Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  Silence after that.

  Mia looked down at her phone.

  Call ended.

  When she hit the number again, it went to voicemail.

  • • •

  Mia got an Instagram alert from her friend who’d just finished camp, and the dinging tone jarred her into realizing. Why was she trying to track down Uncle Doug’s friends and calling their rando relatives? Uncle Doug had only been related to Mia for like a week. But Aunt Nat she’d known her whole life.

  Mia navigated over to Aunt Nat’s account, scrolling back to find the women whose photos her aunt had shoved into a drawer. Mia requested to follow them, then fell asleep with the phone cradled between her pillow and her ear, hoping to be awakened by a penetrating ding of a text.

  It took a second day, Mia still getting passed from her mom to her dad like a five-year-old in need of a nanny, before one of Aunt Nat’s friends finally accepted Mia’s request. Did these people not live on their phones or what? By then, Mia’s insides were swarming with worry, and the response she got from Val after Mia introduced herself and explained the situation, made things a thousand times worse.

  not surprised to hear it didn’t exactly go smoothly

  what do u mean? Mia texted, her heart punching a fist in her chest.

  your new uncle isn’t a good guy, sweetie, came the response a minute later. why do you think i wasn’t at the wedding?

  Because you’re a stone-cold bitch and my aunt didn’t want you there? Mia thought. She stared down at the screen, at a loss for what to say back.

  Val texted again without waiting.

  he tries to control natalie he’s a control freak of the highest order i could tell the moment i met him

  And then another.

  or maybe she just wants to be controlled

  A split second later, before Mia had even gotten a chance to start texting her reply—

  or both

  Mia pictured Val’s fingers jumping all over her screen, so fast she wasn’t even taking time to breathe. She’s jealous, Mia thought. Classic frenemy where one person couldn’t stand the other being happy. Except then Mia’s mind skittered to that moment at the wedding underneath the tree. Uncle Doug had been pretty—what was the word—dominant with Aunt Nat. Trying to get her not to ask questions and the like.

  A final text dinged.

  if natalie insisted on going off into the woods with that guy, and now she isn’t back when she should be, i don’t know about you, but i’d be seriously concerned

  Mia threw her phone aside on her bed and ran to find her mom.

  • • •

  “How late are they?” her mother asked, once she’d made sense of Mia’s overlapping sentences and pleas to stop working. Her mom had been doing all her paperwork at home since she’d started covering extra shifts. She set her laptop beside her on the couch, closing it to hide treatment plans or something else confidential. “How long was their trip supposed to be again?”

  “A week,” Mia said instantly. How did her mom not know this? She always made it her business to be on top of everything. It was like Aunt Nat getting married had changed something, like her mom had lost a job. “They were supposed to finish canoeing after a week and come home the next day, but it’s a long drive, so maybe not till night.”

  Mia’s mom frowned. “So that was…what? Two days ago. How did I lose track?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Mia said, plunking down on the couch.

  Her mother reached for her phone and thumbed it to life. She began clicking on email after email from Aunt Nat, then their old texts, scanning the screen closely at first, but soon going faster, barely reading before scrolling over to whatever she wanted to look at next. Mia scuttled closer to her mom, watching over her mother’s shoulder. She had some web page open with FAQs about wilderness exploration, and was staring at it with the most bizarre expression on her face, all wide-eyed and kind of dazed.

  Finally, her mother dropped the phone and let her hand fall to her lap. She muttered something and Mia said, “What?” But her mother didn’t repeat what she’d said. Could’ve been I told her so or I told her not to go.

  When her mother spoke next, her voice was a little clearer, but strange still, like a little girl’s. “I’ve taken care of your aunt Nat her whole life.” She didn’t exactly seem to be talking to Mia, though, didn’t even have her within sight. “But what is there for me to do now?” Her mother extended one arm, gesturing toward the windows that looked over the skyscrapers and the street. “I don’t know anything about rivers or woods or land that empty. I have no idea what to do out there.”

