Think. Think. And then I realized what I hadn’t done.
I bent low and, with the last of my will, pulled the bottom of the door up and inward, toward me. A hinge somewhere above my head creaked and crackled.
Clear air rushed in, along with the sound of a hard breeze rustling the pines. I stood for a moment in the stage of the open garage door, torn hands, raw skin, the wound on the back of my skull furious from the exertion.
The trees waited to see what I would do.
I noted the spot of moonlight on the surface of the lake, and limped in the opposite direction. Hoping for road.
Chapter Forty-one
The trees began to say my name.
I stumbled through the woods, briar and brush, everything throwing itself in my way. Stumbled for miles without ever finding the dirt path the truck had taken. I did not find a gravel road. Just trees.
Trees, trees, and more trees, someone had said.
A million years ago.
I wanted to put my head down. My head, so heavy. But I fought on, banging into a tree stump, tripping over a fallen log in the dark.
“Trees, trees, and more trees,” I said. I liked the way it sounded, my voice alive in the dead silence. Trees, trees, and more trees. The guy who’d said it first had been lost in the woods in his lifetime. He wasn’t just making noise. “Trees, trees.”
I felt the trees nod toward me for a closer look.
“I’m not crazy,” I said.
The wind picked up. Dry leaves from under my feet rose into the wind and rustled all around me. The aspens would be lifting the bellies of their leaves to the wind, the loose yellow pieces dropping to the forest floor like coins thrown into a fountain. I wished I would live to see it. A storm was a beautiful thing.
The pines nodded deeply.
I warmed to their solicitude. “Trees, trees,” I sang.
At the first gray of predawn, my foot hit gravel. I stood in the middle of a thin stretch of pale, crushed rock. From where I stood, the road seemed to lead out of forest and back into forest. But I knew it wasn’t true. It was a road, and it would take me.
“Thank you.”
The trees bowed extravagantly, showing me which way. I didn’t know which way. I took their recommendation.
I started down the road, right down the middle. No one could miss me. I could not be passed by.
But after a while I had to watch my feet. The gravel kept rolling away and taking my shoes with it. The road was trying to buck me. I’d have to walk to the side of the road.
The scrub next to the road was thick and punishing. I was too tired, too slow.
What if the woman, the bad woman—I couldn’t quite come up with her name—what if she came back to check on me?
The forest presented itself as the best idea of all. I returned to it.
And then the trees began to call my name.
They didn’t have one voice, but many. Anna. The high wind made their song hard to hear. Leeanna.
I stumbled through the trees, patting as many as I could, thankful they could stand when I couldn’t.
Anna, they sang. And just before I might have found the courage to answer, I tripped over a limb. I fell to my knees, pine needles carpeting the blow to my palms.
I let myself meet the ground, soft. I could rest here. All the rest of it would take care of itself. This was my job, my only responsibility.
Lie down among the trees, home.
IN MY OWN grave.
I blinked. Above, a canopy of trees and a daytime sky.
I was soaked. The rains had come and gone while I slept. It had not felt like sleeping and now waking did not feel like waking.
“Dead,” I said, to test the theory.
The only dry spot was the ground under my body. I began to shiver. The trees stood straight and disappointed. They had gathered around to watch.
I reached for one of them and pulled myself up.
The wind had died back down. Nothing chirped or sang. The woods behind me were waiting. They’d heard something.
Then I heard, too.
A car coming, on the road.
I had lost the road. I stumbled from one tree to the next, blessing each one.
Through the trunks I saw a black truck. Just as I might have dreamed it. Just as I would have conjured it.
I propelled myself forward, body stiff, lungs burning. I was too late. The truck passed, kicking up clouds of dust.
Black truck, Indiana plates on the back.
It was the sheriff. I had no idea how or why. I threw myself into the dust, into the road, and tried to make any noise I could think of. I knelt in the road and grabbed handfuls of gravel to throw.
A half mile down the road, the truck’s brake lights glowed red. It stopped, paused, and began to reverse toward me. It skidded to a stop, another cloud of silver dust billowing over me, into my eyes. The figure of a broad-shouldered man hurried toward me.
“Sheriff,” I said, my voice a croak. I thought I had never been more happy. My eyes stung. I turned my head away, coughing. “Russ.”
He pulled me gently from the ground and I let him.
“What the hellfire happened to you?”
Not the sheriff. I tried to stand on my feet. But still—someone. I would take any help now, any help at all.
“—looking all over for you,” the man was saying. “—how the hell you managed it—”
I knew the voice.
“—what you’re even doing here—”
Bo Ransey.
“No,” I screamed, and swung my arms.
“Hey, hellcat.” He backed away, raising his hands in surrender.
“Not after that.”
“Can you get yourself in the truck?” he said.
“Not after all that.”
“Didn’t think so. Here—”
“Get away from me, I swear to God.”
“We’re at a real standoff, then.”
I took a step backward into the brush. Wobbling.
“You’re a mess,” he said. He watched me take another step. “You’re not going to get far.”
“Sorry you weren’t around to help?”
“How are you way out here and your truck is being pulled out of the Midnight right now? This lake isn’t even on the same chain as the Midnight.”
“I’m not buying that innocent look.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Or that one.” I took another step backward, my shoe sliding in the loose gravel at the edge of the road.
“Where you going? There’s not going to be anything left of you, you keep walking that way. Nothing but trees.”
“The trees are—” My friends. My army. I didn’t want him to know how outnumbered he was but then I lost my balance and slid down the embankment on my knee. I couldn’t stand. “I want—a glass of water.”
“Got a Coke in the truck.”
I let myself slide the rest of the way to the ground. “I wouldn’t take spit from you—”
“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t get to choose from a menu right now.”