The Stillwater Girls(21)

I knew then that Mama left certain things out for a reason.

She only wanted to protect us, to shield us from all the ways the world had gone mad.

“Ever seen a TV?” he asks. The man shakes his head and huffs. “Of course not. You don’t even have electricity.”

“What’s a . . . tee . . . vee?” Sage asks.

“Television,” he says. “You can watch shows. Movies.”

The words don’t register with Sage, but I remember Mama once talking about having something like that when she was a kid. Said she’d come home after school and watch her favorite shows until her parents came home from work and changed it to the news. The news always depressed her because it was nothing but people talking about all the bad things going on in the world. She never understood why her parents wanted to watch it.

The only thing Mama liked about TV was watching the weather forecast. She grew up in a place called La Jolla; it was in southern California, where it was always sunny and warm and she could play outside every single day. Then her daddy took a job in New York state. She was never able to go back to La Jolla. Too expensive, she said. But she promised to take us there . . . someday.

“There’s a screen,” he says, tracing the shape of a rectangle in the air with his fingertips. “And there are people on it, acting out . . . things . . . I don’t know how to describe it. It’s for entertainment. When you’re bored.”

I return to the lukewarm meat on my plate, pushing it around with my fork and preparing myself to take another bite.

“You two are missing out, I’m telling you,” he says, shoveling a forkful into his mouth. “You’re going to be in for a real treat once I get you out of this primitive hell.”

My fork falls, clinking against my tin plate. “What do you mean . . . get us out?”

The man narrows his gaze. “I’m leaving in a few days. You two are coming with me.”

“We’re not allowed to leave,” Sage says before I get a chance to respond.

The stranger shrugs. “Says who? Your mama? Your mama who isn’t here right now? Your mama who left you to die out here all by yourselves?”

I tighten my jaw as my fist coils around my fork to keep me from up and stabbing his hand with the dull tines.

“She didn’t leave us here to die,” I say.

He lifts a brow, head cocked, and then he snickers. “Yeah, well, it looks that way to me. Don’t know any mother who would leave her young daughters all alone in the woods without enough food to get through winter.”

“I’d rather starve to death here than go anywhere with you,” I say. “If you want to kill us, just leave us here.”

I’ve done the math with our supplies. We’ll likely be dead by the end of next month.

The stranger lets out a bellow of a laugh that almost makes him look nice. “Kill you? What makes you think I want to kill you?”

“Then what do you want?” I ask.

His shoulders square with mine as he situates in his chair. “It’s complicated. But you’ll know soon enough.”

“Evie’s sick,” Sage says out of nowhere, though maybe she’s just trying to change the subject to something she can understand. “Mama took Evie to town to get help. She needed medicine. They’ll come back once Evie’s well.”

When she says it out loud like that, it makes me realize for the first time just how ridiculous it sounds to keep faith that they’re still coming back.

My last thread of hope vanishes in that moment.

The stranger covers his smirk with the dirty palm of his hand, laughing at her naivety.

“Hate to break it to you,” he says, reaching his fork across the table and stealing our uneaten meat, “but she’s not coming back.”

Sage turns to me, her dark eyes brimming, and I slip my hand into hers, threading our fingers together.

He finishes his cooked goat and pushes his plate toward us. “Been a long day, girls. Think I’m going to catch a nap.”

Rising from the table, he heads to Mama’s bed, wrapping his greasy hands around the spindles and shoving it in front of the door again. A second later, he plucks his hat off one of the bedposts and nestles himself beneath the covers, his face hidden.

Without making too much noise, we clear the table and pump the sink with water to wash dishes.

“Wren,” Sage whispers, leaning toward me, “why do you think he’s looking for Mama?”

Squinting at her, I lift my finger to my lips and silently shush her. That man is maybe twenty feet across the room from us, and he isn’t yet snoring. We can’t risk him hearing us talk about anything.

Eyeing the chalkboard calendar in the corner, above the bookshelves where Mama would gather us on a braided rug for our lessons, I spot our slate boards and a tin can of white chalk.

Tiptoeing across the room, I grab two slates and two chalks and begin to write my first message to Sage. The chalk squeaks as I drag it across the board, and I stop, my heart in my teeth. We both glance toward the man, but he doesn’t so much as stir.

Pressing softer this time, I write out: WE CAN’T LET HIM HEAR US TALK.

Sage nods, writing a message on her board: I’M SCARED.

“I know,” I mouth, writing another message: I’M GOING TO GET US OUT OF HERE.