Near the Bone(68)

Mattie nodded. This was preferable. C.P. said Jen wouldn’t mind but Mattie had a lot of trouble reconciling herself to the idea of sleeping next to a stranger. And this way C.P. could monitor his friend. Mattie suspected that if he slept in the main room he would be in and out of the bedroom several times, checking on Jen.

C.P. started pulling off his coat and boots and Mattie left the room quickly. She didn’t know if he would strip down to his underwear or not and she wasn’t comfortable staying in the same room if he did.

“Leave the door open,” he called after her

She wanted to take off her own heavy skirts and petticoats and change into a nightgown, but she heard the rustle of C.P. settling into the bed and decided not to go back in to get her night things. She hadn’t taken off her coat since they’d entered the cabin, though, so she put it away and then crouched in front of the couch, fairly certain that nobody would be able to see her from the bedroom. She slid her petticoats off so she just wore a wool skirt and stockings and her heavy sweater. Then she stoked the fire, adding wood so that it would burn well into the night.

Mattie climbed onto the couch and covered herself with a knitted blanket. It was warm and comfortable by the fire, and she was exhausted and her belly was full. She listened to the sounds of C.P. rolling around in the bed, clearly trying to get comfortable in a strange place. She wondered if she would be able to sleep with two strangers in the cabin.

William carried her down the stairs, away from Mom, away from her mother’s strange stillness and the sticky-sweet smell. Sam wasn’t wearing anything except pajamas, not even socks on her feet, and she knew that something was very wrong no matter what William said because Mom loved her and she would never let someone else take her away, not even William.

William was only Mom’s boyfriend. Sam had always liked him, because he played with her and Heather and sometimes he carried Sam on his shoulders when they were out. Sometimes she felt like he was a dad. She didn’t remember their real dad, who went away a long time ago.

But now William was acting weird and Mom didn’t answer when Sam called and she didn’t want to leave with William. He wasn’t her real dad. He couldn’t take her away. And Heather wasn’t home, Heather was at a sleepover party with a bunch of girls from her class and if Sam left now she wouldn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her own sister.

“I don’t want to go!” she said. “Let me go!”

“Samantha,” William said. “I told you once that you are to listen to me and obey. I will not tell you again.”

Sam squirmed and wriggled but his arms were so strong. William’s arms were much stronger than her little self, and instead of making her feel safe and happy they felt like a prison. She never felt so small as she did at that moment, when William changed from Mom’s silly boyfriend to a giant from a fairy tale, a giant with blood in his teeth.

“I didn’t want to do this,” he said, and his hand covered her nose as well as her mouth and she couldn’t breathe and then there was no more Mom, no more William, no more strange smells or the shadows of her bedroom at night.

When she opened her eyes she was in a vehicle and it was moving fast. She heard the rumble of the tires on the road and the whooshing sound of the wind outside. She was buckled into a seat belt that seemed too big for her—she was so small that her mother insisted she still use a booster seat in the car even though all of her friends were out of them. There was no booster seat now, and her feet were very far from the floor, and she could see the dashboard. That wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to sit in the front of the car—only in the back. Grownups sat in the front.

She wasn’t in a car. She was in a truck. Sam peered out the window and saw trees going by very fast. She sat up a little straighter and saw an empty highway ahead.

There was a jacket draped over her but it wasn’t her jacket. It was a leather jacket with a quilted lining and it was William’s. She recognized it right away. Her feet were cold even though the heater was blowing.

Then she remembered—William at the window, Mom lying so still in the bed, William covering her mouth with her hand.

“Awake, sleepyhead?” William said. “How’s my pretty girl?”

Sam sat up straighter and looked over at the driver. William was smiling at her as he drove. She didn’t smile back.

“Where’s Mom?” she said.

“I told you before, your mother wants me to take care of you for a while. It’s very difficult for her, you know. She’s all by herself with two little girls. You want to help your mother, don’t you? You want to make things easier for her?”

This didn’t make any sense to Sam at all, and she said so.

“If you want it to be easier then you should come and live with us and we can all take care of each other. That’s what Mom always says—that we take care of each other. She wouldn’t send me away with you.” She wanted to get out of the truck. She wanted to go back home. She was cold and hungry and scared and she didn’t understand any of this.

William’s smile faded, and when he spoke his voice had the frozen-river quality she’d heard earlier, the one that made her feel cold deep in the pit of her stomach.

“Now listen to me. From now on you will do as I say and when I say it. You will not argue or talk back. You will not speak of your mother or your sister anymore. You are to forget about them.”