The Marsh King's Daughter(41)

What I didn’t anticipate was that he would first find me.

Rambo is barking like he thinks the rock is going to sprout legs and take off. I’ll give it to him to sniff eventually, but first, I want to know how my father knew that the person who’d gone into the underbrush to relieve herself was me. I don’t look at all like I used to. The black hair I wore in pigtails or braids is shoulder-length now, and shot through with so many highlights, it’s almost blonde. After two kids my figure has filled out and rounded. I’ll never be fat because I don’t have the body type or the metabolism, but I’m not as skinny as I was the last time he saw me. I’ve also grown an inch, possibly two. Rambo could have been a clue, since he’s the same breed as the dog that showed up on our ridge, but a brindled bear hound running around the Upper Peninsula woods during bear season isn’t exactly a rarity. Unless I spoke his name out loud, I don’t see how my father could have made the connection. And where and how did he get the agate? The whole thing stinks worse than the meat scraps we used to throw in our garbage pit. If my father thinks he’s going to draw me into an adult version of our old tracking game, he should remember that the last three times we played this game, I won.

Only maybe my father didn’t put the rock on the stump to gloat about how much better he is than I am at hunting and tracking. Maybe it isn’t a taunt. Maybe it’s an invitation. I haven’t forgotten you. I care about you. I want to see you one last time before I disappear.

I pull out my shirttail and pick up the agate and hold it out for Rambo to smell. Rambo sniffs his way over the sticks and the brush to a spot on the road twenty feet in front of my truck. A set of treaded footprints points west. Prints like the kind that could have been made by the shoes of a dead prison guard. I go back to the truck, half expecting my father to jump out of the bushes and grab me like he used to when I’d walk back to the cabin after one of his scary sweat lodge stories.

I toss the rock on the front seat, then tie Rambo in the back and signal him to lie down and stay quiet. I haven’t forgotten how my father feels about dogs. I slide the ignition key from the ring and put it in my pocket, then make sure my phone is on mute and stick it in the other. Normally I leave my keys in my truck when I’m hunting—the U.P. isn’t exactly crawling with car thieves, and you don’t want your keys making noise in your pocket—but I’m not about to follow the trail my father laid down for me only to come to the end of it and discover he’s stolen my truck. I lock the cab for extra insurance and check my knife and gun. The police say my father is armed and dangerous. So am I.

A quarter mile up the road, the prints turn in at the driveway of one of the cabins I wanted to check. I bypass the drive and cut a wide circle so I can approach at an angle from the back. There’s less cover than I’d like. These woods are mostly tamarack and jack pine, thin and scraggly and dry as tinder, impossible to navigate without making noise. On the other hand, if my father is waiting for me inside the cabin, he already knows I’m here.

The cabin is old and small and set so far back into the clearing, it almost disappears into the forest. Moss and pine needles blanket the roof. Tall yellow flowers and rangy vines cover the sides. It looks like a fairy-tale cottage from one of my girls’ picture books. Not the kind of cottage that belongs to an innocent childless couple or a poor woodsman; more the kind of cottage that’s meant to entice unwary children inside. I keep a particular eye on the utility shed at the end of the drive where an old pickup is parked. I check under the truck carriage and up in the rafters. The shed is empty.

I skirt the edges of the clearing and go around the cabin to the back. The only window opens into a bedroom barely bigger than the bed, dresser, and chair someone managed to squeeze inside. The bed sags in the middle and doesn’t look slept in.

I go to the side to check the next window. The bathroom fixtures are rust-stained, the towels old. A single toothbrush hangs above the sink in a holder on the wall. The water in the toilet is brown. A dark ring above the water level indicates it’s been a while since the toilet was flushed.

The next window opens to a living room that could have been a twin to the living room at my grandparents’: faded flowered sofa, matching armchairs, wooden coffee table with a bowl full of pinecones and driftwood and agates in the middle, glass-fronted corner cabinet crammed with knickknacks and salt and pepper shakers and Depression glass. Yellowed crocheted doilies on the arms and backs of the chairs. An old recliner badly in need of reupholstering. A coffee cup and a folded newspaper on the table beside it. The room looks undisturbed. If my father is waiting inside the cabin, he’s not waiting here.

I go around to the front and step silently onto the porch. Stand still, listen, smell the air. When you’re hunting humans, slow is the way to go.

After long minutes of nothing, I try the door. The knob turns freely, and I go inside.

—

I WAS FIFTEEN the first time I broke into a cabin. By then I’d dropped out of school, and the tutors the state sent over didn’t know what to do with me any more than my grandparents did, so I had a lot of free time.

I wish I could say I broke into the cabin out of necessity—because I got caught in a rain shower or a snowstorm, something—but it was just a lark, an idea I got for something to do one day when I was bored. The cabin belonged to the parents of one of the boys I went to school with who liked to make trouble for me, and I thought it would be fun to turn things around and make trouble for him. I wasn’t planning to do any damage; I just wanted to leave enough evidence behind that I’d broken in so he’d know I could. The cabin had one of those “This property is protected by” stickers on the door, but my grandparents’ house had the same sticker, so I knew the warning wasn’t real. My grandfather said that fake stickers worked just as well as real ones and were a lot cheaper than installing a security system.