Nathan laughed without humor. “Don’t I care about what? My father being gone? My father killing someone?”
Angel shrugged apologetically as she answered, “Both.”
Nathan sighed. As he turned toward her, his eyes were tired, and Angel caught a glimpse of the same shame and sadness she had seen in the boy she had known years ago. “Yes, I care. I hate everything about who my father is and what he’s done, but I can’t change either of those things. I learned a long time ago that I can’t blame myself for all the things my father’s done. If I did, I think I’d’ve given up a long time ago.”
Abruptly, Nathan’s tone changed and he gestured to the building in front of them. Almost without Angel realizing it, they had come to a stop in front of the small cabin they had gradually been approaching.
“You can sleep inside tonight. I’ll sleep in the loft of the barn.” He shook his head as Angel opened her mouth to protest. “It’s not far enough into fall to be cold at night yet, and the barn holds warmth well, especially with the animals inside. I’ll be fine.” His tone held the certainty of knowledge, and Angel suspected he had spent more than a few nights in the barn loft in years past.
Angel hesitantly approached the cabin door. As she raised her hand to push the door open, she looked over her shoulder at Nathan, but he was already leading the mare to the barn, his back toward her. She raised the latch on the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
The room was dim, the last vestiges of the fading daylight filtering through a small, west-facing window. A wooden table stood in the middle of the room, flanked by two chairs. On the table was a lamp, which Angel lit. The light that blossomed from the flame flickered on the walls and warmed the room with a welcoming glow.
With the increased light, Angel’s attention was drawn to more details—a fireplace to the right, pots and pans stacked on shelves against the back wall, a mattress pushed up against the wall near the fire, and a door leading to a back room.
The back room was empty, except for a large mattress. She paced nervously around the table in the first room, then sat, then stood again, all the while watching the front door, unsure of what to do. In the end, it was the tiredness that made the decision for her.
The chair drew her in first—a welcome relief to her aching feet. She unlaced her boots and gingerly removed them, and then her stockings. There were blisters on her feet, but she breathed a sigh of relief to see that none of them had broken, although a few had come close. Then, as she sat, elbows leaned against the table, head in her hands, the flickering flame of the lamp lowered her eyelids. They were so heavy.
It wasn’t until her chin slipped off of her cupped hand and her head jerked toward the table that the spell of the lamp was broken. And then she stopped caring which bed she should choose or what Nathan might think. All she wanted was to let her exhausted body sleep. Angel made her way to a room, a bed. She barely had time to offer a silent prayer heavenward, Lord keep us safe, and then she was asleep.
***
Her body felt heavy, her lungs thick, slow—like they did when she dreamed she was underwater. It was dark, not because there was no light, but because she couldn’t force her eyelids to open more than a crack. As she slowly floated to the surface, back to consciousness, the sound of the slightest breath escaped her lips, and she turned her head. With her movement came the sound of shattered glass crunching against the wood floor. She was on the floor—how did she get on the floor? Her eyes flickered open. There was so much glass. She could feel it pressing into her hair, stinging against her skull. There was blood on the glass. She didn’t know if it was hers. Every part of her body hurt.
Suddenly, some of the weight lifted off her, and she realized the heaviness she had felt had not been entirely because of her unconsciousness. Her stomach remembered before her mind did, and she found herself retching on the floor as the memories came back in flashes—a single gunshot, one man collapsing, another man leering, her head smashing into the glass mirror behind the bar, bottles breaking and alcohol running down the wall and onto the floor. Fading consciousness, hands on her shoulders, pushing her down. And then, a weight. A weight so heavy it made it hard to breathe.
Her body had hurt then—her throat raw from a silent scream, her muscles bruised from hands that held too tight and wooden corners and edges and lines that didn’t give, her skin stinging from glass shards, her chest caving in on itself knowing that Tom, her uncle, was dead. But now, as the weight lifted from her, there was a new pain.
As the last of the unconsciousness left her, she was finally able to open her eyes, knowing what would greet her. The man stood in front of her, but he was only a dark silhouette against the light of the window. Even without seeing his expression, she could feel the leer stretch across his face as her eyes opened. Then, as if he hadn’t done enough, he left her with one parting stroke. “Angel, no more,” he breathed.
And then he turned and walked out the door.
***
Angel woke screaming. Somehow, the voice she could never find in her nightmares always found her in the waking moments. At first it had seemed strange to her, the juxtaposition of wakeful and nightmarish reality, but as time passed and the nightmares continued, she had slowly realized that even when she was awake, the nightmare was her reality. After that, it no longer seemed so strange. Only cold.
She shuddered with a chill that came from inside, not out, and pulled the blankets up around her ears and rolled back to her side. A frantic pounding on the door sent another jolt of fear and adrenaline rushing through her body.
“Angel, are you all right?” Nathan’s anxious voice reached her through the door.
“Yes,” she tried to reply, but the whisper she managed didn’t have a chance of being heard over the sound of his hand against the door.
“Angel?” Nathan asked more loudly. The pounding on the door escalated. Angel sighed and, wrapping the blankets around herself, walked to the door.
