Page 20 of A Killing Cold

When I reach the cabin, I strip off my sweater and run cold water over the stains in the kitchen sink before they can dry. The water runs red, then pink, slipping down the drain.

I know how to get blood out of clothes.

Blood on my shirt, when I was seven and Beth screamed at Joseph to control me and so he took off his belt the way his father had always done, the first and only time because as he struck out, his grip slipped and the buckle snapped free, caught my back. Skin splitting, me shrieking, Joseph gathering me to him with tears in his eyes, promising never again, and I thought his regret was the same as love.

Blood in my underwear, when I was eleven and terrified and no one had told me enough to know I wasn’t dying, but I was too afraid to go to Beth, and I didn’t figure it out until one of the neighbors’ daughters saw the spreading stain on my skirt and wordlessly handed me a tampon, then laughed when I asked what it was for. Her mother told Beth. Beth told Joseph.It’s early, isn’t it?he asked.

I got mine at fourteen, she said.

She’s developed for her age. We should keep an eye on that.

Blood soaking through my skirt, too much of it, not stopping, and my hands covered with it and Beth looking on in horror.

Blood everywhere. On my hands. On my arms. Droplets and scattered lines, an artwork in dull crimson across my chest, and the lights of the police cruiser reflecting off wet asphalt.

I’ve never minded blood. It’s a trail to follow, back through my memories. I always feel as if there’s something else there, a final step lost in the gloom—before the Scotts, before any of it. Blood holds a promise that someday I might remember what it is.

I scrub my hands in hot water in the bathroom sink. Scrub my face, too, which is freckled with tiny drops of carmine. I dress again. It’s no loss, the sweater. There are so many more.

The Scotts would extract every ounce of value they could get from their possessions. They rarely threw things away—not if it had some kind of use, not if they might find one for it in the future. The Daltons can have whatever they want. A thing needs to be very valuable indeed to bother with it. The smallest flaw, and they’ll simply get rid of it.

I dress again, checking every inch of my skin for stray spots of blood. It’s only when I’ve pulled a fresh sweater over my head that I see the small shape on the windowsill, framed by the crack between the curtains.

A box the size of my palm, gift-wrapped in glossy green paper and bound with red ribbon, sits tucked against the other side of the window.

I peer outside. The woods are quiet. No sign of my visitor.

I unlatch the window and open it cautiously so that the box doesn’t get knocked into the snow. It falls inward instead, toppling into my waiting hand. It’s light, seemingly empty. The tag taped to it bears a single word in a typewriter font.DORA.

My mouth is dry as paper, my blood cold. No one has called me that in years.

I pull the end of the ribbon. It comes undone and drops to the floor. The box is one of those wrapped top and bottom, so all I have to do is lift the lid.

The only thing inside is a slip of paper. Four words, and nothing more.

You shouldn’t have come.

8

Connor brings me dinner in the cabin. Chicken thighs in crackling skin rubbed with herbs, roasted new potatoes and carrots, a salad sprinkled with goat cheese and tossed with a bright vinaigrette, a glass of red wine and then another. I smile and say the right words and I don’t tell him about the box hidden on the upper shelf in the closet.

The texts aren’t from a romantic rival or from someone I used to know back home. They’re from someone on this mountain.

Someone who wants me gone.

We eat our fill and then sprawl together, sated, on the couch, Connor’s hand on my leg and his cheek against my stomach. I play my fingertips through his hair. No one should have been able to find out about what I did. It was supposed to be buried. Forgotten.

“I can hear you digesting,” Connor says.

“Sexy,” I reply distractedly.

“Glurb. Glubble. Your stomach is a flirt,” he says, and I force a smile. I should be here. With him. Not thinking about my apparent stalker. Blackmailer?

He turns his face to kiss the spot by my hip bone that always makes me gasp. I bite my lip, not willing to give him the satisfaction. He works his way up my side, rucking up my shirt as he goes until he reaches my breasts, and then he lifts himself the rest of the way up—neck, jaw, mouth. I put a single finger over his lips.

“What’s wrong?” he asks me, because he can see it on my face.

“I think this was a mistake,” I tell him.

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