by Katy Regnery
“My face . . . my hip . . .”
He nods but otherwise remains still. “Do you remember anything?”
“Not much.” I take as deep a breath as I dare. “I only know it wasn’t you.”
I have never thought of relief as a palpable, visible, living emotion before now. Joy is exuberant. Grief is oppressive. Fear is constricting. But I see relief transform Cassidy’s face, delivering it from doubt and shedding layers of worry with its arrival. It tugs at my heartstrings just as surely as it makes me wonder.
“Did you . . . save me?” I ask.
He grimaces, his jaw tightening. “Wasn’t there in time to save you.”
Thay-uh.
The way he says “there” pinches at something inside me because it sounds so much like Jem. A Mainer accent. How I’ve missed it.
“I’m sure sorry for that, Brynn,” he says.
“But I’m alive,” I point out, maneuvering ungracefully into a semi-sitting position and reaching for the glass of water on the table beside me.
“If I was even a few seconds later . . .,” he mutters, a note of disgust in his tone.
I sip the water, grateful for the coolness sluicing down my dry throat, trying to recall what happened. And suddenly—a flash—metal over my head. Another flash—the squishing sound of something hard sinking into something soft.
The glass starts slipping from my hand, but Cassidy reaches forward lightning fast and grabs it, pulling it from my limp fingers.
“You’re remembering,” he says, nodding at me with wide eyes.
“I was stabbed,” I murmur in a rush. “Someone was . . . s-stabbing me.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” says Cassidy. “Didn’t wait around to find out his name.”
“But you called the police? The . . . the rangers? Did they arrest him? Do I need to . . . I mean, should I make a statement about the attack or . . . or . . .”
“Police’ll take your statement when you’re better. Don’t worry about it for now.”
He’s been holding my eyes steadily, but now he looks away, placing the glass back on the end table and standing up.
“Are you hungry?” he asks, rubbing his stubbly chin between his thumb and forefinger.
Am I hungry? I blink up at him. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll heat up some soup, okay?”
Before I can ask another question, he’s turned and slipped out of the small bedroom, pulling a curtain shut behind him.
Cassidy
Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.
Now what?
I stand at the stove, reheating the chicken noodle soup that I made for her yesterday, looking over my shoulder uneasily at the curtain that shields me from her view.
She’s asking about rangers and police and . . . what’re you going to say to her, Cass? “I carried you here to my house in the woods because I’m the only son of a serial killer and I wasn’t about to show up at the ranger station or the police station with a stabbed girl in my arms.”
I run my free hand through my hair, clenching my jaw and shaking my head.
I shouldn’t have brought her here.
I should have figured out something else.
But what? I considered my options back up on Katahdin and came up with the best possible plan for both of us. Perfect? No. But I didn’t have time for perfect. She was hurt and I was panicked. I did my best.
After carrying her home and placing her on the bed in Mama’s old room, I undressed her so I could tend to her wounds. Never having taken off a woman’s bra and frustrated with the closure, I finally cut it off with scissors. I considered leaving her underwear on, but it was caked with dried blood. I closed my eyes as I pulled it off, then covered her privates with a washcloth and her breasts with a towel, determined not to leer at or linger on the swells and curves of her body. Setting to work, I flushed her incisions, cleaned them with iodine, sewed them up with fishing line, and covered them with sterile pads and gauze.
In Mama’s bureau, I found a soft, clean T-shirt and some underwear folded neatly where she’d left them. I redressed Brynn and carried her to the living room couch, then I made Mama’s bed with the softest sheets I could find, moved Brynn back in there, and tucked her under a down comforter. Every twelve hours or so, I changed the dressings over the incisions, reapplying antibiotic ointment and making sure that they were seeping pink or clear, not yellow.
On the afternoon of the second day, I smelled urine. Lifting Brynn from the bed to the sofa, I stripped off her underwear and T-shirt, and sponge-bathed her with my eyes closed. Then I re-dressed her in clean things of Mama’s, changed the bedsheets, and resettled her under the covers.
Under oath I’d have to admit that I peeked once at her breasts while she was naked.
Maybe twice.
But I swear I feel guilty about it, and my penance is that no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about them now.
While she slept, I sat beside her bed in Gramp’s old rocker, picking out the chords to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Mama used to sing it to me when I was sick, and it always made me feel better. I hoped that it might soothe Brynn too.
The soup starts to boil, and I turn off the burner, pulling the pot from the stove and tipping the contents into a mug.
What’re you going to tell her?
How’re you going to explain how she ended up here?
I have no talent for lying. There’s been little need for evasion in my quiet life, and suddenly I feel a little helpless as I stare down at the contents of the steaming mug. How much do I have to tell her? I remember once reading a quote about lying. The gist of it was, if you lie, you must remember your lies. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to keep track of your words. Resolving not to lie, but to share as little as possible, I grab a spoon from the drying rack beside the sink and head back toward the bedroom.
With no door on which to knock, I pause outside the curtain, uncertain of etiquette. “Um, I’ve got some soup.”
“Okay.”
“Can I come in?”
She pauses for a moment before answering. “It’s your house.”
