Hunter’s Baby

by Alexis Abbott

  I carefully approach her, and she glances up at me, smiling as I set the plate down beside her and take a seat. Leaning close, I pull one of the earbuds from her ear, and I put it in mine. I can hear a woman’s voice speaking, and while I haven’t listened to many podcasts, the tone of voice tells me exactly the kind of one it is. I start to pick up on the words being spoken...just as I see the smile start to fade from Blossom’s face.

  “The White Lilac killer has left his calling card in 17 different states, and there are no leads. Despite a $250,000 reward for information, there are no credible witnesses, and he’s free to kill again.”

  Blossom

  “...if anyone has any pertinent information pertaining to the case of the White Lilac killer, please notify your local PD or email us at--”

  I rip the earbud out and let it fall to my lap, pulling out the one Hunter is using, too. I hastily turn off the podcast as my heart starts to race wildly. I hadn’t known that the episode up next in my queue was about the White Lilac killer. I was just happy to listen along and share my hobby with the man I love. But I can see by the darkening look on his face that it was absolutely the wrong audio to hear together at the wrong time. Even after seeing that lilac tree through the bathroom window last night, I was able to push all suspicion out of my head. And when I came out to see the impossibly wholesome scene of Hunter bonding with Sage and Flora so sweetly, it was so easy to pretend all my worries and paranoia were just that: paranoia. Unreal. Impossible. Too silly and coincidental to be real life.

  At least not my life. I mean, I’m just a regular young woman. Sure, I’ve been through some seriously dark times, but stuff like this just doesn’t happen to me. Only, there’s no denying it now. If I can’t put together all the pieces now, then I must be totally blind. Or willingly ignorant. Or in the deepest swamps of denial.

  And I know from the look on his face that he’s thinking about the same things. He’s wracking his brain for an answer, for an explanation that won’t send me running. He’s trying to justify it in his head to make it easier to justify it all to me. But that’s now possible. This killer on the loose…what he’s done is unforgivable. It’s abhorrent. Inhuman and inhumane. I swallow hard as I stare into the dark, cinnamon-brown eyes of the man I’ve spent five long years pining for. The man whose blood runs in my precious daughter’s veins. That thought makes my head spin and my heart ache. Little Flora. The most beautiful and pure part of my world. She is too young and too good to find out the truth-- if in fact, this is the truth Hunter and I are dancing around right now.

  I tear my eyes away from him to glance over at Sage and Flora. They’re hunched over by the gently lapping waves of the shores, picking through the mud for smooth pebbles and little weeds. Sage is speaking softly to her, pointing things out and giving them names for Flora to repeat in her sweet little baby voice. There’s pure joy and awe on Flora’s face. Everything she sees, everything she touches-- all of it is unique and new and lovely to her. In her tight little universe, all new things are good things. She’s always been brave, almost reckless or headstrong. I figure she gets that from her aunt. But maybe… maybe she gets it from her father.

  And what else? What else could she have inherited from him?

  I turn to look back at Hunter, and I know I can’t wait any longer. For my sake, for Flora’s sake, I have to ask him the questions burning in my heart.

  But not here. Not in plain view of my sister and child. My eyes glance pointedly over to the cottage, and Hunter catches on. He nods slightly and offers me his hand to help me up. I don’t take it. I stand up and walk briskly to the back porch, leaning against the wood-paneled wall with my arms crossed over my chest. I don’t want to let the girls out of my sight completely, but I don’t want to be too close, either. This is not a conversation they should be privy to, not even Sage with all her sardonic wit and wisdom beyond her years. No, this is my conversation to suffer through. Alone. No matter how badly it hurts. After all, I’m the one who fell in love with a possible stranger. I’m the one who fell into bed with a potential murderer, who happily made him the father of my little girl. Perhaps this moment, this dark intersection of soft, lilac-scented fantasy and hard, pungent reality, is my punishment. My atonement for being so naive.

  As soon as Hunter joins me on the porch, he gives me an expectant, intense expression, as though he’s waiting for me to take the first leap. So I take it.

