by Amy Engel
“No, I think I’ll stay here a little longer.”
“Okay.” Ash takes a few steps before stopping to glance back at me. “Your eyes are still sad,” she tells me. “But your whole face lights up when you look at him.”
I manage to keep away from the tent for most of the day. Ash takes Bishop lunch, and from a distance, I watch Carol enter the tent midafternoon, bringing Bishop more medicine for the pain. At dinnertime, I ask Caleb to take Bishop a plate, and he does after only a slight hesitation. I linger outside the tent when he goes in, expecting him to come right back out and give me a report. Instead, I hear the low murmur of their voices and after a while, a laugh from Caleb. So unexpected it makes me jerk a little where I stand. Less than twenty-four hours and Bishop’s gotten a genuine laugh out of Caleb, something I have yet to accomplish in more than two months. It makes me smile to imagine the two of them, Caleb squatting on the floor, Bishop leaning back against the tent pole, although I can’t come up with any idea of what they might be talking about. But they both need a friend, someone they can count on but don’t feel responsible for; maybe they will be good for each other.
After Caleb finally emerges from the tent, I trail behind him to the bonfire. He gives me a questioning look when I sit down next to him, but doesn’t ask why I’m out here instead of in my tent with Bishop. There are times Caleb’s silences can be oppressive, but the flip side is he always knows when to leave well enough alone.
I stay outside after Ash and Caleb have left for his tent. After most of the other people have melted away. After the last of the glowing fire has been covered and extinguished. Only then do I rise and make my slow way toward my tent. I take a deep breath before I duck inside, but the tent is dark, the only sound Bishop’s slow, even breathing.
I slip off my shoes and clothes as quietly as I can, leaving on only my underwear and tank top. I tug the band out of my hair and run my fingers through the tangled strands. Ash’s cot is empty, just waiting for my weary body. But as if I’m watching from outside myself, I climb gingerly over Bishop, settle into the small space I occupied last night. I turn on my side to face the tent, my back to his sleeping body.
The night air is chilly and I shiver, reaching down to pull up the blankets that are puddled at our feet. As I lay back again, Bishop turns onto his side, closer to me. I freeze, not sure what to do. I feel caught, but lack any real desire to escape. Not here in the dark, where we can pretend nothing’s changed. His arm snakes around me, guiding me back against him. My body goes willingly, like it’s sinking into a long-remembered home. I take his hand in mine, bring it up to my lips. Not kissing, but close enough to my mouth that I can smell his skin, imagine the taste of his fingers on my tongue. His lips graze my shoulder, his exhales raising goose bumps along the back of my neck. He doesn’t speak, and neither do I, content to leave the communicating to our touch-starved bodies.
Chapter Ten
Bishop’s been here for a little over a week, and his assimilation has gone better than I expected. Most of the blood lust left along with Mark Laird. Granted, there are people who give him hostile looks, grumble that he doesn’t belong, but there are also those who remember the boy who came to the fence with water and food after they were put out. Others lived in Westfall back when he was a child and remember him as simply a little boy, born into a family he didn’t choose. They are open-minded enough to understand that who he came from doesn’t necessarily define who he is. I wish it were a pardon I could offer to myself, but my family’s bad deeds still feel like my own.
It’s actually my relationship with Bishop that’s causing more raised eyebrows than his being here in the first place. I know that people are confused. They remember the way I threw myself across his body to protect him, but they also notice the fact that I never meet his eyes, that I go out of my way to find things to do during the day that keep me far from him. They know he left Westfall to try to find me, and they see us disappear into the same tent together every night. But every morning we head our different directions, barely speaking. No one seems to know how to put all the disparate pieces together to make a coherent picture. Least of all me.
Bishop’s injuries are healing fast, the bruises on his face fading to streaks of sickly yellow and his ribs, although still tender, not so sore that he can’t be up and moving around. His willingness to help out whoever needs it, regardless of his injuries, has also gone a long way toward easing his transition into the group.
