Alone in the Wild(82)

She meets his gaze. “I cannot promise you that. I have no idea if it will or won’t, and that is a very long conversation we need to have if we want to make this work. But I would like to make it work. You are my partner. You are my friend. You are my lover. Nothing has changed for me. With Ellen, I was answering a question about myself that I should have answered twelve years ago. And I don’t know if I did. I found something I needed, but it didn’t change what I already have, and I’m not sure what to make of that. I need time to work it through, if you can give me that.”

Tomas nods. That’s all he does. Wordlessly nods, his eyes glistening.

“You want me to stay?” she says.

Another nod, and a quiet, “Please.”

“Then the question is ‘do we stay.’ And the answer…” She exhales. “The answer is no. Not here. Not after all this. It will be too hard for the children, and really, that’s just the excuse I think we needed to go. We’ll remain for the winter and then we’ll decide our next step.”

And now, in the midst of tragedy, I need to ask them a question unrelated to any of this. I kick myself for not doing it earlier, but it isn’t as if I’d forgotten the reason we were here: to find Abby’s parents.

Earlier, it’d been clear that Nancy didn’t realize Ellen had been trading goods to help Abby’s mother, so I didn’t see a lead there. Also, I’d suspected one of them might have murdered Ellen, so I hadn’t been about to expose Abby’s existence. Now, though, with Ellen’s death unrelated to Abby, there’s no reason not to ask.

I ask with extreme care, hoping I won’t seem too callous.

Sorry your nephew murdered your friend and lover, but while I’m here, maybe you could help with this other case?

It helps, of course, that the “other case” is a lost baby. It’s hard to begrudge help with that. They are both horrified and relieved. Horrified that Lane almost accidentally killed an infant … and relieved that the child is safely in Rockton.

“We had no idea,” Nancy says. “It makes sense, now that you’ve told us. Yes, she’d have wanted those scraps for diapers and the balm for breastfeeding. There were other items, too, and they all fit. She was helping a woman who’d borne a winter baby.”

“As she would,” Tomas says softly.

Nancy’s eyes glitter with tears. “Yes, she would. Absolutely. I only wish she’d told us, if only so we could help you get that baby back to her mother. She must be going mad with worry. When we find Lane, he may be able to tell us what Ellen was doing or where she was coming from when he … when he…”

She breaks off, her voice catching. Tomas reaches for her, hesitating a little, but she falls into his arms. We slip out after that, followed by Tomas’s promise that they’ll help us in any way they can. In return, we promise that we’ll be back in a week or so, to see whether they need help finding Lane. Then we’re gone.



* * *



We rest back at our campsite. We must, considering how far we need to walk. A four-hour nap before we break camp and walk until the sun starts to drop. I want to push on after that, but Dalton says no. We’re less than halfway home, with no chance of making it back without more sleep. Better to find a spot and get our shelter up before it’s fully dark.

We’re in bed by six, asleep 1.5 seconds later. As exhausted as we are, though, we don’t need twelve hours of sleep, so we’re on our way again by three in the morning, our flashlights leading us through the darkness.

It’s nearly noon when we reach Rockton, and I can say with absolute certainty that these were the most physically strenuous three days of my entire life. Dalton’s promise of an entire batch of fresh-baked cookies may be the only thing that gets me through the last ten kilometers. I’m holding him to that, too, and washing them down with multiple mugs of spiked coffee, followed by an afternoon nap that may last until morning.

I reach the town perimeter and topple face-first into the snow. Or I try to, but my feet tangle in the snowshoes and Dalton grabs me before I snap my ankle with my drama-queen gesture. He lifts me over his arms, and I struggle to get out, saying, “I’m fine. Just being a brat.”

“Too late. I’m carrying you.”

I start to settle in. Then he flips me over his shoulder, firefighter style, which is a whole lot less flattering.

“No, no, no,” I say, renewing my struggles. “Just let me—”

“Too late.”

“You can’t—”

“—embarrass you by carrying you over my shoulder through town? Yep, I believe I can.”

Storm starts dancing around us, barking, finding her second wind. I grab the back of Dalton’s parka and yank, and I’m just goofing around, but it’s hard enough to make him stagger, and apparently Storm chooses that moment to cut in front of him, and we all go down in a heap of curses and yelps and giggles.

As we untangle ourselves, a voice says, “First, you disappear for three days. Now you are napping at noon. I understand the holidays are coming, but as a taxpayer, I object.”

I twist to see Mathias standing there. “Since when do you pay taxes?”

“I treat each and every person in this community with marginal respect. It is very taxing.”