The House in the Pines(49)

Maya dips her spoon into her bowl but doesn’t bring it to her mouth.

There’s something about the sight of him across the table, his face shrouded in steam. A half-formed image of people walking through clouds. Faces emerging from mist. Where was it that she’d seen this? In a movie?

“Maya?”

She stares at him, unable to explain her growing unease. The image, remembering where it’s from, feels urgent, like a gas stove accidentally left on in the kitchen. A thing she must articulate, must attend to before something bad happens.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Something’s . . . wrong.”

“Oh, sweetie . . .” He smiles lovingly at her. “Nothing’s wrong.”

She closes her eyes, unease blooming into dread.

Caras en la niebla. The words come to her in Spanish, though she doesn’t know why. La niebla—she only recently learned the word for mist, having come across it while translating her father’s book.

Her father’s book! The village in the clouds. This is what she’s reminded of here—Pixán’s true home, the place he yearns for. She opens her eyes to find Frank staring at her. A wave of dizziness.

“Listen to me,” he says. “Whatever’s wrong, we’ll figure it out together. Nothing to worry about.”

But the story feels like a warning. Like Pixán, Maya has forgotten something. Her heart beats faster as she thinks back to the last moment she can recall before arriving here: The sound of water as she approached the bridge. The flickering flashlight in her hand. “Why . . .” she says, face growing crowded. “Why can’t I remember?”

Frank sets down his spoon. He stands, walks slowly around the table, never breaking eye contact, his face calm.

Maya begins to shiver.

He kneels at her side, eye level, as if he intends to propose.

Her shivers grow deeper. The cold is in her bones.

“Relax,” he says. “You’re having a panic attack.”

He takes her left hand, which she has curled into a fist, and pries it open, finger by finger. He presses something small and hard into her palm. She knows what it is before she sees it. She feels its metal teeth.



* * *



— The rain strikes her face, her arms, her chest. She draws a sharp breath. The drops are like a bucket of ice water sloshed unexpectedly on her head. She clutches her elbows, unsteady on her feet.

Frank is there to catch her. He walks beside her, arm around her shoulders, his father’s flashlight in the other hand. He shines it on the ground just ahead of Maya so she won’t trip over anything as they make their way back down the abandoned road. The forest is dark. “What—what’s happening?” she asks, but her voice is lost beneath the drumming of rain on leaves, branches, and earth. The rain soaks her clothes, running in rivulets from the frayed hem of her shorts.

Her hands feel raw, and when she looks at them, she sees dirt. There’s dirt on her palms and knees. She stops walking, shrugs out from under the weight of Frank’s arm. Turns to face him.

He looks worried. “What is it?” His voice is measured, but his jaw is tight, as if he’s more upset than he’s letting on. He doesn’t try to shield himself from the rain plastering his hair to his scalp.

“What the hell is going on?” she asks.

He looks confused.

She can’t stop shivering.

He opens his arms to her, offering warmth, but she flinches away from his touch, and he looks hurt. But this time she’s sure of it. This time there’s dirt on her hands and knees, and the fact that she doesn’t know how it got there chills her more than the cold rain.

“What did you do to me?”

The question takes him aback. He raises his hands as if to show her they’re empty, that he doesn’t mean her harm. “You said you wanted to leave,” he says. “Asked me to walk you back to your car, so that’s what I’m doing.”

Bewildered, she looks back over her shoulder, as if the way they’d come might hold a clue to the last few minutes, but all she sees is the overgrown road disappearing into dark woods. “Why can’t I remember?” she asks. The wind picks up, sharpening the rain. She shouldn’t be here. Aubrey was right—Frank is weird—and for the first time, she senses he could be dangerous.

She turns and continues walking in the direction they’ve been going, hoping that it is, in fact, the way back to her car.

“Wait, Maya.” But the note of pleading in his voice makes her walk faster. He follows her, lighting her path even as she tries to get away from him. She breaks into a run as soon as she sees the dark outline of his father’s house, the rain pounding, her sneakers kicking up mud. She’s soaked and out of breath as she crosses the wild lawn to the street where her car is parked and unlocks her door with trembling hands. She turns back, expecting to see Frank, but now he’s gone, and the only sound is rain and her own heaving breath and heart.





TWENTY-SEVEN




Thanks for this, Maya texted Steven at nine a.m., which felt like the earliest she could reasonably text someone she didn’t know very well.

It’s beautiful, she added, referring to Cristina’s painting as well as to the warm home it portrayed. Maya had forgotten. These days, when she thought of Frank’s cabin, she thought only of the time she had lost, dirt on her knees and hands, and fear as she ran through the woods to her car.