“It’s your room,” I say, still standing on the other side of the curtain, though I am starting to feel a little foolish.
I don’t expect to hear the soft sound of her chuckle. Honestly, it’s been so long since I heard someone laugh at something I’ve said, it takes me a moment to register her reaction, but once I do, I replay the soft sound in my head, carefully placing the precious sound bite in the growing mental file labeled “Brynn.”
“So, um . . .”
“Yeah,” she says quickly. “It’s fine. Come on in.”
Pushing open the curtain, I take a step into the small room, trying not to look her in the eyes and hoping that my presence doesn’t make her feel uncomfortable. I have grown accustomed to having her here over the past three days. I mean, I marvel at her presence, but I am no longer startled by it. But she has not had the same amount of time to accustom herself to me, and I am twice her size. I am aware of all this as I place her mug of soup on the bedside table, then step back, looking around the room uneasily.
“I’ve, um, had the shades drawn so you could sleep. Want them open?”
She is reaching for the soup but stops to look up at me thoughtfully. “I assumed it was night.”
“They’re blackout shades,” I say, hooking my thumb toward them. The mug of soup scrapes the tabletop as she pulls it closer. “Shouldn’t be too hot.”
She takes a sip, watching me from over the rim of the cup before lowering it to her lap. “It’s good.”
“Thanks.”
“You made it?” She seems surprised.
I nod, putting my hands, slick with nervous sweat, on my hips.
“Are you a chef?” she asks, offering me a small, uncertain smile.
It so transfigures her already pretty face, my breath catches, trapped in my lungs, while I stare back at her.
/> “Are you?” she asks, as she lifts the mug to her lips again.
“No,” I say, forcing my lungs to compress and exhaling deeply. I glance at the windows, then back at her. “The, um, shades?”
“Okay.”
I move quickly, pivoting around and crossing the small room. Across from the bed, there are four pane-glass windows, and as I open the four shades I hear Brynn gasp behind me. When all are opened at once, they offer a panoramic view of Katahdin.
“Wow!” she breathes, and, because the awe in her exclamation sums up how I feel about the view too, I can’t help turning around to see her expression.
Her face was badly battered by her attacker, and there are still visible reminders of his assault three days later: her lips are puffy and scabbed from where they were split, and a medium gauze pad and tape covers a contusion on her forehead. But to me, she is so beautiful, it hurts me to look at her, and I turn away sharply.
“Yeah. My, um . . . my mother loved the mountain.”
“Is this her room?” she asks.
I swallow. “Was.”
“Oh,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
Nobody other than Gramp has ever shared condolences for Mama’s death, and I’m not sure how to respond. I nod, still staring up at Baxter Peak.
“Are you alone here?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. The silence between us grows heavy, and without approaching her, I turn around. “Well, I mean, you’re here.”
“But . . . we’re alone,” she says—a statement, not a question.
I nod once.
She blinks rapidly, then drops her eyes, lifting the soup to her mouth again.
Have I made her uncomfortable? I didn’t mean to do that.
“You’re safe here,” I say.
She stops drinking and looks at me carefully, her expression hawkish over the rim of the cup, like she’s trying to decide whether or not this is the truth.
I place my hand over my heart, like we used to do before ballgames when they played a recording of the national anthem. “Brynn, I promise—I swear on . . . on—” On what? “—on the memory of my mother—I will not hurt you.”
As she lowers the cup, her face relaxes. “Were you a boyscout?”
“For a little while,” I say, searching her face, hoping for her trust while knowing I don’t deserve it. My voice is a whisper when I repeat, “I won’t hurt you.”
“Okay,” she says softly, nodding at me. She places the cup on the bedside table and looks around the room. “Do you have my backpack? I should charge my phone.”
I shake my head. “No. It’s still, um, up there. I couldn’t carry it.”
She looks upset about this, dragging her bottom lip between her teeth, then wincing as she is reminded of her injuries.
“Why not?”
“Because I was carrying you,” I say simply.
Her eyes widen. “You carried me down the mountain?”
I nod.
“By yourself?”
I nod again.
“How?”
“On my back.”
She gasps, the sound ragged and shocked. “On your . . . back?”
“There was no other way to get you down.”
She looks beyond me, out the windows, to Katahdin in the distance. When she catches my eyes again, hers are filled with tears, and her voice breaks when she asks, “How f-far is that?”
I shrug. “Seven miles. Or so.”
“You carried me . . .” She pauses, her eyes searching my face while tears slide down hers. “. . . s-seven miles? On your b-back?”
“Couldn’t leave you there.”
“Thay-uh,” she repeats softly. She sucks in a choppy breath, her face contorting as she sobs, “Y-you s-saved m-my l-life.”
I move to the side of the bed, taking the mug from her hands before the contents slosh out. Tears stream down her cheeks, and it hurts me—hurts me—to see it, but I don’t know what to do. I think about Mama, who barely ever cried. But when she did, Gramp would lay a hand on her shoulder and say, There, there. There, there, Rosie.
I reach out and lay a hand on Brynn’s shoulder. “There, there.”
