Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Maggie was silent.

‘She burst in on us. I was — I was bleeding back there. He was still inside me, and she pulled him off. My knife, the one I always kept, it was on the floor near my boots. Dory didn’t give me time to explain. I wanted to tell her it was okay. I was letting him do it. It was what he needed. He loved me. She took the knife and she stabbed him, and she kept stabbing him. I wanted her to stop, but she just kept stabbing and screaming at him.’

Cat slowly pulled her legs underneath herself and folded her hands in her lap. ‘When it was over, we took one of his coats so Dory could wear it, and no one would see the blood. We drove home. We stopped along the way to throw the knife in one of the lakes. When we got back, I helped her take a shower and clean herself, and then we bundled up all the clothes in a garbage bag and put it in a trash can. We never talked about it again.’

Maggie got out of the chair. She put her sunglasses on again in the darkness. ‘Is that the truth?’

‘It’s the truth,’ Cat said. ‘Dory was all I had. She protected me. So I protected her.’

Maggie turned around and hiked down through the trail in the dunes.

‘Are you going to tell Stride?’ Cat called.

There was no answer. Maggie kept hiking through the long, swaying grass until the darkness swallowed her up and Cat was alone again with the roar of the lake. She didn’t take a walk in the wet sand the way she’d planned. She didn’t say goodbye to everyone who had died. She realized that she’d been wrong. The past was the past, but it was never really behind her.

*

The house was quiet after midnight. Serena’s hair was wet, and he toweled it dry, using soft touches to avoid stress on her wound. They stood on the slanted floor of the house’s third bedroom. A floral blanket covered the bed. A flickering lavender candle lit and scented the space. Serena was fragrant from the soap in the shower, and her skin was damp under the silk robe.

‘Sharing a bathroom with two women,’ she murmured. ‘You’re a brave man, Jonny.’

‘I’ll adjust.’ He squeezed the strands of her hair in the thick towel.

She turned around, and the candle cast his shadow across her face. ‘Do you mind if I sleep here? Not in your bed?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I’ll get there, Jonny. I just need time.’

‘I know.’

‘Will you undress me?’

His fingers tugged at the bow of her robe. The strip of silk came undone, and the robe parted an inch down her body, exposing a shadow of skin below her neck. He nudged the fabric from her shoulders and it spilled to her feet. She was naked and perfect in his eyes, but she wasn’t healed. The gauze on her chest reminded him of what she’d suffered. He ached to touch her, but there was something just as arousing to see her standing there under his gaze.

‘There’s a nightgown in the closet,’ she said.

‘You?’

She smiled. ‘We have a child in the house now.’

He found the black nightgown on the hanger and bunched the fabric and gingerly slid it over her body, covering her in lace. Clothed, she was even more beautiful, drawing his eyes to the swell of her breasts and her bare legs stretching from her mid-thighs to her feet. Behind her, the bed was turned down.

‘I’m so tired,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘It hurts.’

‘I know.’

He tucked her in and blew out the candle, causing a finger of smoke to curl into the air. Almost as soon as she closed her eyes, he heard her breathing change, growing steady and regular as she slept. He closed the door softly, leaving her alone. He was tired, too, but he couldn’t go to bed yet, feeling as he did. Life had changed. He was a guardian of the future. He was a watchman protecting things of infinite value. So be it. There were other times to sleep. He sat down in the red leather chair near the fireplace and kept vigil on the night.