The Captive

by Fiona King Foster

  “Are you hurt?” Brooke tried again. “What happened?”

  “They’re okay,” Milo said, guiding Brooke to a chair on the other side of the table. “They have some blisters and scrapes. Sal’s got some burns on her fingers, and her throat hurts. But they’re okay.”

  Brooke sank into the chair. Her hope of finding them had been so tangled up with the contrary, pointless effort not to hope. Now, amazingly—improbably—they were here, safe and intact. “How did they . . . Where did they . . . It’s been . . . How long has it been?”

  “Two days,” Holly said to the wall. “Three nights and two days.”

  A silence, punctuated by sparks in the chimney and Sal’s wet, rhythmic thumb-sucking.

  “I’ve got water heated for you,” Milo said, clearing his throat. He dragged a stockpot to the edge of the stove and tilted it to pour steaming water into the half-full tub. Then he turned back to Brooke, kneeling to pull off her boots. Holly kept her gaze on the kitchen wall, but Sal watched mutely, thumb in her mouth, as Milo delicately unbuttoned Brooke’s shirt and gestured for her to lean so he could ease it off her shoulder. He drew the sleeve carefully over her cracked and swollen hands. Every cut and crease was packed with dirt and blood, the palms stained rusty.

  Brooke stood and Milo helped her tug her pants and underwear down. The clothes were unsalvageable. Milo piled them in a heap next to the stove.

  With a hand on Brooke’s back, Milo led her across the floor and helped her fold herself into the tub. The water could not have been more than lukewarm, but it scalded her chilled skin. Grime swirled from her body. It wasn’t just her hands. Her goose-fleshed arms and thighs, her chest, her belly—stretched and doughy from two pregnancies—every part of her was steeped in dirt, sweat, ash, blood.

  Something touched her and she looked up. Milo was handing her a washcloth. She recognized the threadbare pattern from childhood: white leaves against faded teal.

  The blood and dirt dissolved slowly. Milo used a margarine container to pour water over Brooke’s hair. He scrubbed the grit that clung to her scalp, rinsing it again and again. The girls picked at their food. They were more tired than Brooke had ever seen them, drawn and frail. Sal leaned on Holly, her head lolling limply against her sister’s arm.

  Brooke rose, dripping, to dry herself. The water was cold and murky now, deep brown.

  “Here.” Milo handed her a stack of clothes. Jeans and a yellow sweatshirt of Emily’s. Brooke maneuvered herself into the sweatshirt slowly.

  Milo put the skillet back onto the hot part of the stove, greased it, and spooned in batter from a bowl. The faded box of pancake mix stood on the counter. Judging from the table, he had fed Holly and Sal everything he could find: lentils, carrots, blueberry preserves, tea, canned ham.

  Milo slid more pancakes onto Sal’s plate.

  “I’m full.” Sal’s voice was almost unrecognizable, gravelly from smoke.

  “Just one more,” Milo said.

  “I already had one more.”

  “Three bites, then.”

  “Dad,” Holly said. “Stop. She’ll barf.”

  “I don’t want to barf.” Sal’s voice broke, on the edge of tears.

  “It’s okay,” Milo said. “You’re not going to barf. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” Holly shouted, drawing her knees up in front of her. “Stop saying that! Nothing is okay!”

  Milo stood, holding the stack of pancakes. Brooke moved around the table to the girls. Sal was crying now, in hoarse, muted barks. Brooke pulled a chair up next to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. Sal looked at her warily, gulping back a sob, but didn’t object, so Brooke gathered her in close, and Sal dissolved against her, gripping a handful of the yellow sweatshirt tightly.

  “Did something happen?” Brooke asked. “Did someone hurt you? Milo, do you know where they’ve been?”

  Milo shook his head. “They saw the fire and came toward it. That’s all I’ve gotten.”

  “Holly?” Brooke asked.

  Silence.

  “Please,” Brooke said. “We need to know. Where have you been? How did you get here?”

  “How about where have you been?” Holly muttered. “How about what you were doing? How about what we want to know?”

  “We were looking for you,” Brooke said.

  “Here?” Holly spat.

  “That’s— It’s complicated.”