  “Who are you?” I hiss under my breath, never taking my eyes off of him.

  The question seems to wound him like a knife to the chest, like I’ve knocked some of the air from his lungs. He scowls. “I’m exactly who you think I am, Blossom,” he replies.

  “Oh? Is that so? Well, that might not be a good thing for you, then,” I answer icily.

  “What I mean is that I am the same exact guy you met and fell for years ago. I’m the boy who stole from your neighbor. Who hopped your fence like a hooligan. The one you covered for. You saved my ass because...because you trusted me. Or so I thought,” Hunter murmurs.

  “Are you really that boy? You seem awfully different to me. And besides, you were never innocent. Not like I was. You were twenty-three, and you’d seen a lot more of the world than I had at that point. More even than I have now. I was just a stupid, naive, clueless little teenage idiot and you saw easy prey, didn’t you?” I accuse softly.

  Hunter blinks several times, looking totally taken aback by the accusation. He holds up both his hands in surrender, shaking his head. “Whoa. What? Where is this coming from? I never saw you as prey, Blossom. You know how I felt about you then. You know how I feel about you now, too. You were an angel to me, straight from heaven. But I never once thought you were gullible or stupid or whatever you’re accusing right now,” he insists. “I loved you because you were good and pure. Because you had a kind heart. Because you were beautiful. The same reasons I still care for you so much today. I never stopped loving you, Blossom. I swear.”

  I can feel a lump forming in my throat. “God, this is so hard to talk about. It’s so hard to reminisce and pretend everything is sunshine and roses. Our love story isn’t as sweet and serendipitous as I once believed,” I tell him bitterly. “I had my suspicions, but I shoved them away. Even back then, I knew so little about you, about where you came from. I never asked because in my mind, it didn’t matter. It was pointless. Irrelevant. All I cared about were the moments we spent together, holding hands and kissing and cuddling under the lilacs.”

  He takes a cautious step forward. “That is all that matters,” Hunter asserts.

  I shake my head. “No. No, it’s not. You’re hiding things from me, Hunter. Big, scary things you don’t want to talk about, and that I haven’t asked about because frankly, I was terrified to learn the truth. I should’ve known you were too good to be true.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asks, his voice low and rasping. There’s a hint of a warning in his tone, but that only spurs me on with more vitriol. I have to get to the truth, even if it means digging too deep and scratching the surface of something truly horrifying.

  “I’m talking about white lilacs, Hunter,” I tell him meaningfully.

  He pauses for a moment, then recovers. “What about them?”

  I sigh and stomp my foot, getting frustrated. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

  “Say what?” he demands in a harsh undertone.

  “That you-- that you’re-- involved,” I whisper, glancing at the girls with worry. To my relief, they are still oblivious, playing in the shallow water and reeds.

  Hunter stands up straight and crosses his thick arms over his powerful chest, looming over me with a dark look on his handsome face. “Involved in what, Blossom? If you want to accuse me of something, you have to be more specific,” he says.

  “Hunter, you wouldn’t hurt someone, would you?” I choke out, a long-held breath gasping from my throat. My arms hang limply at my sides as I beseech him. “I know you had a rough time of it growing
up, what with the foster homes and the abuse--”

  “You think that because I come from a shitty background I must be a shitty person? Is that what you’re implying here?” he asks, sounding defensive and almost hurt.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what to think or what to say or do right now,” I hiss. “How am I supposed to feel?”

  “About me?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

  I roll my eyes. “Yes. About you. About everything. About...what you do.”

  “What do I do, Blossom? Hmm? What is it you have in your imagination that you’re blaming me for?” Hunter demands in a low voice, eyes flashing. I stick out my chin defiantly.

  “Oh, so you’re going to gaslight me now? Just pretend like all of this is in my head? You never answered my question, you know,” I retort angrily.

  “What question?” he growls.

  “Would you hurt someone? Have you hurt someone in your life?” I repeat, glaring at him.

