The Retreat

by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Dedication

  For Bianca.

  There’s an intersection between grace and fierce:

  only a dancer can teach you that.

  Epigraph

  The body says what words cannot.

  —Martha Graham

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Day 7

  Day 1

  Day 2

  Day 3

  Day 4

  Day 5

  Day 6

  Day 7

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue: Day 7

  THE DOOR FLIES open against the wind and then Maeve is flying too, her body hurtling out into the cold, the palm of her hand ripped open and bleeding hard. It’s still night. Snow swirls up and sprays at her eyes as she stumbles into the dark.

  Now what? If there’s a moon, it’s a thin sliver or hidden away. There’s no light and no color, just shadow and snow and more snow, crusted and rising up into drifts that collapse, Maeve knows, like a trap under too much weight.

  The hand stings something fierce. There’s the howl of the wind and then another sound, the high whine of the door opening again. She can hear him screaming after her, calling her name.

  He can’t see her here. He can’t find her in the dark.

  She repeats it like a mantra but only until she sees the sweep of his flashlight skimming across the snow. Searching. There’s a flicker from the woods: the fluorescent trailhead marker picking up the beam as it floats past, a guiding light. She gets low and takes off across the field toward it, sinking and stumbling in her boots, trying to guess where the deep snow is packed hard and stable. If she can get to the cabins ahead of him, just get inside her own studio, at least there she’ll be safe. She can lock the door. There’s no other way in.

  He can’t stay outside in this weather forever.

  Inside the tree line she slips, almost falling, her feet sliding where new ice coats the old. The roots and branches force her to slow down. An injury now is unthinkable. She can feel her heart pounding in her ears: You can’t run on a broken ankle. You can’t run on a sprain.

  She knows when he hits the woods behind her, the sheer noise of it propelling her forward again. The sharp crack of falling ice, frozen branches splintering, his voice coming throaty and harsh. He’s still calling after her, but she can’t make out the words anymore. It all sounds like heavy breath, like the grunt of strenuous labor. Physical. Forcing his way through. It’s hard to resist spinning back, just in case, to make sure it’s really him and not some animal charging after her. But the stream of light is still there: she can tell he’s running, moving fast. The beam jumping around, making surging, flickering shadows ahead.

  In the trees, she feels protected. There’s a clearing between where she is now and the studio cabin, and she skirts the edge instead of cutting straight across even though it would be faster. She’s thinking of the gun in his hand: better off ducking branches, staying in the cover of the woods. She gets as close as she can before darting out into the open. The snow between her and the studio door is hip-deep and ice-crusted and she plows her way through, muscles screaming.

  But when she gets there, her heart drops into her belly. She slams her good hand against the lock.

  It’s iced over. The new storm has coated the door, the handle, everything like a shield. She looks over her shoulder, frantic, scratching at the ice with ragged fingernails, pressing the heat of her hand against it, anything to get inside—but then there’s the glimmer of his light and it’s already too late.

  There’s no one to yell for, no help coming. Just Maeve, alone. Wind whips at her ears, her fingers. She realizes that she is shaking.

  She looks down to see a new shadow, a dark stain spreading in the snow at her feet. The line of her old scar runs across her palm, now just a broken parallel to this new wound, open and bleeding, her hand slick with it. She knows what the scent of warm blood can attract out here. The thought makes her gag a little bit, but she holds it in her mind.

  She needs to find someplace safe, fast.

  She can’t double back to the center—there are too many doors, too many windows, too many ways he could get in. But a wild idea works its way into her thoughts: There’s still one more place. High up on the ridge, where the ledge leans out over the frozen river valley.

  One last place to go.

  Far to her left, there’s a sudden crack, and then the gunshot echoes through the woods around her. A warning?

  She can’t stay here.

  She squeezes her fist and counts to five, waiting to see the stutter of the flashlight beam one more time.

  Then she runs.

  Day 1

  MAEVE STARTLES AWAKE, her head throbbing.

  They’ve hit a bump or train tracks, and she’s jostled roughly against the side of the shuttle bus, her temple smacking the window as the vehicle lurches to a sudden halt. Outside, rain lashes at the ground. A three-hour trip up the mountain from the airport. The last village, High Water, some ten miles below them now.

  Maeve is the only passenger left. She’s staring out the window into the night, her own reflection just an outline in the glass against all that darkness; her dancer’s bone structure, high cheekbones and wide eyes, dark hair lost to the black of outside.

  There’s a heavy thud of footsteps and then someone is there. She spins to face him.

  The driver, a stocky man in his late fifties, stands over her, his stubby fingers gripping her seat in the dark. He gives it a rough shake.

  “Better wake up, miss,” he says. “We got a washout. You’ll have to walk.”

  Maeve blinks. It’s almost two in the morning, the night and weather outside the bus relentless. But the driver doesn’t move until she pushes herself to her feet.

  She peers out at the way ahead: the road has turned to gravel. They are nowhere, the middle of nowhere. The middle of the night. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and pretends to check the time.

  One bar.

  “Where are we?” Maeve says, moving her thumbs across the screen. She looks up, feigning indifference. “I just have to text my boyfriend.”