  Mia slid down off the couch, getting onto her hands and knees in front of her mother, and laying her head on her lap. “Mom?” she whispered.

  Her mother looked down as if she hadn’t quite realized that Mia was still there. “Yes, Mi?”

  “Why don’t you just call the police?”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Natalie and Doug helped Kurt collect armfuls of wood, staying in a tight radius whose boundaries Kurt laid out, reminding them not to wander. Once they had enough kindling and sticks, they started to head back toward the huts—Natalie noting that she now needed no guidance, could navigate this part of the woods on her own—but Kurt held up a hand to say wait before ushering them in a different direction.

  “Follow the trail I break,” he said, forging a path toward a group of boulders bunched like a cluster of enormous grapes. “I’ve got a surprise for you both.”

  The sky was so soft, it looked brushed. Kitten-fur wisps of cloud melded with the lavender blue of descending night as the three of them walked. After a while, they came to the lake Natalie and Doug had glimpsed from the hut. Darkness flashed on as if cued, all remnants of daylight suddenly gone. An indigo pool of water sat in a bowl so deep its sides were the mountains, sparkling like a prism beneath a million stars.

  Natalie caught her breath.

  Kurt noticed, his ears pricking in the darkness. “Location, location, location. Isn’t that what they say?” He pointed toward the water, regarding Natalie as she turned. “This would’ve sold me on my camp even if I’d had to deal with Realtors. Thankfully I didn’t.”

  Doug reached for Natalie’s hand, and they started walking toward the edge of the lake. Doug stripped off his shirt and shorts as he went, looking over at Natalie. She glanced down at her clothes. The prospect of slipping into that silky smooth water—the chance to really get clean for the first time in what felt like months—was hard to resist.

  Doug shrugged, gesturing toward the boxers he wore, which looked just like swim trunks, then indicated Natalie’s own undergarments. “No different from a bikini, right?”

  What decided Natalie was the oddest, yet utterly certain conviction. Kurt would show no less interest in Natalie if her entire body were swathed in robes than if she’d stood naked before him. She tossed her T-shirt and shorts onto a rock before running beside Doug down to the water.

  Her husband’s renewed strength was reassuring, although Natalie felt aghast at what had happened to his body in so short a time. His ribs stood out like a fan, barely encased in flesh; there were grooves at his sides and hollows in his chest. Still, Doug’s grip was firm as he tugged her into deeper water—up to their thighs, their hips, their stomachs—until they both plunged, laughing, beneath the surface.

  Doug came up, shaking water from his head, while Natalie surfaced a few yards away. She dolphin-dove and swam underwater back to her husband. He caught her around the waist and pulled her close. Their gazes caught, then slid away, flicking to the shore before their eyes were drawn back together like magnets. Helplessly, Natalie lifted her face while Doug lowered his. Their lips met with a flutter of newness, a feeling Natalie had only experienced once before—on the night they had met, when it was hard to believe that two strang
ers could want the same thing with such equal intensity.

  They both seemed to remember at once that they weren’t alone, and twisted back around toward shore.

  Kurt stood there, facing them. When their gazes met, he didn’t turn away or avert his stare, but simply continued to look as if the moment was his as much as theirs.

  Despite the cool swish of water against her, Natalie’s skin grew heated, uncomfortable.

  Doug grinned down at her, but there was a stiffness, a falsity to his expression compared to the intimacy that had united them just moments before.

  Smile at me, he mouthed, and Natalie did.

  “Look,” Doug said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  Natalie took her eyes off Kurt on the shore.

  “And I’d be a fool to dismiss it. I’ve learned that by now.” Doug paused. “It’s hard for me to get used to listening to anybody else.”

  It would be hard for Natalie to get used to saying things that people listened to, but she decided to hold on to that for right now.

