by Nora Roberts
When he got back to the cabin, he’d seen the tracks in the snow right off. The rage that he’d nearly choked down spewed back up as he strode to the shed, found the door unlocked.
He roared inside sure, still sure, he’d find her. She wouldn’t dare, wouldn’t dare disobey.
But the place he’d provided for her was empty, not even fully put to rights.
She’d pay for it, pay dear.
He rushed back out, squinting as he surveyed. The moon gave him enough light to see those tracks, though the clouds were coming in.
She wouldn’t get far. Ungrateful whore. And when he caught up with her, he’d break both her legs. Walk off, would she? It would be the last time she walked at all.
He marched to the cabin, unlocked the door.
He had stores set by to last a year. Sacks of beans and rice, flour and salt. Cans stacked floor to ceiling.
He had cordwood inside and outside under a tarp.
But he kept his armory in his bedroom.
Three rifles, two shotguns, a half dozen handguns, and an AR-15 that had cost him dearly. He had the tools for making his own shotgun shells, and enough other ammunition to wage a small war.
The day would come, he knew, when there would be one to fight. He’d be ready. Ready when the sovereign citizens of this once-great country rose up to overthrow the corrupt government and take back the country, the land, the rights denied them and given to immigrants and blacks and homosexuals and women.
A government that pissed on the Constitution and the Bible in equal measure.
The war was coming, and he prayed nightly it came soon. But tonight, this night, he had a woman to hunt down, a woman he’d taken as his wife and provided for, a woman to punish.
He chose a good, hefty Colt revolver—made in the U. S. of A. and already fully loaded. Stripped off his coat to don an ammo vest, filling it with bullets and shotgun shells. He strapped a knife and sheath on his belt, hung night-vision goggles around his neck, and slung a shotgun over his shoulder.
He’d been tracking and hunting these woods most of his life, he thought as he headed out again. No ignorant whore of an ungrateful woman would get far once he was on her trail.
A trail pitifully easy to follow, even when some thin snow blew in. Wandering around without any sense at all, he concluded, quickening his pace.
It worried him a little when he saw she’d changed directions and if she’d kept on would come to a ranch road. He had no truck with the people who lived there, and their fancy house was a good mile back. But if she’d taken that road, walked that way …
She hadn’t. Too stupid for that, he thought with grim satisfaction when he saw her tracks heading away from the direction of the ranch house.
He lost them for a while, decided she’d walked on the road some, picked them back up again when she’d either walked or stumbled off into the snow.
With the cloud cover, he put on the goggles, picked his way along. He could follow her on the gravel, too, the way she dragged that one leg.
Stupid bitch, stupid bitch. He used the words like a prayer as he followed the tracks, as his legs began to ache. How had she walked so damn far?
He spotted some blood, crouched down, studied it. Hard to judge with the wet snow, but it was fresh enough, so it was likely hers.
He walked on. A little blood trail, just a drop here, a drop there, but he picked up his pace until he grew winded.
His head began to throb as he realized where those tracks would have taken her. Though his lungs burned, he forced himself into a hard jog, the shotgun slapping against his back, the revolver a weight at his thigh.
He would kill her, and it would be a righteous kill.
Hadn’t he told himself to lock her up, snap those irons back on her, and take another wife? Younger, childbearing age. A wife who’d carry sons instead of useless girls he sold off rather than keep.
He wouldn’t bother to chain her and feed her now. Not after she showed her deceitful heart. He’d gut her like a deer, leave her for the animals to take.
He’d be more discriminating with his next wife. He wouldn’t show the next one such kindness.
But when he reached the road, he knew he’d missed his chance. He could see a quarter mile in either direction, and didn’t see Esther.
He told himself she’d die of exposure or exhaustion, and good riddance. He told himself even if she lived, she’d never lead anybody back to his cabin. He told himself the corruption of local law enforcement would never follow her trail as he had.
But he’d make sure of it, wiping it, backtracking, leaving false tracks.
When the thin snow turned to rain, he smiled. God provided, he thought and said a silent prayer. The rain would wash away the blood trail, help with her tracks through the snow. Still, he worked through the wet, laying other tracks, carefully backtracking, pleased when the rain came down heavy for an hour of the work.
By the time he got back to his own land, his legs trembled with fatigue, and the jeans over them were soaked through wet.
He still found the rage and energy to kick the dog, viciously.
“Why didn’t you stop her? You let her walk off.”
As the dog whimpered, tried to crawl back to its shelter, he yanked the Colt free. Had his finger on the trigger, and in his mind the bullet already in the dog’s brain.
Then he thought better of it. He’d take the useless dog out on a rope in the morning. Let it run through and across any tracks near the cabin. Saddle up the fleabag of a horse, ride around some. A man on his horse, taking his dog out for a run.
That’s what he’d do.
