Just enjoying the view."

Will didn't stop to test the temperature. He slipped into the tub across from her. They almost didn't fit. His knees were several inches above the rim of the tub. Sara shifted around so she could rest her head on his chest. Will wrapped his arms around her. They both looked out at the treetops. There was a mist hovering over the mountain range. She liked the idea of listening to the rain on the tin roof.

She said, "I have a confession."

He pressed his lips to the top of her head.

"I got a little overwhelmed by everything."

"Bad overwhelmed?"

"Good overwhelmed." She looked up at him. "Happy overwhelmed."

Will nodded. She gave him a soft kiss before resting her head on his chest again. There was room in this conversation for him to speak. She could tell he had been feeling slightly overwhelmed, too. Though Will was more likely to go for a ten-mile run up the side of a cliff than sit on the bed and cry.

He asked, "Did your sister pack everything you need?"

"Including a ten-inch, bright pink dildo."

Will was quiet for a second. "I guess we could try it out if you wanted something smaller?"

Sara laughed as he pulled her closer. There was a complete absence of sound inside the marble bathroom. Not even a drop of water came from the faucet. Sara listened to the steady rhythm of Will's breathing. She closed her eyes. She lay in his arms until the water started to cool. She hadn't planned on falling asleep, but that's exactly what happened. When she came to, the mist of rain had slowly moved across the mountain.

She took a deep breath and sighed it out. "We should go do something, right?"

"Maybe." Will started slowly stroking her arm. She resisted the urge to purr like a cat. He said, "I have a confession."

Sara couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "What is it?"

"There's a guy here at the lodge who lived at the children's home when I was there."

The information was so unexpected that Sara needed a second to process it. Will rarely mentioned people from the home. She looked up at him, asking, "Who?"

"His name is Dave," Will said. "He was all right in the beginning. Then something happened. He changed. Kids started calling him the Jackal. I dunno, maybe he came up with the name himself. Dave was always giving people nicknames."

Sara rested her head back on his chest. She listened to the slow beat of his heart.

He said, "We were friends for a while. Dave was in the same classes as me. Remedial stuff. I thought we got along pretty well."

She knew that Will had only been in remedial classes because of his dyslexia. He hadn't been diagnosed until college. He still treated it like a shameful secret. "What happened to him?"

"He was sent to live with a really bad foster family. They gamed the system. Made up all kinds of things that were wrong with Dave so they'd get more money for treatment. And then he started getting infections. So …"

Sara listened to Will's voice trail off. Recurrent urinary infections in children could often be a sign of sexual abuse.

"They took him out of the placement, but Dave came back mean. Only, I didn't realize it at first. He still pretended like we were friends. I kept hearing all these bad things about him, but everybody said bad things about everybody else. We were all screwed up."

Sara felt the rise and fall of his chest.

"He started trying to bully me. Picking fights. I wanted to punch him a few times, but it wouldn't have been fair. He was smaller, younger than me. I could've really hurt him." Will continued stroking her arm. "Then he started going around with Angie, which—I'm not an idiot. It's not like he dragged her into the basement. She was with a lot of guys. It made her feel like she had some control over her life. I guess Dave was that way, too. It hit me different when Angie did it with him, though. Like I said, I thought he was my friend, then he turned on me. And she knew that and did it anyway. It was a bad situation."

Sara could not begin to understand the warped dynamics between Will and his ex-wife. The only good thing she could say about the woman was that she was gone.

"Dave kept messing around with her. He made sure I knew about it, kept rubbing it in my face. It's like he wanted me to beat him up. Like it would prove something if he could break me." Will was silent for a long while. "Dave's the one who started calling me Trashcan."

Sara felt her heart sinking. She couldn't imagine what it was like for Will to run into this awful man right after his wedding, to have every bad memory about his childhood dredged up. The nickname in particular would've been like a kick to the teeth. Over the last few days, Will had made some passing jokes about his side of the aisle being empty, but Sara had seen the truth in his eyes. He was missing his mother. Her last act of love toward her child was to place him in a trash can so that he would be safe. Then this loathsome asshole had turned that fact into a means of torture.

"Dave tried to apologize," Will said. "On the trail just now."

She looked up again in surprise. "What did he say?"

"It wasn't a real apology." Will gave a dry laugh, though nothing about the situation was funny. "He said, ‘Come on, Trashcan. Don't look at me like that. I'll apologize if it'll help you get over it.'"

"What a fucker," Sara whispered. "What did you say?"

"I started counting down from ten." Will shrugged. "I can't tell you whether or not I was actually going to hit him, but he scampered off when I got to eight, so we'll never know."

She felt her head shaking. Part of her wished that he'd pummeled the prick into the dirt.

"I'm sorry this happened," Will said. "I promise I won't let it get in the way of our honeymoon."

"Nothing's going to get in the way." Sara thought of an addendum to her mother's Bible verse. Will's enemies were her enemies. Dave better pray he didn't run into Sara this week. "Is he a guest?"

"I think he's an employee. Maintenance, by the way he was dressed." Will kept stroking her arm. "It's funny, because Dave ran away from the home a few years before I aged out. The cops interviewed all of us, and I told them he was probably up here. Dave loved the camp. Tried to go every year. I used to help him with the Bible verses. He'd read them out loud so many times that I'd memorize them. He'd practice with me on the bus, during PE, study hall. If he'd put half that effort into school, he sure wouldn't've been stuck with the slow kids like me."

Sara pressed her finger to his lips. He was not slow.

Will took her hand and kissed her palm. "Are we finished with confessions?"

"I have one more."

He laughed. "Okay."

She sat up so that they could look at each other. "There's a trail on the map called Little Deer. It leads to the back side of the lake."

"Jon said that awinita is the Cherokee word for fawn, which is a little deer."

"Do you think the trail leads to the campsite?"

"Let's find out."