  “Yeah. It’s complicated, we wouldn’t understand, you’ll explain later, whatever. I don’t care. Don’t bother.”

  “Holly—”

  “No!” Holly slammed a hand down on the table. “I’m sick of it!” She shoved herself out of her chair and ran up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed.

  “Holly, I’m sorry!” Brooke made to stand, but Sal clung to her, crying harder than ever.

  “Don’t,” Milo said. “Give her some space.”

  Holly kicked something upstairs and then opened the door again just to slam it harder.

  They were here, Brooke reminded herself. They were safe. That was enough. She couldn’t expect to be forgiven.

  “Is there coffee?” she asked, adjusting her position to hold Sal more comfortably.

  It took a while, but eventually Sal’s sobs abated and, softly, softly, Milo convinced her to tell them what had happened after she and Holly struck out from the hunting blind. The story came out confused and out of order, interrupted by renewed bouts of tears. Milo prodded gently, asking simple questions, and gradually they were able to piece it together.

  As Milo had guessed, Holly’s first plan had been to lead them to Buffalo Cross and home from there. They had quickly become lost in the dark, and then the snow had started. By the time Brooke had caught sight of them beneath the hemlock trees, Holly had already given up and was trying to get them back to their parents.

  Brooke and Milo exchanged a glance. Holly wouldn’t abandon even an obviously bad idea once she had set her mind to it unless something stronger overpowered her pride—fear, or hopelessness.

  They’d heard shots, Sal said, and saw someone fall on the hillside. From their hiding place in the trees, they couldn’t see who it was. Then Brooke had appeared, running for the woods, and they’d set off to find her.

  When they lost Brooke’s trail at the swamp, they had despaired, until Holly had thought of the hunting shelter, their last common location, recalling that it was also next to the swamp. They changed into their dry clothes for warmth, as Brooke had taught them, and kept moving.

  Nothing looked familiar in the snow. The swamp had many inlets and tributaries too wide to cross, and they got off track. Late in the day, they were following a rocky stream when they heard more gunshots and took cover. Holly chanced a peek and saw a rider in the distance. They remembered Brooke referring to “the others,” back when they’d first left home, and wondered how many more strangers with guns might be out there.

  It was then that Holly remembered watching Brooke brush the tracks from their first campsite. She and Sal searched quietly near their hiding place until they found supple birch boughs to sweep with.

  “We stayed on the rocks,” Sal explained to Brooke and Milo. “That way, you don’t leave tracks. And when we had to walk in the snow, we brushed it.”

  “You did a good job,” Milo said. “Fooled Mom.”

  Brooke thought she heard a snort from upstairs.

  Sal explained how they’d followed the riders, not sure what else to do, hoping at least the trail would lead them to a road or town. They had no sense, anymore, of where to look for their parents. That night, they’d come to the highway and, cold and hungry enough to risk it, followed the light of a storm lantern to where some people were stopped in a covered flatbed truck. The people—a crew just finishing their season as cleaners in the tar sands—had been kind; they’d fed the girls and given them space to sleep. In the morning, Holly had asked about getting back to Buxton, but the people were going the opposite way, south to Shaw Station, and they warned the gi
rls against taking the road north alone. So, having failed to find their parents and unable to get home, Holly and Sal made a new plan: they would go to the federal marshals Brooke had been trying to reach.

  They rode south in the truck. Beyond the river, where the hill road branched off from the highway, the people set them down, pointing the way to the outpost. It wasn’t far, they said, but the road was too rough for the truck. The weather had been clear at first, and Holly and Sal sang to keep their spirits up as they walked. But they must have missed the outpost. It got dark. The blizzard had started when they were walking a stretch of road next to a lake, with several cottages close together, all seemingly abandoned. Afraid of losing their way, they’d taken shelter in a place with a broken lock on the front door. The walls inside were all broken up, Sal said, with wires and pipes sticking out. They’d changed their clothes again, slept a little, and waited for a break in the weather.

  It was dark when the snow stopped. They were too cold and hungry to sleep. They decided to keep walking. Late in the night, they’d seen an orange glow in the distance and thought it was the outpost. Closer, they’d hesitated, smelling smoke. Then they’d been spooked by a sound in the woods—someone else approaching—and hurried forward. They’d come through the trees and heard Milo shout, and then their parents were running toward them.

