Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

He leaned his forehead into my temple. I could hear him swallow.

‘When you lifted that mask tonight, your face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.’

I closed my eyes and pushed the words out slowly, patiently. ‘When someone kidnaps you, the proper response is thank you.’

He laughed, more a rumble of chest against my shoulder than actual noise.

‘Thank you, Maya Stark, for saving my life.’

‘You’re welcome, Lucas Blackthorn. Any time.’

The sound of boots thumped up a set of stairs and then a door opened and slammed again.

Harry came back into the room carrying an old, metal case and a folding chair. Lucas moved to crouch near my head while Harry examined me and I noticed for the first time I was shirtless and my sports bra was stained with sweat and blood. Unwrapping the bandage, Harry leaned over and smelled the wound, then mopped up the area under my right rib cage with alcohol swabs that felt like acid. Once clean, it looked strangely like an Easter egg had been carved out of my stomach.

‘What did this?’

‘Rebar. And a douche bag.’

‘Good. No splinters or shrapnel from rebar or douche bags.’ He consulted a small, worn manual. ‘Might have nicked your liver, but it doesn’t look too deep. We can disinfect and sew you up. I don’t have much for pain, though.’

Lucas went to the car and brought back the first aid kit, where I’d stored all the stolen medicine from Congdon. I argued – those pills were for Josiah, not me – but Lucas wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was speaking. He handed the whole thing to Harry and wrapped his hands around mine, maybe for comfort, maybe to keep me from knocking the kit away. Harry found some lidocaine spray and doused the area, then stared at the blood still pooling in the center of the wound while waiting for the anesthetic to take effect.

‘That’ll help some, but might still hurt when I stitch it. Do you drink?’ Harry asked.

‘No.’

‘That’s good. But it’s not a bad day to start.’

I could feel the needle when he began piercing the skin, but the lidocaine dulled the worst of it. After Harry stitched the wound he told us we needed to eat. I didn’t think I could, but Harry cooked us venison steaks and fries like it was the most natural thing to do at three in the morning, then pulled up chairs in front of the couch so he and Lucas could dig in. He didn’t ask us what we were doing here, why Lucas wore a state-issued smock and pants, or why I looked like the loser of a vicious street brawl. He joked about the patchy electricity as his lamp flickered and turned off at random. Raccoons in the lines, or maybe mice.

‘It’s been a while, girl,’ Harry said as Lucas practically licked the juice from his empty plate.

‘Eight years. Give or take.’

‘She don’t call. She don’t write. She just shows up, bloody, every decade or so.’

Lucas sat up straight. ‘Is this where… ?’ He let the question hang.

‘I used to see this girl every summer when she and her mom came up to their cabin over there.’ He waved through the wall, as if Lucas could see it. I tried not to think about what lay beyond the wood paneling and the darkness outside. ‘Only neighbors I could stand. Quiet. Kept to themselves. Probably ran into them more paddling the Waters than I ever did on our property line.’

Lucas dropped his fork on the carpet and barely noticed. ‘Wait. We’re in the Boundary Waters?’

Harry nodded. ‘Starts at this shoreline here and stretches right out to heaven.’

Lucas half turned and his eyes lit up with the knowledge. The impulse to get up, to escape into the forest, shimmered through him as clear as sunlight and I felt torn in half – wanting him to disappear, to leave before the authorities found us, and yet aching for him to stay, to keep looking at me the way he had ever since I lifted that ski mask and showed him who I was.

‘The last time I saw this one’ – Harry gestured to me with his steak knife – ‘I’d been out fishing on Basswood all day and what do I find when I pull up in front the house? A gangly girl, sitting cross-legged on my front step with dried blood covering her face. She stared at me like she’d been waiting all day and I was late.

‘ Are you all right? I asked.

‘ I killed someone over there . She pointed toward their cabin. With this rock, she added and held it up, like she’d be happy to use it again if I took a wrong step. It gave her a power, I saw. She was safe with that rock.

‘I went to the cooler in the back of my pickup and held up the pike I’d caught. I fished these today, I said. Have to go around back and clean them. Do you want to come?’

Harry rocked a little as he told the story, looking past this room to a place where only the two of us could go. I closed my eyes and let myself remember.

‘I didn’t know what she was going to do. She might have disappeared if I turned away, so I was careful not to move quick, not to get too close, and she stood up and followed me to the fish house with that rock still in her hand.

‘She watched me fillet each fish while I tried to figure out what to do. I’m not what you’d call a social man. I mind my own business. Don’t have much use for townsfolk or police, but in the end I didn’t see what choice I had. Brought her inside and she sat right where she’s lying now while I made the first 911 call of my life and she turned that rock over and over in her hands. When the police came, they asked her who she was. Maya, she told them before she handed over the rock. Red Maya. ’

The room was quiet after Harry finished. Both men looked at their plates in the shadows of the room.

‘I never thanked you,’ I said after the silence had stretched out.

‘Hell, it wasn’t a count your blessings kind of day.’

‘But you let me in. You’re letting us in now.’ The simple, rough-edged space wasn’t designed for company. There was a single couch, an old cathode ray TV sitting on a block of wood, and a row of books neatly lined on a homemade bookshelf made out of planks and stones. He’d tacked blankets up over the windows to keep out drafts and the scuffed wood floors had seen better days. In all the summers of my childhood, I’d never noticed another person on Harry’s property.

He nodded to the cross-stitch on the wall, the one piece of color in the room. ‘ “Be not simply good, be good for something.” ’

I tried to think of a way to voice my gratitude, but an overwhelming drowsiness had begun to blanket my brain. The lidocaine was still working, easing away the pain of the stitches, inviting me into the blackness. I struggled against its pull.

‘Sleep, girl. There’s still a few hours until sunup.’ Harry put a small quilt over my shoulders, leaving the stitched up wound open to the air. ‘I’ll set your protector up on the floor next to you.’

I gave in and let myself drift off, but not before mumbling into the blanket, making one last thing clear.

‘I’m his protector.’

IWANTED TO leave right away the next morning, but Harry and Lucas took one look at me and both insisted I needed to rest. My heart stuttered every time I heard a car pass, knowing the houses weren’t tucked far enough into the trees to be completely invisible, not with November’s bare branches. A blanket of snow had covered Butch’s car during the night, but even that camouflage wouldn’t be enough if the police connected me to the kidnapping and started canvassing the area. My mother’s cabin would be the first logical place to look. We were exposed here, vulnerable. How long would it take them to knock on this door? How long would it take my father to come home and for Butch to report his car stolen?