Alone in a Cabin

by Leanne W. Smith

  Alone in a Cabin

  Alone in a Cabin

  L E A N N E W. S M I T H

  Copyright © 2021 by Leanne W. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously with the exception of quotes and writing inspiration attributed to actual persons which should be made clear in the context of the attributions.

  All Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. except where paraphrased by the author.

  Frederick Buechner quote used by permission of Frederick Buechner Literary Assets, LLC. Source: The Hungering Dark, HarperSanFrancisco 1969, Part 1, Chapter 5: "Ponntifex," p. 45-46. ISBN 0-06-061175-8.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author (info@leannewsmith.com) except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  First Printing, 2021

  ISBNs: 978-0-578-92241-6 (paperback), 978-0-578-92242-3 (ebook)

  This book also available in hardcopy: 978-0-578-92723-7

  Cover design by Shelby M'lynn Mick

  To Shelby & Lincoln.

  To all artists living bravely,

  telling stories even when it's hard.

  Also by Leanne W. Smith

  Leaving Independence

  A Contradiction to His Pride

  On a Dark and Snowy Night (short story)

  "There is a spirit in every home that meets us at the door."

  Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Sometimes it's waiting on the porch.

  1

  A story begins with a disruption to the heroine’s daily life—a major disturbance in the balance of things that throws her off her footing and sets her on her rump.

  Maggie’s gaze rested on Tom’s throat, on the smooth-shaven ridge she used to press her lips against. If I wrap my hands around his trachea—cut off his windpipe below his larynx—could I squeeze hard enough to shut him up? Forever?

  Tom had just butchered Maggie’s heart with his words. He deserved to die…looked like he wanted to, even.

  She pictured Tom’s body lying in an open casket, the echo of his words gone silent. Was it normal for a wife to picture her husband dead when he was the one who flung a verbal dagger into her chest and severed their relationship?

  I could be the one to put him there.

  As Tom’s pronouncement continued its mean slide down the back of her spine, the rising temperature of Maggie’s blood came up through her own trachea, heating her so thoroughly she reached to loosen the top clasp of her blouse. She couldn't stand to look at him for more than a few seconds at a time.

  “I realize this must come as a shock,” he was saying. It was so trite she disregarded the rest. Maggie could no longer bear his voice now either. Whatever he was saying all she could think was Really, Tom? That’s the best you can do?

  The force of her anger was unsettling…strange. She knew if she gave in to the fury she could do it—she could leap across the sofa and pin him to the floor.

  Maggie had once thought Tom so clever—certainly before she married him. He was going to make a doctor. That’s how her father had put it. And he did; Tom made a doctor. At every family gathering Maggie heard her father say to someone, “Maggie has done well for herself. She married Tom, and Tom has made a doctor.”

  When her father died, Maggie searched to find a memory where he had ever stated her worth based solely on her own merits. But she couldn’t find one. Her father was proud, though, of her status as a doctor’s wife, proud she and Tom lived in a gated community in Franklin, south of Nashville, and proud Tom drove a BMW. All the important things.

  Maggie forced herself to refocus on Tom at the opposite end of the sofa—same color as the seats of his BMW—and for a moment allowed herself a new mental fantasy: grabbing a knife from the kitchen and taking the sharp edge of it down the side of his Z4 Roadster. Killing Tom was too kind. But scratching his car? That would hurt him.

  The word ‘Bethany’ cut into her daydream. No. I’ll save the knife for Bethany. Bethany is the one I’ll kill.

  “How old is she again?” Maggie was surprised she could speak at all—surprised by the evenness of her voice, so out-of-sync with the swelling waves in her chest.

  Tom squirmed. He couldn’t meet her eye—he who told families the worst of news on a daily basis. “Twenty-six.”

  “Twenty-six,” she repeated, watching his eyes flit to the picture over the mantle, to the smiling boy and girl. The twins had turned twenty-six in June. “And she’s your nurse.”

  “Receptionist.”

  Maggie waited until his eyes came back to hers before nodding. “She’s the one you’d rather be married to now.”

  Tom shifted on the sofa. “We’re not really talking marriage.”

  She felt her head continue to nod. The nod seemed bitter. Bitter wasn’t how Maggie wanted to be. Caskets. Knives. Killing. Those images were fleeting indulgences, unbidden as the bitter taste forming in her mouth and the sudden throb, as from a hard kick, in the pit of her stomach.

  “But she’s pregnant.” Before Tom could respond to that she finished it for him. “And you want to live together to raise the child.”

  Tom took his elbows off his knees. “I’ll get my things.”

  “No. I’ll get mine.”

  He flinched. “I’m not throwing you out of our home, Maggie.”

  “Don’t refer to it as ‘our home’ anymore, Tom. ‘Our home’ is a thing of the past, apparently.”

  ‘Our’ anything.

  Anger fueled Maggie’s bloodstream. Adrenaline surged. The wave was rising now but threatened to crash and suck her soul out to sea. She had to get out of there.