  Sal stopped talking and closed her eyes. She didn’t have to tell them what had happened after that. Cawley, the burning drive shed, Emily.

  “It’s over,” Brooke said, stroking Sal’s damp hair. “You’re safe.”

  “Can we go home?” Sal whispered.

  Brooke hesitated. “I hope so,” she said, wishing she had a better answer.

  “Time to sleep,” Milo said. “Come on, Salamander. There’s a warm, dry bed.”

  The silence from upstairs was palpable. Brooke knew those gappy floorboards. Holly would have heard everything.

  “I’ll stay down here,” Brooke said. “I don’t want to make it worse.”

  “It’s okay,” Milo said. “She’ll come around.”

  “No, I won’t!” Holly shouted from upstairs, making Sal flinch.

  “Go ahead,” Brooke said. “I’ll be all right.” A tangle of blankets still lay on the floor where Davey had kicked them aside in the night.

  “Let me know if you need me,” Milo said, kissing her still-damp head. Brooke felt tears spring to her eyes and blinked them away.

  Sal leaned away from Brooke into Milo’s arms, her thumb in her mouth again. Brooke watched them climb the stairs and listened to their footsteps through the ceiling. Milo’s muted voice, an angry whisper that must be Holly, the rustle of blankets, the weight of the bed shifting on the floor, then silence.

  Brooke looked around her childhood kitchen. All the details of this place that she’d forgotten: the canvas sling for carrying firewood, hanging from its nail; the strip of mirror that hung over the door, reflecting the rafters and the ceiling fan, except the fan was gone now, a paler circle of wood and three empty screw holes left behind; the little clay pot of toothpicks and medicine droppers by the sink; the yellow plastic basin under the U-shaped pipe; the chipped ceramic knob of the cutlery drawer. She had avoided thinking about home over the years, and when she couldn’t help it, there had been certain tokens she returned to. Now she saw how meager those few images had been—flimsy, worn thin.

  The framed photograph that Milo had taken off the wall was lying on the table. Holly and Sal must have seen it. Brooke wondered what, if anything, Milo had told them about where they were, and the kind of people who had lived here.

  Brooke returned the picture to the wall. She felt a stab of fresh grief, seeing Emily, fierce and pregnant, and Callum and Anita, younger than Sal then, their faces already so recognizably their own. And there was Brooke, staring down the camera, tiny fists at her sides. People had loved that picture: the invincible Hollands. Now, Brooke found it odd that such a young child—barely out of diapers—would have stood in the back of a pickup truck, amid guns and anxiety and cameras, looking so stern and sovereign. Why wasn’t she reaching to be picked up?

  Brooke set about the familiar task of eating the scraps from her daughters’ abandoned plates. What now? She’d told Sal she hoped they could go home, and in one sense there was nothing to stop them from returning to the farm now. Stephen Cawley was dead. All the Cawleys were dead, and Brooke’s parents with them, everyone she’d been hiding from for fifteen years. She could move through the world without fear of being hunted.

  There were other dangers, however, more mundane but equally real; the cranberries were likely frozen by now, they didn’t have the money to wait out another growing season, and the bounty was gone with Cawley under the smoking remains of the drive shed. They would be penniless before spring. Brooke could hunt for food, and she and Milo—even the kids—could hire themselves out if there was work to get, but it was a bleak and perilous way for a family to live. She’d seen it.

  She surveyed the kitchen for what might be sold. The most valuable thing, the cookstove, weighed at least nine hundred pounds. She could try pulling it into Shaw Station with Emily’s big draft horse, if Davey came back with it, and if she had something to use as a sled. An aluminum roof sheet might do. The thought of stripping the roof—leaving the sad remains of her childhood home gap-toothed, open to the rain and snow—gave her pause. Then she shook her head. She should take whatever this house could give. Her family was gone.

  Exhausted, Brooke put the empty plates in the sink, spread the blankets out by the stove, and lay down. But when she closed her eyes, she saw Emily on her knees, held up by the pitchfork, and then it was Brooke’s own chest that was full of holes, her own body from which breath fled. She jackknifed upright, gasping and reaching reflexively for her rifle. It wasn’t in the kitchen; Milo must have brought it upstairs, along with the backpacks.

