The Winter People(78)

Perhaps I had gone mad after all.

I still held Martin’s gun in my hands, gripping the stock so tight my fingers turned white. Auntie just glanced at it and laughed. It sounded like wild wind through a dry cornfield.

She was older. Her once raven-colored hair was now steely gray and in wild tangles, tied in clumps with rags and bits of leather. She had feathers and beads and pretty little stones woven into her hair. Her skin was dark brown and wrinkled. She wore a fox pelt draped over her shoulders.

“Would it be easier for you,” Auntie asked, “if I were a sleeper?”

“I …”

“Easier to believe you were right all these years, that I lay dead in the ashes of my home?” Her face grew stormy.

“But how? How did you survive?” I remembered the heat of the fire, the soot that rained down and covered us; how, in the end, there was nothing left but a few charred remains and that old potbelly stove. “I heard the gunshot. I watched your cabin burn to the ground.”

Auntie chuckled bitterly. “Did you think it would be so easy to kill me, Sara?”

I remembered Buckshot, his fur singed, taking off into the woods. Was he following Auntie?

“Kill me and leave my remains to rot in the ashes?”

I took a step back, suddenly frightened. “I tried to stop him,” I said, voice shaking. “I even tried going in after you once the house was in flames, but Father stopped me.”

Auntie moved forward, gave a disappointed shake of the head. “You didn’t try hard enough, Sara.”

“And you’ve been alive all this time?” I asked, disbelieving. “Where have you been?”

“I went home. Back to my people. I tried to leave my past behind, to forget all of you. But, you see, I couldn’t forget. Whenever I got close, all I had to do was look down at my hands.” Auntie removed her gloves, showing hands and fingers thick with white, gnarled scars. “I’ve got another on my belly, too, from your father’s shotgun. The wound got infected. It was a terrible mess.”

Auntie rubbed her stomach with her scarred right hand.

She raised her eyes to meet mine; hers were as black as two bottomless pits. “But sometimes the scars that hurt the worst are the ones buried deep down inside, isn’t that right, my Sara?”

I said nothing, my eyes fixed on her gruesome pale hands.

“I knew that one day I would return. I would return and keep to my word: you would pay. You would pay for what you and your family did to me. Turning your back on me, after all I did for you. I nursed you, brought you up as if you were my own child, and this was how you repaid me, by trying to burn me alive?”

“But it wasn’t me! It was Father. He was mad with grief.”

She smiled a sinister smile. “Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don’t you think? For doing terrible things to other people.” There was a little glint in her dark eyes. “To other people’s children.”

My heart went icy as a terrible realization bore down on me. “How long have you been back in town?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

“Oh, a little while now. Long enough to see your poor family struggle along. Your limping husband, who fights with the land rather than working with it. Your daughter. Your beautiful little daughter. So tiny. So delicate. So like you at her age.”

“Gertie,” I said, voice faltering. “Her name is Gertie.”

Auntie’s mouth twisted into a painful-looking smile. “Oh, I know. We knew each other well, she and I.”

I looked into her eyes, and at that moment, I finally knew the truth.

I took a step back, raised the gun, and aimed it at her chest.

“It wasn’t Martin. You killed Gertie.”

She cackled, throwing back her head. “The evidence pointed to Martin, though, did it not? His ring in Gertie’s pocket. The ring of mine he unearthed in the field. I don’t blame you for shooting him. I would have done the same.”

“I didn’t shoot him. It was an accident.”

Auntie laughed, showing pointed teeth stained brown.

“You put the ring there,” I said. “You took it from Martin somehow. It was you who left the notes that were supposed to be from Gertie.”

She smiled a wide and crooked smile. “My bright little Sara. My star.”

I stepped forward, pushing the barrel of the gun right against her chest.

She laughed, shook her head at me as if I were a foolish child once more. A little girl who simply didn’t know any better.

“Would it do any good to kill me now, Sara? Would it help to bring back all that I have taken from you? Your child? Your husband? Your brother and father?”

“You didn’t kill my father,” I said.

“No. He killed himself with drinking. Because he could not live with what he had done to me.”

I gazed into her eyes, so deep and black. Her eyes drew me in and held me, brought me back through time to when I was a little girl and would go down to the creek with her, hand in hand.

You are different from others, Sara. You are like me.

Maybe, I thought. Maybe I am like Auntie. Maybe I, too, am capable of murder, of revenge. Killing Auntie wouldn’t bring back all that she had taken from me, but it would be justice. I would kill Auntie. I would do it for Gertie. For Martin. For my father and brother.