‘I didn’t know what she was going to do. She might have disappeared if I turned away, so I was careful not to move quick, not to get too close, and she stood up and followed me to the fish house with that rock still in her hand.
‘She watched me fillet each fish while I tried to figure out what to do. I’m not what you’d call a social man. I mind my own business. Don’t have much use for townsfolk or police, but in the end I didn’t see what choice I had. Brought her inside and she sat right where she’s lying now while I made the first 911 call of my life and she turned that rock over and over in her hands. When the police came, they asked her who she was. Maya, she told them before she handed over the rock. Red Maya.’
The room was quiet after Harry finished. Both men looked at their plates in the shadows of the room.
‘I never thanked you,’ I said after the silence had stretched out.
‘Hell, it wasn’t a count your blessings kind of day.’
‘But you let me in. You’re letting us in now.’ The simple, rough-edged space wasn’t designed for company. There was a single couch, an old cathode ray TV sitting on a block of wood, and a row of books neatly lined on a homemade bookshelf made out of planks and stones. He’d tacked blankets up over the windows to keep out drafts and the scuffed wood floors had seen better days. In all the summers of my childhood, I’d never noticed another person on Harry’s property.
He nodded to the cross-stitch on the wall, the one piece of color in the room. ‘ “Be not simply good, be good for something.” ’
I tried to think of a way to voice my gratitude, but an overwhelming drowsiness had begun to blanket my brain. The lidocaine was still working, easing away the pain of the stitches, inviting me into the blackness. I struggled against its pull.
‘Sleep, girl. There’s still a few hours until sunup.’ Harry put a small quilt over my shoulders, leaving the stitched up wound open to the air. ‘I’ll set your protector up on the floor next to you.’
I gave in and let myself drift off, but not before mumbling into the blanket, making one last thing clear.
‘I’m his protector.’
24
I wanted to leave right away the next morning, but Harry and Lucas took one look at me and both insisted I needed to rest. My heart stuttered every time I heard a car pass, knowing the houses weren’t tucked far enough into the trees to be completely invisible, not with November’s bare branches. A blanket of snow had covered Butch’s car during the night, but even that camouflage wouldn’t be enough if the police connected me to the kidnapping and started canvassing the area. My mother’s cabin would be the first logical place to look. We were exposed here, vulnerable. How long would it take them to knock on this door? How long would it take my father to come home and for Butch to report his car stolen?
‘Hey, it’s Maya.’ I’d left a message on his voice mail before leaving the house last night. ‘I’m taking off for a little while. Jasper should be fine until you get back.’
My voice had almost broken on Jasper’s name, just like I’d bitten back tears when I installed the pet door going out to the backyard and topped up the automatic feeder to the three-week line. He wouldn’t need nearly that much – Dr Mehta would contact Dad, too, as soon as it was clear I was missing – but I still felt horrible leaving him. My loyal German shepherd, my guardian and friend, had watched me go with sorrowful eyes.
The provisions, the cash purchases, the untraceable phone – none of it would have been necessary if I’d rescued any other patient in Congdon. The authorities couldn’t care less about Greta, or suicidal Eliza, or Big George. None of them had been featured on national news. They hadn’t been written about in Time magazine, or garnered over a hundred thousand social media fans who picketed outside the gates, or been vilified with signs reading keep them in jail in the last town they’d known as home. This was Lucas Blackthorn, the boy who came back from the dead, and they weren’t going to let him off the grid again, not without a fight. So, I put Jasper out of my mind and concentrated on the present and on the fact that – so far – I was winning. I’d gotten Lucas out.
I only agreed to rest longer because of the pain. Although it was more manageable this morning, a slow walk across the living room was about all I could handle. Harry gave me some of the antibiotics from the first aid kit and didn’t listen to any of my arguments about not taking the pain pill – they weren’t meant for me, someone else needed them more than I did – and made me swallow one anyway, which turned the flame down to a warm ache and made everything else uncomfortably fuzzy. He went fishing after breakfast, trying to get the last catch before ice-in, he said, but I suspected that, even though he’d insisted we stay, three people in his house were two too many. After he left I sent Lucas to the car to retrieve the clothes I’d bought for him, and it was jarring when he walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later, to see him dressed normally.
When I commented on it Lucas gave me his this-place-is--beyond-messed-up look. ‘What’s normal?’
I waved to the blue all-terrain pullover and cargo pants. ‘That’s normal.’
He grinned. ‘You think that because you were born and raised in Duluth. Normal might be completely different if you came from somewhere else.’
I sighed and rolled gingerly onto my back, swimming in the medication and fighting to keep my head clear. ‘The answer is always a pullover, cargo pants, and hiking boots.’
‘I used to make myself bracelets out of bark.’
‘And that’s why they assigned me to be your cultural ambassador.’
‘Right. Thanks for showing me that part about prison breaks. I think I’ll fit in pretty well now.’
I laughed and immediately clutched my side, wincing.
Lucas crossed the room, laying his hand on top of mine and waiting as my breathing evened out.
‘Better?’ he asked.
‘It’s fine.’ I ignored the pain growling through the drug haze, ready to lie to anyone if it meant we could leave sooner. Most people appreciated bullshit, especially when it helped them dismiss you, but Lucas wasn’t having it. He sat next to me on the couch looking awkwardly out of place, a model for Outdoorsman magazine trying to play nurse. I attempted a smile and it didn’t hurt.
‘Swearing. Sarcasm. I think your speech therapy is almost complete.’
‘I’m a quick learner.’ He returned the smile and we stared at each other as the wind blew snow dust against the window. Sitting with Lucas, arguing with Lucas, being able to smile at Lucas without wondering how many people at Congdon were watching us – it was almost worth being shish-kebabbed on a stump of rebar. He must have been thinking along the same lines, because he bowed his head and gave my hand a hesitant kiss.
‘It’s still hard to believe I’m free, that we’re here together.’
The warmth of his breath against my knuckles cut through the medication in my system, providing a sudden, not unwelcome point of focus. ‘They’re going to be looking for you. You’re not safe here.’
‘I dreamed about this, about being with you.’ He worked his way up, tracing the outside of my arm like he was drawing a picture in the snow, then his eyes flickered up, narrowing. ‘Except in my dreams you weren’t bleeding.’
I propped myself against the cushions and trapped his face between my hands, arresting his attention. ‘Ice-in is almost here. Soon the lakes will be frozen over. I want to come with you, but—’