  The driver glances at the phone, and Maeve wonders if he can read it upside down, if he sees the blank name field and knows she’s lying. She’s so sick of this, all the lies women have to tell to try and protect themselves.

  “Only half a mile, miss. Maybe less. We better get on with it.”

  Maeve pretends to hit Send all the same.

  Outside the bus, the rain is turning into ice pellets, or something worse. She steps down, and her long hair whips against her eyes, instantly soaked. She pulls an elastic off her wrist and ties her hair up high on her head before slinging her pack onto her shoulders. The driver hauls up the cargo door and heaves her duffel bag out and onto the ground, where it lands in the muck. She bends to retrieve it; the bag holds all her dance gear, the whole reason she made this trip in the first place. Two weeks in residence at the High Water Center for the Arts and a dance studio of her very own. Her first real studio time in five years. Her first time away from her children ever.

  The bus headlights are still on, casting a slim light out onto the dark road. Up ahead, a sign warns they are in bear country: BE ALERT. ALL WILDLIFE IS DANGEROUS.

  Above the words, a bear painted in black and white stares at her head-on, its massive shoulders rising to a hump on its back.

  She can’t see anything beyond that.

  “Gates are that way,” the driver says, pointing toward the sign. The bus door clo
ses behind her. He’s standing a little too close. They stare at each other.

  Then he pulls her duffel out of her hands and heads off into the dark, forcing Maeve to follow, struggling to keep up in the downpour.

  “Don’t get used to this rain.” He’s yelling, his voice half lost in the wind. “We had two feet of snow last week. Temperature’s already dropping again now.” To the side of the road, Maeve can see the ridge of dirty snow, plowed up and frozen and now melting again. The driver calls over his shoulder, “Can’t predict nothing anymore, not around here. Nothing’s the way it used to be.”

  At the gate, there’s a rusty dead bolt that won’t give and he drops her bag again to work at it. Maeve stands to one side, stray hair now plastered to her neck. He’s hammering away at the lock with his fist when she hears another sound. Some kind of call. Something moving in the trees.

  Apart from a few childhood weeks at a cabin, she’s unused to the wild. One reason for choosing this retreat, this place. To challenge herself. To shed old fears.

  She takes a step toward the tree line, but her foot slips on an icy patch, and she pulls up quickly, saving herself a fall. The bear warning has left her wary, but this doesn’t sound like a bear. It’s a kind of blast. A high gripe.

  No: a bleat.

  At nine, she spent one long night listening to the screams of a far-off deer, run ragged and chased up against a fence by a pack of coyotes. In the morning, they found its remains, the bones still pink and raw and tangled in the tall pickets. Her mother using it as some kind of biology lesson, nudging Maeve forward, forcing her to look.

  Now Maeve pulls up her phone and casts a light as she edges her way into the trees.

  For a moment, she’s a child again, her mother’s hand at her back. Then she takes a breath.

  It’s a fawn.

  She can see it now, its leg caught high in the chain-link fence that extends from the gate, trying to follow its mother over. Not quite big enough yet to clear it at a leap. On the other side of the fence, two adult deer dance quietly back and forth in the rain. With her approach, they freeze. They’re both does, or anyway, deer without antlers. Maeve stops again and lowers her light, not wanting to frighten them further.

  Can she get close? Should she? Try to help somehow, free the thing herself?

  Maeve digs her fingernails into her palm.

  But with its next yell, the fawn gives a good kick and it’s free. It lands, surprised, on the ground and staggers as the two females urge it forward, forcing it to make its joints work. Maeve exhales.

  “Hey!”

  The driver calling to her from the gravel road. Looking at her like she’s crazy.

  She follows him through the open gate just as the weather changes—the wind drops, and the first real snowflakes catch in her eyelashes, errant and heavy.

  It’s four hundred yards up the winding drive, walking blindly in the dark, and then the building is there, looming high overhead. Maeve steps back, surprised by how it seems to have materialized out of the storm. She tilts her chin to look. Six stories. The only light shining through a window is on the ground level, as though a single lamp has been left to guide her. She can see her own reflection, drawing closer, in the glass.

  The driver tosses her duffel down at the front entrance. Then he’s gone, heading to the road without another word.

  She turns back one last time. The deer are still there, motionless. The big doe’s eyes on her from the shadows on the wooded side of the fence, and snow suddenly everywhere. Snow coming down all around her.

  The door swings open.

  “Mommy, I see you!”

  Maeve leans into the laptop screen, and back home, her daughter does the same, Talia’s long chestnut hair swinging as she shoves her little brother out of view.

  Off camera, four-year-old Rudy lets out a howl. “But I want to see Mommy!”

  “It’s okay—” Maeve starts, but the screen freezes and the image suddenly dissolves, pixelating, as though the little girl in the picture were falling to pieces. There’s silence as even the sound cuts. Maeve waits, calling out every few seconds—“Talia? Talia?”—just as if she were sitting at the child’s bedside, gently waking her, rather than half-perched on her bed in the bowl of a mountain range two thousand miles away, trying to catch her breath in the thin air.

