A History of Wild Places(42)

I lift my hand, palm to the sky, and consider sliding it out beyond the eave of the roofline, until little explosions of rainwater speckle my skin. But I close my hand into a fist, too afraid. Theo might be immune, but that doesn’t mean I am.

I wait for the rain to recede, and after another few minutes the storm pushes east, moving out over the treetops, and soon the last of the rain sheds down from the roof above me and the air falls still—a silent, dark dripping over the valley.

I step out into the open and walk to Levi’s house.

Blood pulses between my ears—the words I need to say already clawing at my insides, wanting to sputter free.

When I reach his porch, I touch the frame of the front door, imagining tiny hands reaching out for the knob, tiny feet running across the hardwood floors, laughter like a bell always chiming. This house could be made into a home. A place where a family could live. Children always stirring, fingerprints on the windows, garden dirt on the rugs. Levi and I could make something in this house, a life sturdier than the ones we live separate from each other. We could be happy.

I imagine it so clearly that when I turn the knob and enter his home, I feel as if I belong here, a purpose greater than the sum of the words I’m about to say to Levi.

I hear his heart beating as soon as I enter—quickened in his chest, the blood hot in his veins.

“Bee?” he says, his voice thin. He sets something on the cabinet near the stairs, probably the bottle of booze he keeps hidden there.

“I need to talk to you,” I say. I know he’s surely upset with me for speaking against him at the gathering—for saying that the baby needed a doctor—but I need to tell him the thing that’s been roaring inside me for too long. The secret I can no longer keep.

He staggers toward me, and I know he’s been drinking. I can smell it on his skin: sickly sweet and salty skin. It’s been months since he’s been into the bottle of whiskey, since last winter, when a heavy snow sunk over the community and we all started to feel a little desperate. Levi feared winter was growing too long, that spring would come too late to plant crops, and the community might not have enough food to last through another year. But the snow thawed and spring came quick, almost overnight.

He drinks when he’s worried. When a thought begins to wear at him like a river against soft wood.

“You think Colette’s baby won’t survive?” he asks, his voice cold, grating against my ears.

“She needs a doctor,” I echo what I said at the gathering. “Her heartbeat is weak. I don’t think she’ll last much longer.”

He moves closer to me, then sinks onto the couch—I can hear the depression of the cushions—and he scrapes his hands through his hair, pulling tightly. “We should prepare a ceremony,” he says. “I’ll have one of the men construct a coffin, and we should mark a space in the cemetery. Let it be done quickly, so the community can mourn and then move on.”

A wall of air builds inside my throat. “She’s not even gone yet.”

“You know there’s nothing we can do.”

“We could try.”

He makes a sound through his exhale—a tired irritation. A weariness I don’t fully understand.

“We can’t just do nothing,” I press, easing onto the couch beside him.

He shifts, leaning forward, his breath bitter and hot. “This isn’t nothing,” he says, words like sharpened blades. “This is surviving. This is keeping our community alive.”

“Everyone except Colette’s baby.”

“Yes.” He’s stopped pretending now. He’s given up trying to smooth over the ugliness of his words. “I will sacrifice the one for the many. I do this for you. For all of them.” A hand waves in front of him, I can hear the shush of the air. “You know this better than anyone.”

I press my palms against my knees, wanting to push away the hurt welling up behind my eyes. I need something I don’t know how to ask for. I need him to reach out and touch me, soothe the scraping thoughts racking at my skin, but he might as well be a hundred yards away from me. I can hear the distance in his voice.

“It’s still out there,” he continues. “Beyond our valley. You can hear the trees separating, can’t you? The wood peeling away. It will kill anyone who tries to leave.”

I know he can see the answer in my face—I have heard the trees. In the deepest hours of night, they crack themselves apart, trying to rid themselves of disease. The sound echoes over the valley and it keeps me up, unable to sleep.

“It isn’t safe, Bee.” He reaches out now, for the first time, and touches my hand gently, like he’s afraid I might pull away. I close my eyes and absorb the warmth from his touch. We sit like this for a while, in the quiet of our own thoughts, until he says, “I feel like I’m losing control.” There it is, the idea always nagging at him: the one that never leaves him alone, a ticking inside his rib cage like a beetle looking for a way out. He fears the community doesn’t trust him like they trusted Cooper. He fears his role as our leader won’t last, that in time they will see that he was never as good as Cooper—the man who they followed into these mountains. The man they trusted with their lives.

I worry his paranoia will be the thing to finally tear him wide open for all to see—a festering wound he’s been carrying all this time.