Jane Doe(60)

“Yay, weenie roast!” I yell. His face spasms in irritation, but I laugh because, come on, it’s funny.

Steven makes a big show of cutting a couple of sticks off a nearby maple tree and whittling each end into a forked point using a pocketknife.

“Won’t these get tree stuff on our hot dogs?” I ask as he hands me my stick.

He rolls his eyes. I imagine poking the stick in them.

“They’re not, like, poisonous or anything?”

“No, Jane, they’re not poisonous. Didn’t any of the men your mom brought home ever take you camping?”

I shoot him a narrow look and he holds up his hands. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” I grumble as I stomp up the stairs to the cabin door, “they didn’t take me camping.”

“That’s why women shouldn’t have kids outside of marriage. Your real dad would have taught you this kind of stuff.”

“Maybe. But men have kids outside of marriage too, you know. That’s kind of how it works.”

“But women should know better. They’re the ones left with the children.” Lucky men and stupid, irresponsible women. A tale as old as time.

Steven has done his whittling work, so he grabs another beer and puts his feet up on a rough block of wood that sits between the couches. I get the hot dogs and buns and condiments and paper plates. The fire has warmed the place up, at least, and I shed my big coat and boots.

“There are potato chips too,” he calls out. I retrieve them, and he moves his feet so I can fit the chips on the makeshift table. Steven hands me his cooking stick. I kneel in front of the fire and cook our meal.

“This is nice,” he says.

“The first dinner I’ve made for you!”

He laughs and chugs his beer. I grin with happiness as my cheeks flush from the fire. A tiny flash of movement catches my eye. A spider drops frantically from a high hearthstone to escape the heat. But it’s hotter near the ground, unfortunately for the spider. It drops to the floor right in front of the flames, and I watch its legs curl in until it’s just a little ball of drying meat. I don’t squeal with fear once. I don’t even blink.

When the weenies are roasted, I slide them onto buns and serve one to my man. He eats it quickly and asks for one more, but he does get up to fetch himself a beer from the doorstep. He gets me one too. As soon as our meal is finished, he announces that he’s going out to get in a few hours of hunting before dusk.

“Hold on!” I cry. “Let me just get my coat and—”

“No. You stay here.”

“But, Steven—”

“Not today. I need some peace.”

He’s out the door before I can think, stomping down the steps with his gun in hand.

Damn it. I shove my feet into my boots and scramble into my coat, but as I run for the door, one of the overlarge boots slides off and trips me. I have to stop and tie them to keep them on, and by the time I burst out of the front door, Steven has vanished.

I sprint around the back of the cabin to see if he’s still somewhere here in the clearing, but he’s gone and I don’t spy any trailheads.

“Shit!” Maybe I’m not a jungle cat after all.

I walk down the dirt lane, one of my boots clomping sadly against the packed ground. I hope to find an obvious trail he might have taken, but all I see are a couple of narrow gaps in the trees. Even if I can make the right guess, it’s not a great idea to silently stalk an armed hunter through the woods. Shooting me might make his life miserable for a while, but that’s really not the way I want to go about it.

Okay, this is fine. I’ll talk him into taking me with him tomorrow morning and I’ll kill him the first chance I get.

But damn I hate making mistakes.

Don’t believe the movies about us. Being a sociopath doesn’t automatically make someone a genius at killing. I’m learning on the job here.

The good news is that I’ve made a decision. I’ve lost my chance to make this fast, so quickly making my way back to the city undetected will be too difficult. Option one is out. And option three—accidentally shooting my boyfriend in the woods—puts me under too much scrutiny and could result in charges.

It’s going to have to be option two: kill Steven in the woods, bury him deep in the forest, and then report that he went out hunting and never returned. It’s supposed to snow on Sunday night. I’ll wait until the storm starts before I drive down to the general store to call authorities for help.

Hunters and hikers go missing all the time. Wherever I bury him, I’ll tell them he set off from the cabin in the opposite direction. They’ll search far and wide in the wrong part of the forest, and they’ll find nothing. It will snow for half the week. He’ll be impossible to track. Days will go by. Then weeks. I’ll slowly fade out of the Hepsworth family’s life. The end.

Satisfied, I head back to the cabin to settle onto the couch with the new book I brought. It’s a sci-fi adventure packed with romance and war and intrigue. I love it.

When I look up again, fading sunlight is stretching across the plank floor from the back window, and I realize he’s been out in the woods a long time. At least four hours.

Maybe he’ll take care of this problem for me and never return, but I feel a sharp slash of irritation at the thought. I want to be the one to make him pay. I want to go to bed at night with the knowledge that I avenged Meg. That thought will keep me as warm and happy as my cat does.