  Jet lag has her upside down. Early November, and the sun not even fully up yet, the first band of light striking a fine note at the ridge of pine that seems to crest like a giant wave, rising up out of the rock face to the east of her. The morning air sharp and clean; the ground, far below, frost-veined.

  The connection stays broken and Maeve swirls her finger against the track pad, impatient, then sets the laptop on her desk and pulls on her tights.

  There’d been someone waiting up for her when she arrived; the door swung open and a hand pulled at Maeve’s, ushering her inside. The sudden contact made Maeve flinch. But it was only a clerk of some kind, an almost severe-looking Asian girl, noticeably young, her blunt black hair cut with razor sharpness. She tugged at Maeve’s arm, hand over hand, drawing her closer.

  “I was so worried. Are you okay? I’ve heard—” The girl glanced out at the retreating driver before closing and locking the door. She spun her back against it and looked at Maeve, expectant. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Facing her in the shadows, Maeve startled: the two women made a sort of mirror image. The same size and height, dark-haired, dark-eyed. But more than that, a tension to the girl that felt too familiar. A nervousness. Small and lithe enough to fit in at audition time, lining up down the long hall with the other junior dancers—and something about the way she held her body. Fierce and anxious, all at once. How Maeve used to look too. But now?

  She stiffened. November was the center’s off-season, the whole reason she’d scheduled her visit for this time. She’d been told there would be no other dancers on-site, much less someone looking for mentorship. She didn’t want to see herself in this girl, in her anxious eyes.

  “I’m fine—it’s just a little rain.” The words coming out more snappish than she’d meant. “And I’m sure you haven’t heard everything.”

  The girl’s face went blank and somewhere behind her exhaustion, Maeve felt a ping of guilt. She took the key, found her own way to her room, and collapsed into bed—but then woke in the dark, over and over, with a vivid string of dreams.

  First: She is in a garden in winter, everything barren and white, and Iain suddenly beside her, gripping her arm, his spade raised in his hand. Then she dreams that she flies home but forgets the children and goes to a party instead; Iain takes them somewhere and she doesn’t know where. She dreams of her old house, the one before they moved back to the city, that she and the children live with Godzilla. This does not seem outlandish in the dream.

  Finally, a dream she is being crushed.

  In this one, she is in bed, her bed at the center. There’s an animal smell—she can smell the thing before she sees it—and then it’s through the window, as if the window simply opened to it. Soundless apart from the heave of its breath; the weight of it, enormous. Maeve cannot make it out, cannot seem to open her eyes. Chest-crushing. A darkness pressing down on her.

  She woke up then for good, struggling for breath. Her coat like some humpbacked shadow in the corner where it hung, draped and drying, over a chair. She flipped on the light and unpacked.

  Now she watches the little loading wheel on her screen going endlessly around and around. Buffering. The nightmares haven’t worn off: she just wants to know that her children are safe at home. That they’re okay.

  But when the image suddenly jolts back to life, Maeve finds that she is looking at her own mother rather than the kids.

  “Talia went to watch the TV,” her mother says. She shifts her eyes back and forth as though she can somehow peer beyond the screen’s limits to see more of Maeve’s room. Short-haired and hawk-nosed, she is a tall, broad-shouldered woman.

 
Maeve takes after her late father; she’s quieter and more delicate in her features. She presses her lips together, then forces a smile.

  “It’s going all right, though?” Her voice is a little flat. This is her first professional time, her first time alone in forever; she resents her mother pushing her way into any of it.

  “Of course. What about you? Dancing already? Getting your work done?”

  Maeve opens her mouth, about to explain that she just arrived, that the time difference means it’s only eight a.m. where she is, that she hasn’t even had a chance to meet with the program director, much less get a key to her studio, and that, really, this should all be evident as it’s been less than twenty-four hours since she left the kids and drove herself to the airport—but she holds back. “On the agenda for today,” she says instead. “I’m barely out of bed. It’s early here.”

  Her mother tips her chin, stern-faced. “Mmm.”

  Maeve instantly regrets the honesty. Her mother, who’d woken Maeve every day before dawn through childhood, wrapped her ankles a million times, counted out her pre-breakfast workouts, policed her eating and sleeping through twelve years of ballet school, and beyond.

  She’s silent now, her tight expression pasted in place.

  “Look—” Maeve impulsively turns the laptop to face the window, hoping the camera will catch the view. “It’s beautiful here.” The center is nestled in the backcountry between high ridges; it’s like standing in the middle of a crown, jeweled peaks jutting up on all sides.

  Her mother’s voice cuts through the crisp air. “Maeve! What are you doing? Are you still there? I can’t see you anymore.”

  Maeve takes a breath and swivels the screen back around. She offers a wide, accommodating smile. Camouflage. This call is ostensibly for the kids, but let’s face it: it’s really for Maeve.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I thought it would work. Can you call them back? The kids? I really wanted to say hi.”

  Her mother doesn’t even turn her head.

  “They don’t need you, Maeve,” she says. “Let them play. You can say hello tomorrow.”