  “But it’s understandable, right?” he said. “I mean, it must get lonely, living like this way out here. Kurt wants companionship. And he has it for now. It’s not like he’s going to argue when it comes time for us to go, even if on some level he might prefer that we didn’t. I mean, he’s got to realize that most people can’t just trash their real lives.”

  Natalie nodded slowly. Cool lake water swirled around them.

  “Hey, you two!” Kurt called from the shore. “Getting hungry?”

  Doug continued to look at Natalie, one eyebrow cocked.

  She gave a surer nod. “Okay,” she said. “Tonight let’s just be friendly, not even talk about the prospect of leaving. Tomorrow we can figure out a plan.”

  Doug squeezed her hand beneath the gray skin of water. They swam back to shore underneath the star-pricked sky.

  Kurt had made a circle of rocks on the banks of the lake, depositing the wood they had collected. A blaze was just starting to catch when Natalie and Doug emerged from the water, dripping and gathering up their discarded clothes, which they pulled on under cover of the darkness.

  “Come dry off by the fire,” Kurt called.

  “I haven’t seen you use any matches,” Doug remarked, settling himself on a flat rock and tugging Natalie down beside him.

  “That’s because I don’t have any,” Kurt replied. “Or not many at any rate, and those I do must be saved for emergencies.” He displayed a whittled stick.

  “That can start a fire?” Doug asked.

  Natalie glanced at him. He must’ve been going along with what she’d said, donning an easy amicability, because they had both watched the matchless-fire trick done on YouTube a dozen times before setting out on their honeymoon.

  Kurt demonstrated the rapid wheel of the stick between his two palms, how touching it to a dry leaf ignited a flicker of flame.

  Doug whistled. “Amazing.”

  Natalie leaned back against him, staring off at the distant mountains.

  “I have a treat for us,” Kurt remarked. He laid a pair of glistening fish upon a crosshatch of wood in the fire. “We’ll take them off before the sticks really start to burn,” he said. “Fish this fresh doesn’t need much cooking. Just a nice sear of its skin.”

  “They from this lake?” Doug asked.

  Kurt nodded. “Swam into my trap earlier today when you both were asleep. Doesn’t happen very often.” He turned a bright expression on them, although there was something cold and empty about it, reflective of the moonlight. “I think they came just for the two of you.”

  A chill wind swept through the mountains, causing the leaves on the trees to rustle like a nest of rattlesnakes, and wrapping itself around Natalie. Her clothes were damp from her body, and she shivered. Because with those words she’d realized something. She and Doug had both underestimated the forces at work here, the strength of Kurt’s desire.

  He was wooing them. His nicest locale, the choicest treats.

  Leaving was not going to be easy.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The wind continued to blow with that dry, corn-husk sound while Kurt poked the fire to awaken the flames. Embers sparked, giving off a smoky essence. Kurt served the fish, slicing one in half for him and Natalie to share, and giving the other to Doug.

  “Unbelievable,” Doug said, sucking a sliver of flesh off a translucent bone. “Best fish I’ve ever eaten.” He shot a grin Natalie’s way. “Five stars.”

  Natalie tried to smile in return. “We’ll have to write our review in the dirt.”

  “Or when we get—” Doug began.

  Natalie slid her hand over his, locking their fingers together.

  Kurt licked the tips of his own fingers, catlike and somehow appealing. “When it’s this fresh, you don’t even need any butter or lemon.”

  The thought was a sharp shard in Natalie’s head. What I wouldn’t give for some butter or lemon.

  Kurt’s gaze rested on her. “It can take a while to shed the last vestiges of the old world,” he said. “You probably want nothing more than to run into the nearest Stop & Shop right now. But I found such penchants didn’t last long.”

  She hadn’t said it out loud. How had he known? Natalie’s skin prickled despite the heat of the fire, and she struggled to get down a last morsel of fish. “Gristedes,” she said a little hoarsely. “That’s where we go in the city.”

  Kurt offered her the cup, but Natalie shook her head.

