“What are we going to do?” Rachel wailed from her puddle on the forest floor.
A colossal squawking erupted from the mesh of leaves over our heads. A half dozen black crows dropped down all around us. Screeching and cawing, they battled out some crow feud, then took off and flew downriver. We watched with weary detachment.
“Wini, Rachel, get up. Come on,” Pia said.
“And do what, Pia? What’s the big plan now?” Rachel said, blue eyes naked without her glasses.
“We run.”
“We bury our friend,” Rachel said. “Or we take her with us. Or I die here.”
38
In the end we did for Sandra what we had for Rory: we covered her with stones, branches, anything we could find to protect her body. Two of the life vests and the oar had washed onto shore several yards downstream, and Dean sprinted off to retrieve them. Cutting off one of the bright orange straps, he climbed a tree with branches that hung over the river and tied it there, so we could come back for her. The more I tried to shut out of my mind the idea of wolves and other animals, the more I saw them, snarling and hungry, waiting for the night.
“We leave now,” Pia said. “We have an hour of sunlight.”
“I’m staying here,” Rachel said. She sat cross-legged near the pile of stones that covered Sandra, staring at nothing. “I’m done.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Pia bent over and grabbed her under the shoulders. “Come on, Rachel, get up.” Like a rag doll, Rachel let herself be lifted to a slouchy standing position.
Dean signed to me with quick hands. “Bullets from other side river, but she comes. Little time we have, only. We leave now.”
Pia watched Dean sign. “I don’t know what he said, and I don’t care. He needs to go.”
“Yes,” Rachel said, coming to life. She took a few steps toward Dean and stopped, marionette-like. “He needs to go back to his mother. This is fucking crazy. She’s going to kill us all.”
“No,” he signed. “We take raft and go. Everybody.”
I translated, adding, “We should do it now, because she’s crossing the river.”
“How does he know that?” Rachel sputtered. I have to think it was easier not making eye contact with him—her glasses gone—when she added, “Look, Dean, this is over. You need to go back. Stop her. Kill her.”
He glared at her.
“If you care about us at all, you can’t stay with us. Do you understand?”
Dean shook his head, rooted around in his pouch, and pulled out the plastic packet of photos.
Rachel swatted them out of his hands. He dove down, frantically gathered them, jumped to his feet. Seething, he seized her by the shoulders and rammed her up against a tree, her helmet cracking against the bark. Her round blue eyes focused on his, inches away.
“Whoa, Dean, calm down,” I said.
They stared venom into each other. Nobody moved. A full minute passed. “Take your hands off me,” Rachel said evenly.
He glanced over at me, a question. I shook my head. Still he held her there.
“I can’t fucking believe you did that, Rachel,” Pia hissed. She took a few cautious steps toward them. “Come on, Dean, you don’t want to do this, really you don’t.”
“Maybe say you’re sorry, Rachel,” I said. “Maybe mean it this time.”
“I’m not—”
“Say it.”
“Sorry about the photos.”
Dean shook Rachel by the shoulders, teeth-rattlingly hard, then shoved her away from the tree.
She fell off her feet, nearly losing her balance, but ended up stumbling off a few steps down toward the river. In a vain attempt to regain her pride she squared her shoulders and recalibrated her cockeyed helmet.
“Look, I don’t care about your goddamned family or whoever they are. This is my family, my friends here. The only family I have left, and we are down one. We are not going anywhere with you, so you may as well leave, got it? Go back. Your mother is your family, your home.”
I gazed at the pile of stones that covered Sandra, picturing not just her serene, lovely face, but her body, which had beaten back cancer, which had borne two remarkable children, one who’d arrived as easily as breathing, the other a torture to bring into the world but who became her biggest joy on earth: her boy, Ethan. All that fighting only to die in this useless, meaningless way; even the scars on her body—marks of grace—to disappear forever.
“No,” Dean signed, his face hard and unreadable. “We go to town. All of you. Safe. Come.”
I didn’t translate.
“Win, you have to tell him,” Pia said. “He’ll listen to you.”
“Dean.” I held him with my voice and my gaze, while I was seeing Marcus the day I had to tell him I was going to abandon him to the home, and in his eyes I saw how unimaginable this was for him, how I may as well have been pushing him over a cliff. “You have to go back. I’ll come for you, after we get some people to help. Do you understand?”