The Marsh King's Daughter(61)

I sank down on my heels in the snow. My own cheeks burned. I knew what a kiss meant. A kiss meant you loved the person you were kissing. This was why my mother never kissed my father. I couldn’t believe my mother kissed this man, this stranger, after she brought him into our cabin while my father was away. I did know what my father would do to them if he was here. I took out my knife. Crept silently across the porch and flung open the door.

“Helena!” my mother cried. The man and my mother pulled apart as cold air swept the cabin. Her face was flushed. “I thought you were . . . Never mind. Hurry. Shut the door.”

I left the door open. “You have to leave,” I told the man as harshly as I could. “Now.” I waved my knife so he’d know I meant business. I’d use it if I had to.

The man backed away, put up his hands. “Whoa. Easy. Put the knife down. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” Talking to me like I was my dog.

I made my face as hard as my father’s and took a step closer. “You have to go. Now. Before my father comes back.”

My mother’s face turned white when I mentioned my father, as it should. I didn’t know what she was thinking when she brought this man into our cabin, how she thought this might end.

She sank down into a chair. “Helena, please. You don’t understand. This man is our friend.”

“‘Our friend’? Our friend? I saw you kiss him. I saw you.”

“You saw . . . Oh, Helena. No, no—I was only thanking John because he’s going to take us away. Put your knife down. We have to hurry.”

I looked at my mother—excited, hopeful, happy, like this was the best day of her life because this man showed up on our ridge. All I could think was that she was out of her mind. I knew she didn’t like living in the marsh, but did she really think she could leave now, in the cold and the dark? Get on the snowmobile behind this stranger and let him take her away without my father’s permission? I couldn’t imagine why she would think for a second that I would agree to this plan.

“Please, Helena. I know you’re scared—”

I most certainly was not.

“—and this is all very confusing.”

I was not a bit confused.

“But you have to trust me.”

Trust her? The magazine in my back pocket burned like an ember. After this, I would never trust my mother again.

“Helena, please. I’ll explain everything, I promise. But we have to hur—”

She broke off as my father’s footsteps clomped across the porch.

“What’s going on?” he roared as he burst into the room. He sized up the situation in an instant and swung his rifle between the man and my mother like he couldn’t decide which of them he should shoot first.

The man held up his hands. “Please. I don’t want any trouble—”

“Shut up! Sit down.”

The man fell into one of our kitchen chairs like he’d been pushed. “Look here, now. There’s no need for the gun. I just wanted to use your phone. I got lost. Your—um, wife let me in, and—”

“I said shut up.” My father spun on his heel and smashed the rifle butt into the man’s gut. The man gasped and toppled off the chair and rolled around on the floor, moaning and clutching his stomach.

“No!” my mother screamed, and covered her face.

My father handed me the rifle. “If he moves, shoot him.” He stood over my mother and drew back his fist. The man scrambled to his knees, crawled toward my father, grabbed my father’s ankle. I knew I should shoot. I didn’t want to pull the trigger.

“Leave her alone!” the man cried. “I know who you are. I know what you did.”

My father froze, whirled around. There was an article in one of the Geographics that described a person’s face as being “black with rage.” My father looked like that now. Angry enough to kill us all.

He roared like a wounded black bear, advanced on the man, kicked him in his kidney. The man cried out and fell facedown on the floor. My father grabbed the man’s left wrist and planted his foot on the man’s elbow, then twisted the man’s arm higher and higher behind his back until the bone snapped. The man’s scream filled the cabin, mixed with my mother’s, my own.

My father grabbed the man by his broken arm and yanked him to his feet. The man screamed again. “Please! No! Oh, God—no! Stop! Please!” he yelled as my father marched him across the yard to the woodshed. My mother sobbed. My hands shook. I looked down and realized I was still holding the rifle. The rifle was pointed at my mother. My mother was looking at me like she thought I was going to shoot her. I didn’t tell her the safety was on.

My father came back into the cabin. His jacket was bloody and his knuckles were red. He took the rifle from my shaking hands and locked it in the storage room. I waited in the kitchen with my mother. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do.

When he came back his expression was calm, like nothing had happened, like this was an ordinary day and he didn’t just break the arm of the first person to show up on our ridge. This could have meant one of two things: his anger was spent or he was just getting started.

“Go to your room, Helena.”

I ran up the stairs. Behind me I heard the sound of a fist hitting flesh. My mother screamed. I shut the door.