  He takes a minute, staring up at the sky as though the clouds might open up and swallow him, letting him escape my interrogation. But that rescue never comes, and finally he looks at me and gives a shrug. “Maybe. Yes. If someone deserved it, I would,” he answers quietly.

  A shiver runs down my spine. “Okay. Like who? And what? And how?” I go on.

  He sighs in exasperation, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you remember the way we used to talk sometimes? About how there are just some people in the world who are evil? Come on, Blossom. I’m not the only one with anger. You wanted to see people hurt, too. The right people. The bad ones. Men who hurt women. People who abuse children. The people who hurt you and me,” he says gruffly.

  I can feel the color draining from my face. He’s right. I did used to vent to him all the time about how restrictive and cruel my father could be. About how one time the town drunk leered at me and chased me home while I was riding my bike. I was only nine at the time, and he shouted all kinds of terrible sexual slurs and threats at me. I thought I’d buried that. But now Hunter was ripping up the sod and tearing the truth back out of the dank, decaying earth.

  “We used to talk about making them pay,” he adds, staring at me hard.

  I gulp. “Kids say stupid shit sometimes. It was just talk,” I answer meekly.

  He groans and rakes his fingers back through his thick dark hair. “No, it wasn’t just chit-chatting, Blossom. You meant it. I meant it. Both of us.”

  “I would never act on it,” I reply in a trembling voice.

  “That’s you, then,” he answers. “I’d never want you to act on it, anyway. You… you’re too good for that kind of life. You’re too good for that kind of world.”

  “So, what are you saying? That you do it so I don’t have to?” I scoff.

  He grabs my hands suddenly, holding them tight as he peers deeply into my eyes and nods firmly. “Yes, Blossom. That is exactly it. I do what I do so that I can keep the world a safer place for you. And for Sage. And for our daughter,” he explains.

  I tear my hands away from him and stumble back a step, nostrils flaring. “Don’t you talk about my little girl that way. Don’t you involve her in any of-- whatever it is you do,” I snap.

  Again, my heart aches to see the hurt look in his eyes. I hate this. Every part of this is like a knife wrenching into my very soul, but I can’t just ignore it. Not now that I’m a mother.

  “She’s mine, too,” Hunter says slowly and softly. “You might have kept her from me for five years, but you can’t take back what you said about Flora being my daughter.”

  “I didn’t keep her from you on purpose,” I reply angrily. “I had no idea where you were. I looked for you, Hunter. But you were off doing god knows what while I was raising our child. And besides, now that I know what kind of man you really are, I have to-- I have to take her away. She can’t be around you. It’s too dangerous.”

  Pain and fury flashes in his dark eyes. “You can’t. Please, Blossom. I’ve only just met her and I already adore her. You can’t just rip her away from me before I even get a chance to know my own daughter.”

  “I am her mother. I am her guardian. Her legal guardian,” I specify. “And I have to do what’s best for her, even if...even if it hurts me.”

  “And you think she’ll be safe with you? Really? You want to be a crime journalist, you say, but do you understand how dangerous that is?” Hunter protests.

  I glare at him. “Right. It’s much more dangerous to be the one reporting on the crime rather than the one committing the crime,” I hiss coldly.

  I see that muscle twitch in his jaw, the one that tells me he’s pissed but he’s holding himself back. I know he won’t hurt me. Despite all the other horrors he might be capable of, I can sense beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’d sooner jump off a cliff than harm a hair on my head or our daughter’s head. But the truth is, that’s not enough.

  “I-- you know I would keep her safe, no matter,” Hunter insists. My heart sinks. I was hoping he would respond to my accusation with indignant denial, that he would set me straight and clear the air of any suspicion. But instead, he’s just dancing around the subject. He’s lying by omission. And suddenly, I know my worries are bound up in truth.

  Hunter is essentially confessing to me that I’m correct, that I have the true suspect right in front of me. All my research, all my podcasts, all my preparation-- none of it could have prepared me for the truth. The reality that the man I love so much, the man who is the father of my child...is a killer.

