Near the Bone(77)

“Hey,” he said, tapping her shoulder with one finger. “You weren’t bad. You didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this. Except maybe that sicko. I’d like to see how he’d like it if someone shoved him in a wooden box.”

Something broke inside her then, some tide of fear and hurt that she’d been bottling up for longer than she could remember.

“I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to go home to Mom and Heather. William told me that Mom gave me to him to keep, that I belonged to him forever, but I didn’t believe him and I just wanted to go home.”

She wept then, wept like she never had before, wept like she would never stop, bent over her knees with her arms over her head and the musty smell of the Box inside her nose and the feeling of this stranger’s eyes on her, helpless to stem the flood tide of her grief.

After a long while she felt dried up and exhausted, and she sat up. C.P. looked away from her, like he was embarrassed to have seen her outburst.

“Let’s cover this up,” he said. “Nobody needs to see this.”

He closed the trapdoor to the Box and pushed the rug back over it while Mattie watched him, drained and dazed.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’re getting off this goddamn mountain and never coming back. Come on, pull yourself together. We have to pack up some stuff and figure out how to get Jen out of here. I’m going out to see if that sled you talked about is somewhere around.”

He stood, and held out his hand for Mattie to grasp. She hesitated, because there was a part of her that was still saying William will be angry you’re not supposed to talk to strange men but she pushed that part of her down, down, down and away. That person didn’t exist anymore, that little mouse Martha. But she wasn’t quite Samantha yet, either. She was something in between.

She took C.P.’s hand, and stood on her own two feet.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



Mattie went to check on Jen while C.P. was outside. Jen was still asleep, breathing lightly, but she didn’t rouse at all when Mattie touched her forehead or shook her shoulder. There was certainly something more seriously wrong with Jen than just the wound from the trap, but Mattie was at a loss. She didn’t have any real medical knowledge. If anything she was the one who’d needed medical care over the years, particularly after the losses of her children. William had always taken care of her then.

She went to the closet and took out her trousers and a heavy sweater and changed into them. At least she wouldn’t slow everyone down by trying to walk in skirts and petticoats. Her hair was falling out of its braid—it had been more than a day since she’d combed and bound it—and it was in her way as she dressed.

She didn’t have time to brush it all out—that was a very long task, one that required assistance. William usually brushed her hair for her. It was the only time he was anything like tender with her. He liked to sit by the fire with her sitting in front of him, and he would carefully brush the waist-length strands until they gleamed, and call her his little Rapunzel, his princess in a tower.

She felt a deep and sudden revulsion. William had liked her hair this way. William wanted her to have it long, long, long and never cut it because she was his doll to do with as he pleased, a doll he could play with if he wanted or break if he wanted, a doll that only moved and talked at his whim.

Mattie rushed out of the bedroom and to her worktable. There was a very sharp knife there that she used for slicing carrots and potatoes and deer meat, and she wondered that he let her have such a sharp object within reach. He must not have been afraid that she would try to kill him with it.

There were so many times she could have. He slept so heavily at night. She could have slit his throat and he wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. He might have slept through the whole thing.

Why didn’t I? Why?

(Because he made you think you couldn’t. He made you think that you belonged to him.)

She picked up the knife, pulled her braid taut with her other hand, and sawed through the hair close to her nape.

The knife cut through the thick braid easily, and a moment later she held the long messy rope that used to be her hair. The braid had blood in it, and she felt the cut on her head where William had hit her with the shovel. It was clotted over now.

She swung her head from side to side. Her head felt so light. It almost didn’t feel like her own head. She looked at the braid and a thought came, unbidden and unwanted.

William will be so angry when he sees.

No. She needed to stop worrying about William, what William wanted or didn’t want, how William would feel about things. William didn’t matter anymore.

C.P. opened the cabin door and stood on the porch for a moment, stamping the snow off his boots. Cold air swirled around her feet and she noticed then that she hadn’t put any socks on.

“That sled is a little on the small side—Jen’s pretty tall—but I think we can figure something out. It’s wide so maybe we can lay her on her side and tuck her up so her head and legs don’t hang off.”

He shut the door, looked at her properly for the first time, and did an exaggerated double take.

“Time for a new look?”

She dropped the knife on the table, let the braid fall to her feet.

“William liked my hair long.”

“Ah,” he said. “I bet it got in your way.”