  Tom reached for her hand but she jerked it away. Maggie had already been forced to endure his eyes, his voice, his stomach-churning remorse. She stood and stepped away from the sofa, clutching her fury like a lifeline, willing it to stay at a crest for as long as possible.

  Lord, don’t let Tom see me cry.

  She would pack a quick bag for now, and come back tomorrow while he was at the office to begin the parceling.

  Parceling. The earth seemed to shift, the house to sway.

  Rage, hurt, fear hit a peak and rolled into the crest while Maggie stuffed items into a bag. She wasn’t sure what she was grabbing, she just knew she had to get out of the house. Waves crashing. Soul sucking. It was happening. She could feel it.

  She raced through the kitchen, smacked the garage door opener, flung open the hatchback of the Subaru, and tossed the bag in. Tom’s car was parked a little close. The sharp corner of her door left the tiniest nick in his Estoril Blue. Not as dramatic as the knife running along the side that she had fantasized, but satisfying nonetheless.

  Maggie threw the car into reverse with a shaking hand and fled.

  * * *

  That same day Canon sat in his patrol car at the corner of Elm and Main when a hatchback rolled through the stop sign—plowed, more like it. Maybe the driver didn’t see the sign. Or him. The rain had started an hour ago and now fell hard. He flicked on his lights, leaving the sound off, and pulled out to tail it—a Toyota Corolla.

  The driver saw his lights about the time he—or she—passed the bank. A woman. He could tell by the ponytail. The car turned at the corner, pulled into the parking lot, and circled to get in under the overhang of one of the d
rive-through lanes.

  After hours. The bank was closed. Out of town tags, which was unusual because Marston County was well off I-40.

  He took the lane beside her, glad she had the sense to get them out of the rain, falling in drumming sheets now on either side of the roofline, and called it in to Shirley. Canon gave her the tag number, and waited. She was quick with the details, like always.

  Keeping his eye on the driver’s side window over the teller box, he slid the safety off his gun, only a precaution, watching the woman through the dripping glass as she shook her head and looked over at him, lifting her shoulders like she didn’t know what she had done. She rolled down her window. A redhead.

  Canon had his hand on the door handle by then, but paused. Redheads affected him.

  She was young—a girl, really—carrying extra weight for her short height, the ponytail a mess like it had been slept on or done up in a hurry.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed opened his door and took long strides around the cruiser, noting that the Corolla, by contrast, was dented, dated, and rusting.

  “What did I do?” the girl asked, eyes brimming for a cry.

  “Ran a four-way back there.”

  “I’m sorry.” The tears spilled out. “I didn’t see it.”

  The tears were genuine, he could tell, and Canon had a feeling they were brimming long before she saw his lights.

  “You’re a long way from home.” With Indiana tags that were soon to expire.

  “I know.” She looked away. The girl couldn’t have been driving long.

  “Why don’t you come back to the station with me and we’ll give your parents a call.”

  The girl looked up at him sharply, wiping one side of her face. “My parents don’t know I’m here.”

  The phone sitting in her cupholder buzzed. Canon couldn’t make out the entire text, but caught part of the choice language. He knew what was going on. Shirley had tipped him off.

  “They will when you call ’em.” He tried to keep the natural growl out of his voice and let the words fall softly.

  She broke down then, washing the front of her blouse in tears. The girl might as well have stopped out in the weather after all.

  Canon got her out of the car she had stolen from her mother, into the back seat of the patrol car, and down to the station.

  * * *

  Maggie wasn’t sure when her tears started or when the rain began to pelt the roof. Soon both fell in torrents. It had already been a wet week in Middle Tennessee. The Harpeth lapped at the edges of its banks, eyed freedom, prepared to jump.

  She had trouble seeing oncoming traffic through the blur on the windshield and didn’t have a destination anyway so she got into the far corner of an empty school parking lot, cut the engine and crawled into the passenger floorboard. The storm muffled her sobs as she clamped down on the leather, her saliva collecting in a pool.

  Thirty years.

  Thirty years sucked down the drain like salt dregs after a comforting bath. And here she was standing in that moment—the shock of the cold wind rising from the vent after climbing naked from the water. Maggie had put her faith in a good book ending. But maybe happy endings were only a wisp, vapors destined to dissolve.

  Sometime after dark, after the rain moved out, she wiped the seat with her sleeve, crawled back into the driver’s seat and drove to a hotel on the other side of town, an out-of-the-way place that looked as bleak as her future. The night was moist—hot—Maggie’s mouth dry.

  The clerk took one look at her and planted his eyes on the counter. She was beyond caring, her head throbbing with a ticker-tape of questions. Would Tom tell the twins? Had he done so already? Or would Tom leave that task for Maggie? She checked her phone out of habit. No messages. She turned it off before any could come.

  Sleep was elusive, a past luxury Maggie worried she might never know again...like love. Her head wouldn’t stop swimming with visions of Tom, images of the Harpeth, sounds of the rain continuing to fall outside the hotel window.