“Yes,” she tried again. This time, the sound that escaped her throat was a hoarse croak, but Nathan heard her, and the pounding on the door stopped. There was a brief pause, then, “What happened?” Nathan asked. His voice was slightly calmer, but still held an edge.
“I’m fine,” Angel reassured him, although she knew no amount of reassurance was likely to counteract the effect of waking up to screams in the middle of the night. “I just . . . I have nightmares sometimes.”
“Oh.” Nathan was silent, then said, “I have those sometimes too.”
“What about?” As soon as Angel asked the question, she wished she could take it back. It was too close. She wasn’t sure she would have wanted to answer if he had asked her the same, and besides, she could already guess what he would say.
Angel heard Nathan exhale deeply on the other side of the door. Then came a soft thud and the sound of heavy fabric sliding against wood, like he had leaned his back against the door and then slid down against it to sit on the floor. Angel copied his movements and slid down to sit with her back against the door. It felt closer—warmer—sitting this way, back to back, even with the hardwood between them. She was grateful for the distance provided by the door. Somehow it made the closeness feel safer. The shivers that had held her since she had woken slowly relaxed their grip.
“Sometimes I dream about my father,” Nathan answered her question. “When I was younger, I’d have nightmares about my father coming home drunk and beating me. I could never get away. Now, I have dreams where my father is hurting someone else, and I can’t do anything to stop it. Sometimes I think it’s my mother. Sometimes I think it’s just a younger version of myself. Once . . .” Nathan paused, and the drawn-out silence was painful. He continued, and admitted, “Once it was you.”
“Me?” Angel was startled. She was glad he couldn’t see her eyebrows pinch together from the other side of the door. “Why me?”
Nathan chuckled faintly, but without humor. Someday, Angel thought, I would like to hear that sound whe
n there is really laughter behind it.
“It was a while after we had met the first time. You were so different from anyone I had ever known. You were the only person I’d met who didn’t judge me by my father’s actions.
“One night my father got drunk and beat me the worst I think he ever has. I was so sick that night. I was lying there on the bed, and swearing to myself that as soon as I got better I was going to run, to leave for good. I remembered you, and what you had done the last time my father had hit me when my back was all tore up, and how it had stopped hurting—how I had stopped hurting. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and then my father came in and sat down beside me and said, ‘Nathan, what would I do without you?’ I didn’t answer, just kept staring at the wall, and he just kept looking at me. Finally, I said, ‘I don’t know, I guess you’d have to find someone else to knock around.’ And then he laughed, and he said, ‘That’s right, son. I guess I would.’ Then he went and brought the doctor—told him I’d got bucked off a horse. When my father left the room and I heard him say, ‘He’s all yours, doc,’ and the doctor came in. He knew my father was lying—wouldn’t look me in the eye the whole time he was there.
“Anyhow, the point is, that night was the first night I dreamed about my father that he wasn’t hurting me. He was hurting someone else—you—and I couldn’t do anything about it except watch, because I wasn’t really there.”
Angel didn’t know what to say, other than to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. “Is that why you’ve stayed—to keep your father from hurting someone else?”
In the silence, she could almost hear him shrug on the other side of the door. “Maybe.”
There was a pause, then Nathan continued. “After that night, things changed. I changed—I wasn’t scared anymore. I think my father knew something was different. It was right after that he started leaving. At first, it was just a day or two at a time. Then toward the end, he would leave for weeks at a time. Now . . .” Nathan’s voice trailed off, and Angel finished the sentence for him.
“Now he’s gone.”
“Now he’s gone,” Nathan echoed, then continued. “The only times I’ve thought of leaving were when my father was here. But now, I’ve put more sweat into this place than he ever thought about. I’ve made this place mine in every way that matters, and now it’s mine by law.
“When I was young, I used to dream of escaping from my father. It’s been a long time since I’ve been afraid of him though.”
Angel wrapped the blanket more tightly around herself. As she did, a faint glow caught her eye. It was barely there, the scrap of light, leftover like bread crumbs brushed from the kitchen table, straggling from the west window to find its way through the gap between the wood floor and bottom of the door. The glow was more of a lesser darkness than anything else, but she had been sitting in the blackness for so long that even that faint glimmer stood out.
“It’s getting light outside,” she observed out loud.
“You should go back to sleep and get some rest,” Nathan said. He shifted, and it sounded like he was standing.
“What about you?” Angel asked quickly. She could feel the brief closeness they had shared start to evaporate, and she wanted to hold on to it for as long as possible.
“It’s about time I was up anyway,” Nathan answered. “I’ve got plenty to do today.”
“Can I help?” Angel asked.
Nathan didn’t answer right away. When he did, there was finality in his tone. “You can rest.”
“Nathan?” Angel raised her voice in question one last time. When she heard him pause his movements outside the door, she asked, “Why did you tell me this tonight?”
There was silence as Nathan considered his response. Finally, he spoke. “Everyone knows about my father. That’s nothing new. As for the rest of it . . . I suppose sometimes it’s easier to trade secrets in darkness than daylight.”
