The Stillwater Girls(18)

Placing the basket of eggs on the kitchen counter alongside the potatoes and butter, I pull a dull paring knife from one of the drawers and begin chopping, each slice requiring brute strength to cut through the earthy flesh. A second later, Sage is at my side, making herself useful. I imagine she wants to stick close to me more than she cares about cooking for this man.

In tense silence, we get busy fixing breakfast, and from the corner of my eye, I spot the man shrugging out of his shirt and rinsing it in the basin we use to wash our faces and brush our teeth. He uses our soap to scrub it clean before wringing out the water, and then he hangs it on a hook near the fireplace. All that covers his broad shoulders and veiny muscles now is a shirt missing fabric where the sleeves should be.

Everything about him is strange and unpredictable. He’s just as wild as anything that lurks beyond the pines.

Returning to the kitchen table, he watches us prepare the meal, his stare heavy and unwelcome. When I finally plate his food and bring it to him, he peers up at me and then down at the food.

“You girls going to eat?” he asks, yanking the fork from my hand and pulling his dish closer. “Or you just going to stand there and stare? Didn’t your mama teach you that staring is rude?”

He chuckles, huffing through his hooked nose.

Sage tucks her head and folds her arms around her small waist, and I glance back toward the pan with a few potatoes left in it.

We gave him both of the eggs.

We were afraid not to.

Without saying a word, my sister and I divide the remaining food and take the seats across from him. My unsettled stomach rolls when I take my first bite, hunger mixing with nerves, but I force myself to chew and swallow, repeating a few more times until my plate is empty.

Sage pushes her potatoes around, and I nudge her under the table. The food might be cold and her appetite may be gone, but she needs to eat . . . especially if we want a chance at getting out of here.

I had lain awake all night dreaming up an escape. He’s going to notice if we pack bags. He’s going to notice if we leave to gather eggs and don’t return after a short bit. A few minutes isn’t near enough of a head start anyway. Plus, I don’t think he’d let us both leave the house together at the same time. Besides, once we get past the tree line, I don’t have the slightest clue which direction to run, and there’s a chance we could get lost in the forest, or worse: become some hungry animal’s dinner.

The thought of getting away from him is equally as terrifying as staying.

The man finishes his breakfast, wiping his greasy mouth on the back of his hair-covered arm. Leaning to the side, he retrieves a green and white rectangular box from his pocket, along with a little blue tube with a red button on the end.

Tapping the box on the table, a long white stick pokes out, and he takes it between his lips. Next, he drags his thumb along one side of the little tube and presses the red button. In an instant, a tiny flame appears.

Sage and I watch as he brings the miniature fire to the stick and sucks in, his chest rising. The tip burns, glowing red, then orange, until wisps of gray smoke rise, filling the air with a distinct, ashy scent much different from the one coming from our hearth.

Drawing in a long breath, he pinches the stick between his thumb and forefinger before releasing a cloud of white that obscures his face for a few seconds.

My sister coughs.

I hold my breath.

I don’t like the way it smells: unfamiliar, aggressive, displeasing—like him.

“You girls know it’s Christmas, right?” he asks, his dark-blue gaze moving between us.

I nod. I hadn’t planned on celebrating this year, so I didn’t bring it up to Sage. Didn’t seem right to exchange gifts without Mama and Evie here. And besides, it’s not like we have anything here for a proper Christmas feast.

“Must be hard being away from your mama today.” He brings the white stick to his lips again, exhaling more smoke a second later. “Where do you think she is?”

I reach for Sage’s hand under the table, giving it a squeeze and hoping she interprets it as me telling her to keep her yap shut.

“Awfully strange to me that a mother would abandon her daughters on Christmas,” he says. “Something about that just seems . . . off to me.”

He studies us, sucking on the stick until the end glows cherry red and a pile of ash lands on the table, which he brushes onto the floor.

“She’ll be back,” I say. “Wouldn’t be surprised if she walked in that door today.”

The stick dangles from the corner of his mouth, as if it could fall at any moment. “You’re a terrible liar.”

My eyes flick to his.

“Tell me, Wren,” he says, taking another puff. “What’s your mama look like?”

This stranger’s fascination with a woman he’s never met before makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.

Clearing my throat and licking my lips, I sit up straight. Half of me wants to lie. The other half of me is scared of what he’d do to us if I did.

“Blonde hair,” I say. “But dark blonde. Dark-blue eyes. Gray almost. And she’s tall—taller than me.”

I hold my hand several inches above the top of my head, remembering how we always measured our height according to Mama’s. I stopped growing when I finally reached her chin.

The man stubs his white stick into the wooden top of our table, leaving a black mark on the wood, and then he flicks it into the fireplace. Leaning back in the chair, he folds his arms across his chest as he examines me.