Today is our last day at the camp. Most everyone has already moved to town. There are just a few final tents to take down, a couple last loads of supplies to be transported. Caleb and Ash left this morning and will be back by afternoon to escort Bishop and me. In the meantime, we’re taking down my tent, packing up the last of my belongings.
I tried to switch places with Ash, so I wouldn’t have to be here alone with Bishop, but she shrugged off my offer. I think she’s as tired of the awful, grinding tension as anyone. Hoping, maybe, that leaving us alone will force us to confront it. But I’m more unsure and tentative than I was in those first few days of our marriage. At least then I knew why there were walls between us, understood my own reluctance to close the distance. Now I am a mystery, even to myself.
As I watch, Bishop reaches up to try to unclasp the top of the tent from the wooden pole, but stretching so far must aggravate his ribs because he yanks his arm back to his side with a wince before he can get the tent down.
“Here,” I say, stepping in front of him. “Let me do it.” Standing on my tiptoes I can reach it easily, managing to unclasp the tent with one hand. As I step back, my foot tangles in a half-packed bag, and I stumble. Before I can fall, Bishop is there, catching my body with his own.
I suck in a breath as his hand curls into my stomach, my body pressed against his from shoulders to feet. He doesn’t let go or move back. His other hand finds the curve of my hip, resting against the bone.
“You all right?” he asks. He’s so close his lips move against the top of my ear. I try not to shiver and fail.
“Uh-huh,” I manage. I can’t find air, my chest rising and falling like I’ve been running a race. He’s warm and strong, his heart pounding against my back. His fingers spread on my stomach, his thumb coming to rest right below my breasts, his pinky nudging the waistband of my pants. My insides coil and twist; my blood simmers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see steam rise out of my pores. It’s the first time he’s touched me outside the darkness of our tent. It’s the first time I’ve let him.
He runs his other hand over my hip bone, up and down, up and down, a slow, simple rhythm. “You’ve lost weight,” he says, voice quiet.
He sounds concerned, not critical, but I latch onto his words as a way to escape the fire in my belly, the weakness that makes me want to turn in his arms and meet his mouth with mine. It takes all my willpower, but I pivot away from him, chest heaving. “Disappointed my curves aren’t quite as curvy?” I mock, balling my hands into fists to stop their trembling. I hate the sneering sound of my voice. My back feels cold without him. My heart feels empty.
Bishop takes a deep breath, then shakes his head, shoves his hands into his pockets. “It was never about the way you look, Ivy,” he says. “You have to know that.”
I do know that. Which only makes it worse. I don’t know how to stop hurting him; I wish I did. I raise both hands and let them drop. “What are you doing here with me, Bishop?” I ask. “You should be with some other girl. Some girl who makes you happy.”
“I don’t want a girl who makes me happy,” he says. “I want you.”
My eyes fly to his, and I can’t help the laugh that tumbles out of me. Bishop’s slow smile makes my heart flip-flop in my chest. We stand there, watching each other, the unstrung tent billowing in the breeze between us.
“We should finish up,” I say, suddenly anxious to have something to do with my hands. Bishop doesn’t move, even as I bend down to begin folding the tent. “Are you angry with me?” he asks, re
ading something on my face I didn’t know was there.
I swallow hard, my throat working. “Why would I be mad at you?” As I ask the question I remember being attacked by Mark, how anger helped me win that battle. And how some of that anger was directed at Bishop. Even Ash thought I was angry with him. “That wouldn’t be fair.”
Bishop shrugs. “I don’t think fair really enters into it. You feel what you feel.”
“I don’t blame you for what happened, Bishop. How could I? None of it was your fault.”
“Maybe you’re angry because I did believe you, even for a minute.”
I toss the tent down with a snap. “I wanted you to believe me!”
“It still had to hurt,” Bishop says. I don’t know what to say to that. I can hardly claim a right to pain after everything I’ve put him through. And he’s already so close to the truth of it, edging right around the way my heart broke when he finally believed I was capable of all the terrible things everyone else already took for granted. “Maybe because if not for me, you’d be with your family right now,” Bishop continues. “All of Westfall at your feet.”
