She looked, but could see nothing. The branches of the trees moved, creating a faint rustling. Odd: she had felt no breeze.
‘Are you sure?’
‘There was a man among those trees. I’m sure of it. Hey! Hey! Over here! We’re lost. We need a little help.’ He put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. ‘Sonofabitch. I think he’s heading away from us. Hey! Hey!’
Andrea still couldn’t see anyone, but she joined in with her husband’s shouts, just in case the man was concerned at the presence of a solitary male on his territory.
‘Please,’ she called. ‘We don’t mean any harm. We just need to get back on the trail.’
Chris folded the map and stuffed it into his rucksack.
‘Come on,’ he said to her.
‘Come on where?’
‘We’re going after him.’
‘What? Are you crazy? If he doesn’t want to help us, that’s his business. Chasing after him isn’t going to make things better.’
‘Jesus, Andrea, there has to be some kind of code of the forest, right? It’s like the law of the sea. You don’t leave people stranded when they’re in trouble. All we’re looking for is directions.’
Andrea had never heard of a code of the forest, and she was pretty sure that none existed. Even if it did then, just as with the law of the sea, there would be those who did not abide by it. She didn’t know what the forest equivalent of a pirate might be, and she didn’t want to find out. People went missing in these woods, and some of them were never found again. They couldn’t all have been eaten by bears, could they?
‘What if he has a gun?’ she said.
‘I don’t have a gun. Why would he shoot me? You know, Deliverance was just a movie. Anyway, that was somewhere in the South. They’re different down there. This is Maine.’
He set off after the man only he had seen. Andrea trailed after him. She had no choice. The woods were thick, and she didn’t want to lose sight of her husband. The only thing worse than being in their current situation would be to find herself in it alone. He was setting a fast pace now. That was Chris all over. Once he eventually got an idea fixed in his head, he’d pursue it full speed to its conclusion. Like a lot of men she knew, he couldn’t follow more than one clear line of thought for any length of time, but he had a determination that she sometimes lacked.
‘Wait up, Chris,’ she said.
‘We’ll lose him.’
‘You’ll lose me.’
He paused, his left hand outstretched to her from the top of a small incline while he continued to look ahead.
‘Is he still there?’
‘No. Hold on, he’s back again. He’s staring at us.’
‘Where?’ She strained her eyes, squinting into the forest gloom. ‘I still can’t see him.’
‘I think he’s raising his arm. He wants us to follow him. Yep, that’s definitely it. He’s showing us the way.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘What else would he be doing?’
‘Uh, leading us deeper into the woods?’
‘Why would he want to do that?’
Because people are just bad, sometimes. Because he means to hunt us.
‘I don’t know. He might want to steal from us.’
‘He wouldn’t have to lead us deeper into the forest to do that. He could just hold us up right here.’
Chris had a point, but she still felt uneasy.
‘Let’s just be careful, okay?’
‘I’m always careful.’
‘No you’re not. That’s how I got pregnant with Danielle, remember?’
He flashed that grin at her, the one that had attracted her back at college, the one that had made her climb into bed with him the first time, and she responded in kind with that sly, sexy smile that always caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise up, and other parts of him to rise too, and both of them made the same wish: that they were in bed together with a bottle of wine half-drunk beside them, and the taste of it on their lips and tongues as they kissed.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said.
‘I believe you,’ she replied. ‘But no more hiking for a while after this, promise?’
‘Promise.’
She took his hand, and he squeezed it. As she stood beside him she saw the man for the first time. Perhaps it was the cloud cover combining with the natural gloom of the forest, but it seemed to her that he was dressed in some kind of a cloak. He wore a hood over his head, so that she could not see his face. He was clearly beckoning to them, though. Her husband had been right about that.
She felt an ache in her stomach, a cold pain. She’d always had a good sense about other people, although Chris just tended to smile indulgently when she spoke of it. Men were different. They were less attuned to their own potential vulnerability. Women needed that added awareness of the dangers that surrounded them. She’d passed it on to their girls, she hoped, attuning them to it. This man meant them some harm: she was sure of it. She was just glad that the girls were safe with her parents in Albany and not out here in the woods. She tried to speak, but then Chris’s hand slipped from hers, and he was moving again, following the slowly waving figure, following him deeper and deeper into the woods.
And she followed after.