Page 52 of What Doesn't Kill Her

She didn’t want to feel things. She didn’t want to remember...Afghanistan, a twist of metal, the smell of burned flesh.She didn’t want to know that if she failed, death would follow. Death...

“Mommy?”

“It’s okay.” Kellen wiped at her eyes. “Let’s call it bull pucky from now on. About your blankie. Honey, we have to use it for protection. If I could figure out anything else to do, I swear I would. Your grandma can put your blankie back together. Please? Let’s do this.”

In slow motion, Rae offered the blanket to Kellen.“You.”

“What?” Kellen was so confused.

“When we get home,youmake it again.”

And now horrified. “You wantmeto take the yarn and knit you a blanket?”

“Crochet.”

“What? Crochet? I don’t know how to crochet. Your grandma—”

Rae crossed her arms over her chest. “Grandma says any idiot can learn to crochet.”

Remembering the events of the day, Kellen muttered, “I have the qualifications then.” Louder, she said, “If I promise to crochet the yarn into a blankie again, you’ll let me use it as a trap?”

“A cobweb! Promise!”

“Oh, pucky. I promise.” Kellen began to unravel the stained yellow blankie. What had she got herself into now?

Rae doubled over with belated laughter. “Mommy, you saidpucky!”

Kellen looked at her daughter sideways. “If you don’t tell Grandma I said that, I won’t tell Grandma you saidbullshit.”

“Deal.”

Kellen wound the yarn around branches that hung over their rocky refuge and down around the perimeter, sure that if someone stumbled on their hiding place, the yarn would indeed act as a spider web and trap them long enough to give Kellen time to wake and defend them. When she got down to the last six-inch square of crocheted yarn, she tied off the thread, clipped it and handed the square to Rae. “Here. This is the heart of your blankie. It will keep you safe.”

Rae snatched it and cuddled it to her cheek. “Oh, blankie, I love you,” she whispered.

Kellen felt like a scumbag. When she was a soldier, she thought she was doing the hard job. No one ever told her being a mother was a wiggling wormy bag of guilt, worry and difficult decisions.

Well, except Max. He’d made it clear enough, and now Kellen knew—he hadn’t exaggerated. If anything, he had toned it down. “Do you remember all the stuff we talked about today? About defending yourself with sticks and rocks?”

“Sure!”

“There’s one more thing. If I tell you to drop or hide or be small, do you know what to do?”

“Hide?”

“Drop means get flat on the ground, right away. Hide means look for someplace like our huckleberry bushes. Be small means get low and wrap yourself into the smallest ball you can be.”

Rae clutched her tiny square of blanket tighter. “Because those bad guys are all around?”

Okay, maybe Kellen shouldn’t have mentioned this now, when dusk slipped through the trees and the forest rustled with the movement of owls and bats and... “Right! Let’s take off your shoes and socks and put them way down at the bottom of the bag.”

“I thought we hung them on the branch of a tree.” Rae sounded suspicious, as if Kellen was arbitrarily changing the rules.

“No, because today you didn’t get them wet.”

“Why do we put them at the bottom of the bag?”

So snakes don’t climb in them.“To keep them warm for in the morning.” She helped Rae out of her clothes and into the sleeping bag. As they got ready to sleep at last, the sun disappeared behind the mountain. The cold descended to nip at their noses, and Kellen listened too hard for movements below.

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