He went back into the cabin, built up the fire. He stripped down to the skin, dragged on some winter underwear to warm his bones.
Hunger gnawed at him, but the cold and exhaustion was worse. With his head throbbing again, he crawled into bed.
In the morning, he told himself, he’d ride out, make sure he’d covered all that needed covering.
Falling into sleep, he wished Esther all the wrath God aimed at the wicked and profane.
While he cursed her, Alice spent her first night of freedom in more than twenty-five years in a drug-cushioned sleep.
In the morning, his skin hot to the touch, his chest tight, his throat raw, he pushed himself to dress, to eat, to saddle the broken-down horse. The dog limped and wheezed, but crossed the faded tracks.
Though the rain had done most of the work, he reminded himself God helped those who helped themselves. He rode more than an hour before bone-rattling chills turned him toward the cabin again.
He didn’t bother to chain the dog—where would it go?—barely managed to unsaddle the horse. Inside he downed cold medicine straight from the bottle. He needed to go out, put an ear to the ground, see if anybody was talking about finding some stupid old woman, see if that deceitful bitch had anything to say.
But that would wait, would have to wait until he’d slept off the cold she’d caused him to catch.
He crawled back into bed, slept fitful between chills and fever.
He didn’t wake enough to take more medicine until about the time Callen ordered his mother a bottle of wine.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
By the third day, Bodine became so familiar with the hospital rhythm she could identify which nurse walked by the waiting room by the sound of the stride.
She worked remotely via laptop and smartphone during what she thought of as her on-duty time. Her mother, her partner-in-waiting this morning, did the same. The waiting room served as their de facto offices, living room, and limbo.
In the afternoon, as the afternoon before, either Sam or Rory would arrive with Miss Fancy, and Bodine and Maureen would drive back to chip away at work. They’d try to convince Cora to come with them, take a break until the night shift. But so far, no one could budge her.
Bodine knew Callen had sat through the night on that same reasonably comfortable couch with Chase. He wouldn’t want her gratitude for it, but he
had it.
When she’d arrived with her mother, shortly after sunup, she’d poured coffee for all of them from a thermos she’d filled at home. She’d unwrapped bacon and egg biscuits, passed them out.
That’s when Callen had kissed her, enthusiastically.
“Mom made them,” she’d told him, and he’d turned straight to Maureen and kissed her, enthusiastically.
It was the first time in three days she’d heard her mother laugh.
Yes, he had her gratitude.
The fabric of their lives woven over the past twenty-five years had been torn. Their routines of home and work and family shattered.
Their world became the hospital, the being there, the going to and from, the constant juggling on snatches of sleep and rushed meals between. The demands of work, the people and animals depending on them, the low simmer of worry for Cora.
If Alice’s return created such tears and breakage, Bodine thought, how much had her careless departure caused so long ago?
“Is it harder?” Bodine asked.
Maureen stopped frowning at an e-mail, looked up over her cheaters. “Is what harder, honey?”
“Having her come back like this, than it was having her leave. I’m not asking that the right way.”
“No, it’s right enough. It’s right enough. I’ve asked myself the same.” To answer them both, Maureen set her tablet aside, folded her cheaters on top of it. “I was so mad, wasn’t worried a bit at first. Here I was about to go on my honeymoon, and Alice pulls a stunt to get attention. We didn’t want to leave Ma in the middle of that mess, but she wouldn’t have us staying. She said it would upset her a lot more. I so wanted to go, too. Here I was, a married woman, flying off to Hawaii with my husband. So exotic, so romantic, so exciting. It wasn’t just the sex part. I didn’t save myself for marriage.”
“Why, I’m just shocked. I’m just shocked to hear that.”
Maureen laughed a little, leaned back. “I was just so smug—the married part—so crazy in love, so excited to be going off with my husband to what was the same as a foreign country for me back then. And Alice had one of her famous snits, put a cloud over it all.”
Reaching down, Bodine gave her mother’s hand a squeeze. “I’d’ve been mad, too.”
“I was spitting mad,” Maureen replied. “I wasn’t really worried until toward the end of our honeymoon week. Every day I was sure she’d come back. And every day, I heard a little more strain in Ma’s voice when we called. So we came back a day early, and then I could see that strain. In Ma, in Grammy and Grandpa.
“We were going to build a house.”
As she’d been imagining the strain, the stress, the face, Bodine missed the postscript. “Sorry, what?”
“Your dad and I, we were going to build a house of our own. Had the land picked out for it. Close enough he could ride over to work, and I could do the same. We were just doing the first expansions on the dude ranch, just starting to make real plans for what we have now. And we’d build our own house. We never did.”
This time, Bodine took her mother’s hand and held it. “Because Alice left.”