  Better to do something, she decided, folding the blankets away. She pulled open the drawers, putting everything she judged sellable into a pile. Cutlery, rubbing alcohol, mousetraps, glue. She felt through the pockets of Emily’s coats and bags, hanging by the door. No wallet, no money. How had her mother planned to get through the winter? But Brooke didn’t need the near-empty woodshed outside to tell her that her mother had stopped planning for the future a long time ago.

  She moved to the sideboard and found it unexpectedly locked. The latch was an old-fashioned mechanism, simple to pick, and there would be tools in the root cellar, but Brooke didn’t want to test her shoulder on the heavy trapdoor. She chose a wire whisk from the pile of salvage, pried one of its loops free, and used it to pop the lock. She opened the sideboard and saw what was inside: a shotgun, two handguns, a semiautomatic assault rifle, and a .303 bear gun.

  I have better than cash, Emily had told Davey.

  Brooke sat back on her heels. “Thank you, Mama,” she breathed.

  She slid open an inner drawer and found neatly ranged boxes of ammunition.

  Clean and complete, the guns were worth more than Davey’s two horses, and if she resold the gelding, they’d have enough to buy a few months of food. A start.

  Brooke built up the fire, propped the door open for ventilation, and cleared a space on the table to clean the guns. She wouldn’t risk going upstairs for a sheet to work on in case she woke Milo and the girls.

  The temperature was dropping again, the house creaking in the cold. Brooke disassembled the guns and brushed and oiled and wiped. Twice, she thought she heard Davey coming with the horses and looked out the window to find the yard empty. It was just the old house constricting, or some part of the wreckage outside collapsing, telegraphing through the ground.

  By the time Brooke heard real hoofbeats, it was late in the day. From the window, she watched Davey ride in on Chevy, with four other horses strung behind him: the two Milo and Brooke had ridden from Buffalo Cross, the draft horse, and Lorne’s stallion. Davey tied them in the woodshed and came stomping up the steps, loudly knocking snow from his boots.


  “They’re sleeping,” Brooke shushed him, opening the door.

  “You’re welcome,” Davey said. “Your mother’s goddamn draft horse led me a two-mile chase. She’s lucky I bothered.”

  The draft horse was Brooke’s now, though she didn’t plan on telling Davey that Emily was dead. Better he should expect her objectionable mother to walk in at any moment, if it speeded him on his way back to Buffalo Cross.

  “I want to keep the gelding and the roan,” Brooke said without preamble.

  “That’s nice,” he uttered tonelessly. “But I’m not giving them to you.”

  “No one’s asking you to give anything. Come inside. And be quiet.”

  Brooke ushered Davey into the kitchen. When he saw the guns, cleaned and arranged on the table, his eyes widened appreciatively.

  They negotiated the trade and Davey soon left. He was sore and sleep-deprived, but as Brooke had anticipated, he preferred a cold ride through the night to spending more time in Emily Holland’s house. With a handful of pancakes in his pocket and the guns and ammunition packed on Lorne’s horse, he followed the driveway through the basswoods and was gone.

  Brooke checked that the gelding, the roan, and the draft horse were settled in the woodshed. Then she unfolded her mother’s blankets on the kitchen floor once more, and lay down. This time, she slept.

  18

  Brooke startled awake. It was dark. She was lying on the floor, wrapped in a familiar-smelling blanket. Bright moonlight picked out grit and debris on the wooden boards in front of her face. Table and chairs. Cookstove.

  A sound had woken her. Milo or one of the kids moving around upstairs?

  No, that was wrong. It was close by, a heavy scraping.

  Brooke began to sit up, but her head hit something; it felt like the corner of a door. She twisted blearily to see what it was, tried again to sit up. Dizziness blurred her vision, and something wet was running into her ear.

  Above her, an impossible image took shape: Cawley. Holding a hammer. His hair burned to a singed mat of stubble. A raw section of scalp on one side of his head, like a skinned knee. Wheezing badly. His shirt black with blood.