The Stillwater Girls(15)

I shut my eyes and hold on to my sister so tight she yelps, but in an instant, I lose her, her skin sliding beneath my grip as he jerks her out of my arms.

“Wren!” my sister cries, and I peer through one squinted eye.

He has her now.

All that’s left beside me is a cold void and a mess of blankets.

Her nails dig into his arms, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.

Wearing a leer that turns my blood to ice, he stares at me with squinted eyes. “Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”

My chest squeezes when I notice the thick tears gliding down my sister’s pale cheeks.

If he does anything to her, it’ll be my fault.

I didn’t hold on tight enough.

I stubbornly refuse to answer him, but finally I say, “Wren.”

“And hers?” His arm rests beneath her pointed chin, covering her entire neck. One powerful squeeze would snap the life right out of her small body.

“Sage,” I say, eyes darting from hers to his and back.

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Nineteen,” I answer, swallowing the lump in my throat. “She’s eighteen.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Our mother went to town to get supplies,” I lie. “She’ll be back soon—any minute now.”

His lips pull up at the side, revealing sallow teeth, but this isn’t a happy smile.

“You think I’m an idiot?” He squeezes my sister tighter, and she gulps for air. “I’ve been coming around here for days. Nobody here but you two.” The man glances around. “But I see over there, you’ve got four beds. And on the wall, I see four hooks, but I only see two coats. Lie to me again, Wren, and you’re not going to like what happens.”

I have to look away.

“So who else is missing from the party?” he asks.

I’m afraid to lie to him, so I blurt out the truth. “Our sister, Evie. She went with Mama to town.”

His hold on Sage appears to loosen, but he isn’t letting her go just yet. His uneven brows rise, and he rubs his lips together, like he’s thinking hard about something.

“Your mother is Maggie Sharp,” he says. “Isn’t she?”

Shaking my head, I say, “I don’t know who that is.”

I’ve never once thought about whether Mama had a proper name or not. I called her Mama, Sage called her Mama, and so did Evie. There was never a reason to call her anything else.

“Bullshit,” he says, spittle flying off his lips. “What’s your mama’s name then?”

“She doesn’t have one.” My voice shakes. I speak the truth, but the way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m fibbing.

His barrel of a chest rises and falls as his head cocks to one side. “Don’t play games with me, Wren.”

Placing my hand across my galloping heart, I say, “Honest. She’s just . . . Mama.”

“What’d your daddy call her?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“How can you not remember?”

“He died a long time ago,” I say. Along with our older sister, Imogen, but I don’t share that with the stranger because it’s neither here nor there. “We were young. I don’t remember him much, so I don’t remember what he called Mama.”

I don’t even know his name . . . just that the number of times Mama spoke about him and Imogen I could count on one hand. It made her sad, talking about the past and how things used to be. I can’t imagine losing your husband and your first child would be something you’d want to bring up more than you had to. Seeing her blue eyes turn glassy as she struggled to keep her composure always tore me up, so after a while, I stopped asking.

Their bodies are buried out back, their graves marked by a weeping willow tree and a bed of red impatiens that Mama plants every spring because they were Imogen’s favorites.

All I really know about them is that Daddy had auburn hair and a big laugh and Imogen looked just like me.

“You could’ve been twins,” Mama always told me. “Spitting image of your big sister.”

The stranger groans, rising and letting Sage go. She falls to the floor, then scrambles across the room and back into my arms.

“I’ve been walking these woods for days,” he says. “I’m tired, and I don’t have much patience left. Now, I don’t want to snap on you girls or do something I’ll regret in the morning, so I’m going to let you get to bed, and we’ll try this again when the sun comes up.”

Sage glances up at me, and I try to steady my breath so I can calm down.

He dims the kerosene light until the flame dies down and then shoves his gun into the waist of his pants before ambling across the cabin toward Mama’s bed. Wrapping his meaty hands around the footboard, he begins to shove his body weight against it. The wood spindles screech against the floor as the bed slides forward, and he grunts with each push.

I don’t ask what he’s doing.

I already know.

By the time he’s finished, the bed is pushed up against the door—our only way out save for a couple of small windows. As soon as the bed is positioned where he wants it, the man kicks off his boots and unbuttons his flannel shirt. A moment later, he’s under one of Mama’s quilts, wasting no time getting cozied up.