My body goes cold. “I never wanted that,” I whisper.
“I know. But it might have been easier.”
I shake my head. “That would never have been easier.”
“I knew you were lying,” he says after a long moment. “I think I knew the whole time. Even at the end. But I was so hurt, so angry. I let myself believe you were really going to kill me, because in some ways that was easier than believing you still didn’t trust me.”
“It wasn’t about not trusting you,” I say. Unshed tears burn in my throat. “I was trying to protect you.” I pause and Bishop just waits, his eyes searching my face. I’d forgotten what it was like to have all that focus solely on me, to be the recipient of such undivided attention. My chest aches from the fierce pounding of my heart. “I don’t…I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say.
“We have to, Ivy,”
I shake my head. “Not now. Not yet.”
“All right,” Bishop says. “But soon.” Even with a hint of frustration weaving through his voice, his patient acceptance stabs at me. That he should be so forgiving after everything when my own family was not, condemning me as easily as they would a stranger.
“They let me be thrown out,” I say, my voice thin. Somehow my mouth is making decisions my brain has not approved. “Like I was garbage.”
I can see the moment he catches up, my words slotting into place. Sadness passes across his face, bleeds into his eyes. Not pity, though, just an understanding. Like what happened to me, happened to him. And maybe that’s love, too—feeling the other person’s hurts like your own.
“Yes,” he says simply. I’m glad he doesn’t try to make excuses for them or convince me it’s not as bad as it seems. I would think less of him if he did. “But that says everything about them, Ivy. And nothing about you.”
I know he’s right, but knowing the truth of something, deep down, doesn’t lessen its impact. Doesn’t stop that little voice telling me that maybe if I’d been a different kind of girl, maybe if I’d been able to change, they would have loved me enough to fight for me.
“Did they ever, after I was gone…” I look away, clear my throat. “Did they ever talk about me?” I keep my gaze on the empty camp, the spots where tents used to stand, and the grass is trampled flat and dry. I tell myself my eyes sting because of the wind.
“I didn’t see your dad much,” Bishop says. “Callie came around a lot. At first.” He pauses. “She talked about you.”
“None of it good, I’m guessing.”
“No, not much of it. She tried to talk about you with me. But I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I knew none of it was true.”
“Some of it probably was,” I say, thinking of the day I married him, how I spoke my vows knowing I planned to kill him. How I smiled at him with murder in my heart. “She was trying to get close to you.”
“Yes,” he says again.
I swing my eyes back to him, my stomach hollow. “Did it work?” I remember Callie’s hand on his arm, her pretty face tipped up to his. I know firsthand the power of Callie’s persuasion, the tricks she uses to get what she wants, so slick and sneaky you don’t realize what you’ve given up until she’s already holding it in her hand.
He gives me a small smile, his eyebrows cocked. “What do you think?”
Selfish relief flows through me. “I think you hated each other.” I know for a fact Callie hated him, probably was thrilled I was out of the picture so she could finally have her chance to ruin him. And I think he probably figured her out fast. Bishop’s so good at seeing what’s behind the surface. And once you really know Callie, there isn’t much to love.
He takes a step closer to me. “She was a pretty good actress. But I’m better at reading people than she is at faking it. And I didn’t have any interest in playing her game. All I cared about was finding you.”
The breeze lifts his dark hair off his forehead. He moves even closer, reaches out, and runs his knuckles across my cheek. Before I have to decide what to do, step closer or move away, he drops his hand, bends and begins gathering up the tent. We work together to fold it. Bishop stacks the wooden tent poles while I pack the last of my clothes. Once we’re done, we sit in the cool sunlight and wait for what comes next.