Angel waited for him to continue, but all he said was, “Get some rest, Angel.” She heard the sound of footsteps on the wooden floor, the front door squeaking as it opened and closed, and then, once more, silence. Her eyes were heavy as she crawled back into bed, but this time, she knew she would sleep without nightmares. Nathan was gone, but the feeling of safety remained, surrounding her until she drifted into dreamless sleep.
Chapter 6
Maybe saving my brother was my first mistake.
***
The next morning, Angel awoke to the feeling of coarse fabric pressing against her cheek. Sleep departed slowly, and as her awareness grew, her senses were torn between startled unfamiliarity and the enveloping comfort of the bed. The crack of light underneath the bedroom door had brightened to a dim glow. A muffled and rhythmic thunk, thunk came from outside, and curiosity pulled her from beneath the covers. She dressed quickly and followed the sound to the back of the cabin.
Nathan was splitting firewood. His movements were smooth, practiced. He grinned as he saw Angel come around the corner of the cabin. It was an action so ordinary that it caught Angel off guard.
Are we going to pretend that what we are doing is normal? Angel thought, but in spite of her misgivings, she found herself grinning back.
Today, she thought with an inward smile, today, we will pretend.
***
Nathan looked up from the stump where he was splitting firewood to see Angel walk around the corner of the cabin. He smiled at her, and as she smiled back, he remembered the question she had asked a day earlier—when you wake up, will you want to pretend this is all a dream, or will you want to believe it is real?
He turned back to his work, the worn wood of the axe sliding across his palm as he swung it over and down, over and down. Finally, as the axe settled into the wooden stump with a thunk and Nathan turned to walk toward Angel, wiping his hands on his pants, his mind wandered over the events from the day before. He sat down across from her with the sun kissing the tops of their heads and the dew carrying the sweet smells of earth and grass upward as it evaporated, and he couldn’t help thinking that in spite of the nightmares of the night before, or maybe because of them, this morning seemed more dream than reality. But he wanted it to be real.
They sat in silence for a moment until their eyes met, and then Nathan spoke the first thing that came to mind. “How’d you sleep?” he asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Any more nightmares?”
“No.”
“I’m glad.” Nathan started to stand, but Angel interrupted him.
“I want to help while I’m here."
Her eyes were earnest, almost pleading, and Nathan thought he understood what Angel hadn’t spoken—it was better to be busy than to be left with too much time to think. Being left alone with one’s thoughts was sometimes dangerous.
Nathan sighed at her persistence, then smiled and offered her a hand to help her stand. “All right, let’s see what we can find for you to do around here.”
As Angel stood, Nathan mentally scanned the cabin and surrounding property. Now that his father was gone, Nathan was accustomed to keeping up with the work himself. He didn’t want to ask more of Angel than she was capable of—he didn’t know if she knew anything about the day-to-day chores that Nathan took for granted—but he also suspected she wouldn’t take kindly to being assigned a task simply to keep her busy.
In the end, he settled on having her help with what he had already planned to do that day—restuff the mattresses in the cabin and move one of the mattresses out to the barn. He had cut grass for hay two days prior. The weather had been sunny and warm since, so he expected the hay would be fully dried.
They gathered armfuls of sweet-smelling hay until the mattresses were full. As Angel stuffed the last of the hay into the mattress, Nathan caught himself staring at her slightly flushed cheeks and the strands of hair that had escaped her long, dark braid to cling damply to her forehead in the humidity. Angel noticed his gaze and self-consciously lifted a hand to the side of her fac
e.
“Is something wrong?” she asked anxiously.
“No, no, nothing is wrong,” he hastily reassured her, and she uncertainly resumed fastening the buttons on the end of the mattress. He snuck one last glance at her before joining her. Even amid the darkness, and frustration, and exhaustion of the day before, Angel had been pretty. Today, in the sunlight and with the task at hand to distract her from darker thoughts, she was beautiful.
“There.” Angel sat back as she finished the last of the buttons. “That’s the last of it. Shall we hurry and take them back?” She glanced upward. “It feels like it is going to rain.”
Nathan nodded, looking at the clouds gathering above. “I think you’re right. The leaves are starting to turn over, anyway.”
He shouldered the first mattress—it was more cumbersome than heavy—and together he and Angel began making their way back toward the cabin, walking easily in silence.
After Nathan had deposited the first mattress in the cabin, he left Angel to make up the bed, and set off at a jog to retrieve the second mattress before the storm hit. He couldn’t help stopping to inhale deeply when he hit the edge of the meadow. The wind was starting to pick up, bringing the scent of rain, and something sharper, with it.
A troubled Angel was waiting for him when he arrived back at the cabin. “Nathan,” she interrupted him as he carried the mattress to the barn. He turned to face her. Gone was the weightless girl from earlier in the afternoon. That light had faded with the sunlight, replaced by the storm clouds within and above. He smiled sadly, but Angel didn’t notice. She was twisting her hands and didn’t seem to know where to look.
“The barn, does it leak?” she asked anxiously.
Nathan was startled. “Well, I guess I’ve never slept there when it was raining before,” he hastily reassured her as her brows furrowed, “but the cows have never complained, and anyway, I just patched the roof this summer. It’ll be fine.”
Angel nodded slowly, but she didn’t seem convinced.
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