  Suddenly, it becomes absolutely adamant to me that we get out of here. I need to retreat. I need to leave this place, this horrid town of death and disappointment and decaying dreams. I have to get the hell out of Ithaca and go back home to Albany. The sooner the better.

  Without another word to Hunter, I tear away from him and rush down the steps of the porch. As I approach the girls, Sage notices me first, and her smile fades quickly to a suspicious scowl. I widen my eyes at her but don’t say anything. She catches on that something is very wrong, but we’re in sync enough to know without mentioning it that we have to put on brave faces for Flora. So I somehow manage to reconfigure my face into some semblance of a smile and pick up Flora from behind, scooping her up into my arms. She lets out a delighted shriek and peal of laughter, surprised to see me. She wriggles around in my arms to hug me, her pudgy little legs wrapping around me as she rests her head on my shoulder. My stomach twists painfully when I notice the white lilac still tucked in her hair from earlier.

  “Okay, little one, it’s time to say bye-bye to the water,” I tell her softly.

  “But I have fun, Mommy,” she protests, surprised.

  “I know, baby, but we can always come back another time. Mommy needs to go home, okay? Are you ready for a long ride in the car? I’ll buy you a big girl ice cream if you behave,” I plead with her. I’m usually not the kind of mother to use bribery on my child, but this… this is an unusual situation, and it calls for unusual tactics.

  I can tell Flora is upset by this news. Her little chin is quivering as she gazes out at the lake with longing. I give her a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “Come on, sweetheart. Can you put on a big, brave smile for Mommy?” I ask her softly.

  After a big sigh, she nods. “Okay, Mommy. I be good. Bye-bye water!” she calls out, waving her chubby little hand at the lake.

  Sage joins in, giving her a smile and adding, “Bye-bye, lake! See you later.”

  I mouth the words thank you to my sister as we turn and start marching back to the house. To my mingled horror and relief, Hunter is no longer standing on the back porch. He’s nowhere to be seen at all. I can’t imagine where he might’ve gone, because even when we get inside the house and start hurriedly packing up our stuff, I don’t see him. I wonder if maybe he got pissed off and decided to go on a long walk or something.

  At least, that’s what I tell myself as I load up my little family into the car. Just as I’m buckling Flora into her booster seat, I notic
e the white lilac in her hair again. I reflexively reach to remove it but then stop myself, biting my lip. Flora looks at me blankly, like she has no idea why I’m staring at her so strangely. I quickly force a smile and decide to leave the lilac be. I just can’t bring myself to take it away from her. Not yet, anyway. I close the side door and slide behind the wheel, taking a deep breath. With one last hard look at the cabin, I start the engine, nearly peeling out in my haste to get on the road. I drive for awhile in silence, my hands shaking and white-knuckled on the wheel as I try desperately to shake the image of that long, sharp hunting knife from my brain.

  But just as I’ve put enough miles between us and the cottage to start to breathe a little, I notice that someone is most definitely following us a little bit behind. I know I’m paranoid and shaken up right now, but there’s no denying it. There’s a car tailing us, and for all I know, it could be Hunter, coming after me to take back what belongs to him. By force.

  Blossom

  “Blossom, you alright?” asks Sage, jolting me from my panicked train of thought. I shake my head a little, as though to throw off my concern, and give her a weak, rather unconvincing smile in the rearview mirror. She quirks an eyebrow at me and tilts her head to one side-- a look I am extremely familiar with. It’s as if to say, Don’t lie to me, sis.

  “I’m fine, yeah. Just, um, noticing some traffic starting to form way back behind us. I hope they don’t catch up and start tailgating my car or anything,” I lie, forcing a chuckle.

  But my little sister knows me better than anyone. We have spent way more than enough time together for her to catch onto even my subtlest, most hidden changes in mood. I can tell she doesn’t want to raise an alarm and risk scaring Flora, though, and I’m with her on that. My little girl is already kind of put out by our hasty retreat from the cabin, since she was having such a blast down by the water, and the last thing I need right now is to freak her out.