Chapter Eleven
I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to live within four walls. To not fall asleep to cicada song and the wind in the trees. To not wake with the chatter of birds and the sun already burning through the thin material of a tent. The town Caleb and Ash and the rest of the camp move to in winter is situated almost on the banks of the river. A small collection of houses strung out like weather-beaten rocks, their clapboard exteriors all faded to a uniform, dreary gray. The stores that once ringed the tiny town square are in even worse shape; only what was once probably a restaurant is used at all. It still has a counter with a few intact stools, and Caleb says people gather there sometimes when spending another snowbound day in their own houses is too much to bear.
The house that Caleb and Ash share is on the outer edge of town, which doesn’t surprise me. Same as with the tents, Caleb likes the ability to move fast, to be the first one to sense a threat or sound the alarm. None of the houses in the town can be considered in good shape, but they are all more sound and welcoming than the ones in Birch Tree.
It takes us a good two days of cleaning to get the house free of dust, aired out and ready for living. Some of the upstairs windows are still intact, but downstairs Caleb has fashioned shutters over the empty holes. There’s not a lot of natural light, but the shutters will keep us safe and protect us from wind and snow come winter. The kitchen is used mainly for storage, but the fireplace in the living room is large, and Ash tells me that’s where they cook most of their meals. In the winter, meals aren’t communal, although everyone is willing to share food if necessity demands it. Caleb’s bedroom is off the living room, and there are two additional bedrooms upstairs. One for Ash and one that Bishop and I share. Ash never offered to let me sleep in her room, and I never suggested it. It never occurred to me to sleep anywhere other than next to Bishop, which considering the state of our relationship is probably strange. The bed Bishop and I share is bigger than the cot, but we sleep curled even closer to each other, most of the extra space left empty.
The first few weeks in town are spent preparing for the coming winter, each morning just slightly colder than the one before. We all go out hunting some days; others just one or two of us go and the rest stay behind and can fruit or make jerky from earlier catches. At night we gather around the fire in the living room, huddled on the ancient sofas, their dust-encrusted surfaces covered with blankets we brought from camp, and talk. Well, Ash does most of the talking. And Bishop joins in. Some nights I think Caleb and I don’t manage to say a word, the two of them filling the awkward conversational gaps that Caleb and I leave behind.
Bishop’s frustration has become a palpable presence between us, his patience stretching thinner with every passing day. He rarely mentions Westfall or his family, but I know he must miss them, worry about them now that he’s gone. I wonder if he balances what he’s gained against what he’s lost. I hope not, because I doubt the end result would weigh in my favor.
Today, Caleb and Ash have gone out to set more snares, and Bishop and I are working side by side in the kitchen, wrapping up jerky for the winter ahead. Bishop cuts the jerky into strips and I roll the strips in cloth, tying the ends tightly. We don’t talk as we work, and the silence isn’t easy. It boils and crackles with all our unsaid words. The air between us is thick with tension, a powder keg of emotion that I know is set to explode no matter how hard I try to defuse it.
I concentrate on our task, my eyes lowered. Dim sunlight flows in through a crack in the shutters and lands on Bishop’s hand, lighting up the gold band on his finger. “Why are you still wearing that?” I ask.
Bishop looks over at me, follows my eyes to his wedding band. “Does it bother you?”
I shrug, but I can feel the tightness in my shoulders. “We’re not married anymore.”
“I know that,” he says. He glances at my bare finger. “Where’s yours?”
“I threw it away,” I say, voice sharp. “It didn’t mean anything. Not out here.” I reach over and grab the jerky. “It didn’t really mean anything in Westfall, either.” Not because I didn’t love him by the end, but because every vow I made to him was based on a lie. But I can’t find the words to make the distinction clear.
Bishop doesn’t move, even as I begin wrapping the jerky. “It meant something to me,” he says. “It still does.”
I keep my eyes on my hands, Bishop’s gaze heavy on the side of my face. “The guard they had watching me after you were put out carried a gun,” Bishop says. I glance at him, startled, unsure where this revelation is going. “I tried to get away from him constantly. Took off every time he turned his back. God, he hated me. I made it as far as the fence once. I got halfway up before he caught me.”