Page 60 of A Killing Cold

The breeze stirs a few stray hairs against my throat. It almost feels like the drip of liquid. I can see it now. The blood a wash across her neck. The panic in her eyes.

I move in a daze back to White Pine. I stand just inside the door, my breath a cacophony in my own ears. The memory is like a dream.

No, this place is the dream, and the memory is the only real thing.

Rowan, Rowan, Rowan, the woman’s voice says, but the name doesn’t fit any better than the others I’ve tried.

“I remember,” I whisper. It’s almost the truth.

The cabin is silent. If Connor woke at the sound of the engine, it wasn’t enough to get him up. I undress in the dark and walk to the bedroom. The door has no lock. I step in on quiet feet and he’s sprawled out on the bed, peaceful in his sleep. I slide under the blanket, lying with my back to him. He stirs. He reaches out with one arm, drawing me to him.

“I love you,” he mumbles against my neck. I’m not sure if he’s even awake.

“I love you, too,” I whisper, and it isn’t a lie. It’s a heat inside my chest, a blinding light that hasn’t dimmed. I love Connor Dalton the way I have since I first looked into his eyes, and that frightens me more than anything.

I’m not safe here. I should be smart. I should run. But if I do, I will never know what happened to me or to my mother.

And I will never know whether Connor truly loves me or if he is like his father in this way, too—

If he, too, is a monster.

28

The morning brings a pale light that seems unable to pierce even the scattered clouds. The air feels thinner, and we don’t waste it talking. We move around each other with quiet steps as if afraid to be noticed, and when Olena arrives with a summons for me, it’s almost a relief.

“Mrs. Dalton would like you to come join her in the lodge,” she says, eyes fixed on my chest.

Behind me, Connor stands from his spot at the kitchen table. Her cheeks turn pink.

“Just Miss Scott,” she says. Connor doesn’t sit back down right away. Our eyes meet, and for a moment I think he’s going to insist on accompanying me. But then he nods. He lowers himself into his seat, eyes tracking away from mine.

I grab my coat and follow Olena outside. She walks with her hands deep in her pockets. In our identical jackets, with our hair under knit hats—hers white, mine gray—we look like a matched set.

“Any way I could convince you to break my leg and get me out of this?” I ask her. Her cheeks go bright red, and she gives a nervous giggle. She’s so young, I think, and then I remember that I am, too. It doesn’t feel that way. It never has. “Just kidding. Mostly.”

“Thank you. For not telling,” she says. She doesn’t share her mother’s lingering accent, but they have the same quality to their voice, a softness contradicted by a faint burr. She really is gorgeous, with those doe eyes and dark hair.

“You know you deserve better than Trevor,” I say.

“Trevor’s not… I know he doesn’t make the best impression,” she says. “You have to get to know him.”

“And what is he like when you get to know him?” I ask.

Her mouth opens. Shuts. “He’s good to me,” she says.

I would have said the same about Peter. Though maybe I’m being unfair to the boy. He was in the same church as me, had the same messed-up stew of ideas about sex and gender and desire, and he was a teenage boy. What was he supposed to do when it all started?

Tell them it wasn’t my fault, I think. But even now I can’t be sure that’s true.

I am not the sort of girl that parents allow around their sons, their grandsons. I am a threat to their future, and a thing that needs to be sacrificed to protect it.

Olena leaves me at the door to the lodge; I find Louise in the kitchen. There’s a pot of water boiling on the stove. She’s in the midst of rubbing a mixture of herbs onto the purplish meat of a skinned rabbit, massaging it in. She barely looks up as I enter.

“You can peel and chop the potatoes,” she says. “If it’s not too hard with your hand.”

“No problem,” I tell her, though my fingers pulse with pain when I stretch and grip. At least it was my left hand. At least the fingers haven’t swollen, so the ring isn’t biting in.

I expect her to start in on me right away, but instead we’re silent for a good while, except for the bubbling of the water and the snick-snick-snick of the peeler across the potatoes. She sets the rabbit aside to rest and grabs another from a cooler at her feet.

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