“I couldn’t leave my mother. At first we thought we’d just put it off until Alice got back and everything settled again. The first year was the worst, every day of that first year. When they found the truck—the battery dead. She’d just left it—that was Alice. Don’t fix it, just walk away. The postcards, all bright and braggy. The detective Ma hired following some lead and losing it again. It was Grammy who made Ma stop throwing money there, and breaking her heart over it. And I was pregnant and having Chase, all in that first year. So, it was the happiest and the hardest year of my life. Of our lives. Alice wasn’t there, but she was everywhere.”
Maureen reached over, rubbed Bodine’s leg. “And now here we are, with our world spinning around her again. Now it’s my children spinning, too, and I don’t like knowing it. I don’t like when we can get my mother out of that room for ten minutes, how tired she looks, how worn. She’s pale, Bodine.”
“I know it,” Bodine agreed.
“I don’t like the ugly resentment I have inside me. It’s there even though I know terrible things happened to her, things she couldn’t stop, things she didn’t deserve. Somebody hurt my sister, stole her life from her, and I want to make him pay for it. But I still resent that selfish girl who couldn’t celebrate my happiness, who didn’t think of her mother and only thought of herself.”
Bodine set her laptop aside, draped an arm around Maureen’s shoulders.
“I have to forgive her.” Giving in, Maureen pressed her face into the curve of her daughter’s throat. “I have to find a way to forgive her. Not just for her sake, but for Ma’s, for my own.”
“Not once have I heard you or Dad say you’d planned to build a house. Part of you must have forgiven part of her a long time ago.”
Straightening again, Maureen tried to brush it off. “Well, I was going to be a country-western singing sensation at one time, too.”
“You’ve got such a good voice.”
“I don’t regret not heading off to Nashville, and I sure don’t regret raising my children in the house where I was raised. Things fall into place, Bodine, if you work at it and make your choices with some care.”
Bodine heard footsteps—heels not crepe soles—and when they turned into the waiting room, her mother’s body shifted.
“Celia.”
“Maureen. And this must be your Bodine.” The woman, sharp-looking with glossy brown hair waving to her shoulders, stepped up, offered Bodine a hand. “I’m Celia Minnow.”
“It’s nice to meet you. You’re one of Alice’s doctors.”
“I am.” She looked back at Maureen. “Could we talk?”
“I’ll take a walk,” Bodine began, but Celia waved her down.
“You’re welcome to stay. Your grandmother speaks so highly of you.” Celia sat, smoothed her dark skirt. “I’ve had three sessions with Alice, in addition to my initial evaluation. I can give you the broad strokes.”
“Please.”
“I know you’ve spoken extensively with Dr. Grove on her physical condition, and you’re aware of his evaluation of her mental and emotional state.”
“Celia, I hope you know me well enough not to feel obliged to dance and cushion.”
“I do.” And crossing her legs, Celia stopped dancing. “Alice has suffered extreme physical, mental, and emotional trauma over a period of years. We can’t yet determine how long. She doesn’t remember, and may, in fact, have no true gauge of how long. It may be her memory will come back, it may not. More likely it will come in pieces and patches. It’s my opinion that over this undetermined period of years she was indoctrinated by methods of force, physical assaults, praise, and punishment. Your mother tells me Alice was never particularly religious.”
“No.”
“She quotes scripture—Old Testament—some verbatim, some bastardized. Vengeful God, a man’s superiority and dominion over women. The sin of Eve. Again, it’s my opinion these views were part of her indoctrination. Physical assaults, religious fanaticism, imprisonment, and as she speaks of no one but the man she calls Sir, probably isolation.”
“Torture,” Maureen said.
“Yes, extended until she submitted, until her will broke and she began to accept the will of her torturer. He is a sexual sadist, a religious fanatic, a psychopath, and a misogynist. And he was her provider. He provided her with shelter, with food, with, however horrid, companionship. He beat her, but he also fed her. He raped her, but he put a roof of some kind over her head. He imprisoned her, but given her condition when she was found, allowed her basic hygiene. She was completely dependent on him. While she fears him, she feels loyalty to him. She believes him to be her husband, and the husband, however cruel, is designed by God to rule.”
“No one ruled Alice. And boys … she liked boys,” Maureen said. “She liked using her appeal. Not in a mean way, she wasn’t mean like that. Careless, maybe ev
en callous. She didn’t think much of marriage back then, made noises about how it was just a trap for women. She pushed that on me off and on while we were planning my wedding. Some of it was just Alice-talk, and some was her idea of being a free, desirable, and famous woman one day. She was always so sure of herself, Celia, impulsive and headstrong and confident.”
“She wanted to scrub her hospital room.”
“She what?”
“She’s supposed to scrub her house every other day. She became agitated about cleaning her hospital room.”
“Alice would rather have gone without eating than wash a dish. Making her own bed in the morning was a daily bitch fest.” Sliding a hand under a wing of her chestnut-brown hair, Maureen rubbed at her temple. “Can somebody really change somebody else like that? Make them all but the opposite.”