  Sometime after midnight she flicked on the lamp and picked up a hotel pen and pad wondering if the next chapter of her life was to be an epic tragedy…a horror story…or maybe a suspense. Maggie could legitimately claim it as a mystery, at least for now.

  Nothing seemed real. But as she rolled the pen in her fingers and looked down at the writing pad with its smooth blank surface, waiting to capture whatever words she wanted—needed—to see on the page, Maggie realized the pen and pad were real. And holding the pair was an instant comfort. That’s when Maggie knew: writing was the answer. Writing was her future. She would need to make a living. The time had come to take the road less traveled, the one she had been avoiding.

  So she began, in a flurry of scribbled notes—her current reality sprinkled with flashes of past and future—as if the pen and pad were a lifeline that might save her. She marked off columns and rows, boxing in this set of words, leaving others free on the page, all offering her needed direction.

  With a flourish of ink she decided to take the downstairs sofa. She and Tom had never made out on that one. The kitchen was hers, of course—that was a given. The bookcases built by a favorite uncle. Those were Maggie’s, too, whether Tom liked it or not.

  Overall, as she traveled from room to room in her mind, Maggie thought of few possessions she cared to keep. Incredible. Material things had never meant so little. Still, nothing sacred could be left in the house at the risk of Bethany carting it off to a thrift store. The thought of the petite blond inspecting her things caused fresh tears.

  Flinging the pen and paper against the wall, Maggie buried her face in the pillows, wondering how long she would need to hold herself there to make it all go away. Housekeeping would find her. They would call the police who would go through her purse and call Tom. He’d call the twins.

  No…Maggie couldn’t hurt Robbie and Cal. She rolled over on her back and decided to breathe, filling her lungs in a yoga move. One, two, three—hold for five—now release.

  She should have seen this coming. Maggie couldn’t even remember the last time she and Tom had sex. He sent flowers every February, boxed roses with a card. Was last February his final overture? Were he and Bethany already…

  Maggie had thought she and Tom were simply coasting. Normal mid-life stuff. Shame hung like a wet curtain, dripping down with her tears.

  * * *

  Canon sat with the redhead long into the night, hearing her version of it—an online romance gone bad—until her parents arrived from Indiana. The boy had looked better on the screen. Evidently she had, too.

  After they left, he wrote up the report then stuck a Post-it on Shirley’s monitor saying he would be in later than usual the next morning. Canon cut off the lights and walked out to his patrol car hoping the parents and daughter could resolve things. Life was too short—too uncertain—to spend it in a squabble with your family.

  The house was dark when he got there, except for the light he left on over the kitchen sink. He stood and listened to the scanner while checking the mail, out of habit. Next he looked in the refrigerator…empty…then the freezer…unappetizing…before closing the doors and climbing the stairs for bed.

  When he finally closed his eyes, he dreamed for the first time in years—of simpler days before social media allowed young people to get false impressions, back when dreams had been a more regular part of his life, a redhead usually making an appearance. But tonight the woman’s hair was brown.

  * * *

  When sleep finally took her, Maggie dreamed of list-making, the taste of seat leather, and Tom making love to other women, all blond. But by nine o’clock the next morning she was showered, dressed, and on her second cup of in-room coffee.

  Like Scarlett clutching a carrot, Maggie wrapped her hands around the Dixie cup knowing she would survive this. So help me God. The same way she survived the death of her father, the illness of her mother, the twins leaving home. Each had hurt like a knife twist, but Maggie had regai
ned her footing following the initial bleeds. She would wrap a tourniquet around this thing and keep moving forward.

  Tom would pay for anything she needed to rebuild a nest for herself. She knew that. And Maggie would let him…at first…as a form of restitution. But she didn’t want Tom’s money. She wanted to earn her own. If any work pursuit could offer peace as she sought to build a new life, it was surely the act and art of writing. Fiction. Maggie needed a diversion from the current cold truth of her life—one that promised hope.

  She picked up the pen and pad that were still on the floor and looked down at her scribbled list-making. Reality. Time to go back to the house and divide the spoils.

  * * *

  By the time Canon woke the sun was well into the sky, the wall clock ticking its regular beat. He checked his phone. One message—Shirley—telling him to take the day off. Lord knows you need the rest. How late were you here last night?

  Ignoring her instructions, he got up to shower. The numbers ran over him with the water. The Andersons from Indiana arrived at 3:38 and left at 3:57. He had finished the report at 4:26, cut off the lights at 4:32, and flicked them back on in the farmhouse at 5:00 sharp. Remembering numbers on the clock through a long night was nothing new. Shirley had texted at 6:49 when she opened the office. Canon usually beat her, unless he’d had a long work night. And when he did come in late, she told him to take the day off because “Lord knows you need the rest.”

  Shirley enjoyed her pet phrases.

  In over thirty years Canon never had taken a work day off. Not one. Shirley knew that. But she said it anyway. Every time. He let her say what she needed to, for her own peace of mind, then he ignored her. It was their way.