  “No?” Kurt said without lifting his gaze. “Not thirsty? Or in need of a drink?”

  Natalie felt a breath of resignation leave her body. There was no use trying to conceal anything from Kurt; he seemed to sense everything. She accepted the cup from his hand, chugging the contents until the fish with its bit of bone slid down her throat.

  Kurt gave a satisfied nod.

  “So,” Doug said, settling back. “We’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “Oh yes?” Kurt replied.

  “Be impossible not to,” Doug said smoothly. He traced a finger along Natalie’s arm in a gesture he probably thought would look affectionate, but which Natalie knew to be a warning. “Nights like this. But I gotta ask. How do you make it through the winter?”

  A mental siren blared. Don’t do this, Doug. Hold off till tomorrow, like we decided. They needed to come up with a plan before presenting their exit strategy to Kurt.

  Kurt laced his hands together, as if warming to the topic. “It’s not easy, I’ll grant you. But when spring finally peeps its head…my, what a sense of accomplishment you have. In a way, you can’t appreciate the seasons that give themselves to you more gently until you’ve survived their brutal sibling.”

  “I can see that,” Doug said. He coughed and reached for the cup. “This full?”

  Natalie poured him some water.

  Doug drank, then gave Kurt his best smile. “Whiskey, though. I mean, you gotta miss that.”

  Kurt didn’t smile back, his face smooth and implacable.

  “Do you go into town?” Doug asked once the pause had drawn itself out. “Before winter sets in, I mean. To stock up on supplies?”

  “No need,” Kurt replied. “Summer and fall bring a new crop of hikers, and as I’ve said, they tend to leave things behind.”

  He means that he takes them, Natalie thought with a sudden stab of fear. Why would a hiker give up any of his equipment or rations?

  “But if you did want to…” Doug said. “You know, say you ran out of something, or a backpacker didn’t happen by. Then you would have to pick stuff up, right? Didn’t you tell us it was a five-day hike?”

  Natalie gave her husband’s hand a firm squeeze. When he looked at her, she met his eyes and tilted her chin, a reminder.

  Doug placed an arm around her, drawing her close. “
Which way would you head?” he asked. “Do you come to any sort of marked trail, or is it all bushwhacking?”

  Silence from Kurt, so heavy that it finally seemed to strike a blow.

  Doug began to scramble in retreat. “Because I was thinking that if we were to settle in here—Natalie and I—then we could divide up the work. I could make a trip to town, while you two stayed back, getting things in shape for the winter.”

  “All that snow,” Kurt said in a musing tone. “And ice.”

  “Must take a ton of preparation,” Doug said, nodding.

  His nod looked a little frantic to Natalie. This was the Doug who drank from the brook, not the measured incarnation who administered the taste test or directed their canoe through the rapids. Doug was straying from the strategy he and Natalie had come up with in the lake, and Natalie thought she knew why. For all the beauty of this spot, Kurt’s description of winter made clear how utterly isolated the three of them were. Natalie and Doug had no more knowledge of how to find their way out than they’d possessed before. It was hard to go slowly, try and manipulate Kurt, when the woods were closing in like a cell.

  “Two extra sets of hands,” Kurt went on, “would certainly be a boon to me.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say,” Doug replied, nodding vigorously some more. “We’d want to pull our weight around here. Not just impose on you, making use of all you’ve created without providing anything in return.” He paused, Adam’s apple rolling in his throat. “And if you did happen to run out of something and needed someone to make a quick run to town—”

  “Well then, you’d be happy to help with that too,” Kurt supplied, so smoothly it almost concealed the edge in his tone.

  Doug shut his eyes for a moment, admitting defeat. He balled his hands into fists. “Look,” he said. “We can’t stay, Kurt. Tempting as the prospect may be.” Doug gestured toward the lake. “Tempting as the prospect is—you really sold us. But we have friends and family waiting back home. Jobs to go to. Lives to lead.” He glanced at Natalie for support.