The Stillwater Girls(23)

I found something like that once, in the wooden box Mama keeps under her bed. I was looking for an extra spool of yellow thread to hem Evie’s dress, but before I had time to examine the strange black rectangle, I heard Mama’s voice outside the window.

The next time she stepped outside and I found myself alone inside the cabin, I tried to steal another look at it, but by then it was gone. I never asked Mama about it after that. I didn’t want to get in trouble for being nosy.

Glancing toward his bag, I can’t help but wonder what other things he has in there. From what I’ve been able to gather, he’d been trekking through the forest for at least a few days before he found us, so whatever’s in that bag were things he needed to survive out there.

I managed to get a few hours of sleep last night, but only because my body took over my mind long enough to let it happen, but in the still, quiet hours, lying in the pitch-blackness of the cabin while the man snored and Sage’s breath was warm against the back of my neck, it occurred to me that getting out of here might not be as difficult as I thought it was going to be . . .

Everything we need has been in front of us this entire time.

Behind the mirror above the basin is Mama’s medicine cabinet, where she stores rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, bandages and salves, aloe vera and camphor and aspirin, but most importantly melatonin and valerian root—sleep aids.

Tomorrow night when Sage and I prepare supper, I’m going to crush the tablets and mix them into his food. I’ll triple, quadruple the doses if I have to—anything to put him out so we can set off as soon as the sun goes down.

If we leave on foot under a dark sky, it’ll be harder for him to track us, and if he does wake and realize we’re gone, he’ll be so disoriented from the herbs, it’ll only make things worse for him if he does go after us. He’ll get lost. And it’s cold. And on top of all that . . . we’ll have taken his bag.

The only thing left to determine is how on earth we’re going to get out without making any noise. In the winter, the cabin tends to shift with the drier weather, making the window frames settle and require extra push just to open them. That extra push is often loud, squeaky like chalk on slate.

I have less than twenty-four hours to come up with something.

Fat snowflakes begin to fall from the sky, and in a matter of minutes, the grass is dusted in white powder. If we’re lucky, it’ll melt by the time we leave so he won’t be able to follow our tracks.

“Is tee vee evil?” Sage asks the man as I wash dishes.

I keep my eyes low, trying to ignore the conversation but wondering why she’s getting friendly with him. Just because he hasn’t harmed us doesn’t mean we’re friends now or that we’re safe.

The man rests his head on his hand, yawning. I’m not sure why he’s so tired all the time, but I’m hoping that’ll work to our advantage come tomorrow night.

“The government regulates it,” he answers. “But there’s some bad stuff on TV, that’s for sure. Things that would scare you girls.”

Years ago, Mama and I were talking about the kinds of things she did for fun when she was a little girl, and she mentioned something called cartoons that she would watch on her family’s television set—TV for short. She said TV started out wholesome and family oriented, and then it became violent and inappropriate, and in the process, it taught people to be violent and inappropriate.

“The government?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says. “The FCC.”

Mama also once said our government fell apart.

She said we used to have leaders and presidents who wanted to do great things for our country and its people. We revolted, she said, when we realized they lied. Our functional democracy disintegrated, and everything stopped working. There were no presidents, no political parties, no nothing . . . just local municipalities ensuring roads were paved and taxes were collected.

Mama told me all this during our history lessons.

“The FCC?” I ask.

“Federal Communications Commission,” he says. “They’re in charge of what is and isn’t allowed on TV.”

“Who’s in charge of them?” I ask.

The man’s face winces. “I don’t know. The president? The senate?”

Mama said we hadn’t had a president in decades.

“How do I know you’re not making this up?” I ask.

“Making what up?”

“The president.” I clear my throat.

“What reason would I have to lie to you about the president and the FCC?” He laughs, lifting up his cell phone. “If this thing had any kind of service out here, I’d look it up on my phone just to prove it to you. Maybe when we get to town in a couple of days. You’ll have to remind me.”

He doesn’t understand my question and I don’t understand how his phone could prove the answer, but I let it go.

Turning away from him, I’m elbow deep in cold, soapy water, but I don’t feel a thing. Staring through the window above the sink, toward the weeping willow grave site, I can’t help but wonder if Mama lied.





CHAPTER 18

NICOLETTE

“You look rested.” Brant smiles from his end of the phone as we video chat the next morning. “Everything going all right back home?”