I am surprised when she reaches up to place her hand over mine. It’s the first voluntary contact she has initiated between us, and it sends my body into chaos to feel her touch. My blood rushes; my heart pounds. Her palm is soft against the back of my hand, her fingers grasping.
“H-he was k-killing me,” she sobs. “S-stabbing me. I was . . . I w-was s-so . . . s-so . . .”
She is full-on weeping now, unable to speak anymore, and I don’t think before sitting down on the edge of the bed beside her. I’m not sure what to do next, but it turns out I don’t need to know. She scoots forward, turning into me, moving my hand from her shoulder to her uninjured hip and letting her forehead drop to my chest. I realize that she wants me to hug her, so I gently wrap my other arm around her, careful of her wounds, pulling her as close as I dare.
She flattens her hands on my chest, and her body trembles in my arms. Her tears wet my T-shirt as she sobs, murmuring unintelligible words.
“There, there,” I whisper every few seconds, keeping one hand flat on her hip, where she’s placed it, and the other on the tangles of her hair, which falls down her back. I run my hand over the hair gently, trying to soothe her, desperately wanting to be of use to her.
“I w-was so s-scared,” she says through hiccups, as she fists my flannel shirt in her hands. “I th-thought I w-was going to d-die. He w-was t-trying to k-kill me.”
She’s right about this. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, she would surely be dead by now. From what I observed, her attacker didn’t plan to let up, and he eventually would have hit her iliac artery. She surely would have bled out in that little lean-to.
“Did you know him?”
She shakes her head. “N-no. His n-name w-was W-Wayne. He w-was b-bothering some g-girls at the r-ranger station b-before we started h-hiking. I-I th-think he w-was c-crazy.”
“Yeah. I don’t think that’s debatable.”
She snorts softly, and I realize that she’s laughing, which kind of startles me since she’s also still sobbing. I didn’t realize until now that people can laugh and cry at the same time.
“Y-yeah. D-definitely c-crazy,” she says, her sobs starting up again.
She turns her head slightly so that her cheek rests on my chest, and she feels so small, so vulnerable, nestled against me, I can’t help but hold on to her tighter. I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m going on instinct, and every instinct says that holding her, comforting her, is right.
“How d-did you f-find me?” she finally whispers against my chest.
“I heard you scream.”
She nods, her body shaking with another sob. “I remember s-screaming.”
“I’m glad you did,” I say, still stroking her hair. “Or else . . .”
“I’d be d-dead now.”
“Yes,” I whisper, the word bitter on my lips.
She takes a deep breath, but it’s ragged.
“Breathe again,” I say. “Slowly, now.”
She does, and it’s a little easier this time.
“One more time,” I say, rubbing her back.
This time it’s deep and smooth and slow.
“I’m so tired,” she says, her tears subsiding bit by bit as her weight falls heavy against me.
I shift a little in the bed, so that my back is against the headboard. She nestles closer to me, but her rhythmic breathing, intermingled with soft, leftover sobs, tells me that she’s fallen asleep.
I think about Annie, who needs milking, and the eggs waiting for me in the henhouse. The garden should be fertilized, and I religiously chop wood for two hours every day from May to October so that I’ll have a pile large enough to last throughout the cold fall, winter, and early spring months. Now that it’s summertime, I should be fishing every other day and freezing or drying my catch. There are little repairs I should
be making on the cabin, and crops that need tending in the garden.
But this human being—the beautiful girl asleep on my chest, her ear over my heart—needs me right now. So I hold her close and let my eyes shut as the sun lowers over “the greatest mountain.”
I don’t really know her.
I don’t have any right to her.
I shouldn’t get attached to her.
In a handful of days she will be gone.
But right now, there is simply nowhere else on earth I’d rather be.
Brynn
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
My eyes open slowly to the rhythm of Cassidy’s heartbeat, and I find the room cast in a pink glow. Turning my head slightly, I realize it’s dawn. The black outline of Katahdin stands majestically in the distance, with pink and orange light in parallel streaks behind it. The sun is still hidden by the mountain, where my backpack, holding Jem’s phone, has been abandoned.
When Cassidy told me that he’d left my backpack behind, its loss was a stab to my heart.
But when I discovered he’d carried me seven miles—an unimaginable distance over rough ground in torrential rain—on his back to safety, it disarmed me completely. The walls behind which my tears and fears were held crumbled and fell.
His chest is solid and warm under my head, and his arms still hold me as they did when I was falling asleep. We’ve slept like this all night, I guess, and it surprises me that sleeping a whole night in Cassidy’s arms—an intimate act that requires so much vulnerability and trust—feels so organic to me. Especially since I haven’t slept with anyone in a long time.
I lift my head and peek up at his face, at his pillowed lips slightly open in sleep and the three beauty marks on his otherwise rugged cheek. His beard has grown in from last night, and I can see a pulse beating in his throat, a little beacon that pronounces his strength every few seconds.
This man saved my life.
Several times.
Once on the mountain, when he stopped Wayne.
Twice when he carried me to safety.
Three times when he cared for my injuries.
I am in awe of his selflessness, grateful for such profound kindness and care from a stranger.