by Mindy Mejia
He laughed, more a rumble of chest against my shoulder than actual noise.
“Thank you, Maya Stark, for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome, Lucas Blackthorn. Any time.”
The sound of boots thumped up a set of stairs and then a door opened and slammed again.
Harry came back into the room carrying an old, metal case and a folding chair. Lucas moved to crouch near my head while Harry examined me and I noticed for the first time I was shirtless and my sports bra was stained with sweat and blood. Unwrapping the bandage, Harry leaned over and smelled the wound, then mopped up the area under my right rib cage with alcohol swabs that felt like acid. Once clean, it looked strangely like an Easter egg had been carved out of my stomach.
“What did this?”
“Rebar. And a douche bag.”
“Good. No splinters or shrapnel from rebar or douche bags.” He consulted a small, worn manual. “Might have nicked your liver, but it doesn’t look too deep. We can disinfect and sew you up. I don’t have much for pain, though.”
Lucas went to the car and brought back the first aid kit, where I’d stored all the stolen medicine from Congdon. I argued—those pills were for Josiah, not me—but Lucas wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was speaking. He handed the whole thing to Harry and wrapped his hands around mine, maybe for comfort, maybe to keep me from knocking the kit away. Harry found some lidocaine spray and doused the area, then stared at the blood still pooling in the center of the wound while waiting for the anesthetic to take effect.
“That’ll help some, but might still hurt when I stitch it. Do you drink?” Harry asked.
“No.”
“That’s good. But it’s not a bad day to start.”
I could feel the needle when he began piercing the skin, but the lidocaine dulled the worst of it. After Harry stitched the wound he told us we needed to eat. I didn’t think I could, but Harry cooked us venison steaks and fries like it was the most natural thing to do at three in the morning, then pulled up chairs in front of the couch so he and Lucas could dig in. He didn’t ask us what we were doing here, why Lucas wore a state-issued smock and pants, or why I looked like the loser of a vicious street brawl. He joked about the patchy electricity as his lamp flickered and turned off at random. Raccoons in the lines, or maybe mice.
“It’s been a while, girl,” Harry said as Lucas practically licked the juice from his empty plate.
“Eight years. Give or take.”
“She don’t call. She don’t write. She just shows up, bloody, every decade or so.”
Lucas sat up straight. “Is this where . . . ?” He let the question hang.
“I used to see this girl every summer when she and her mom came up to their cabin over there.” He waved through the wall, as if Lucas could see it. I tried not to think about what lay beyond the wood paneling and the darkness outside. “Only neighbors I could stand. Quiet. Kept to themselves. Probably ran into them more paddling the Waters than I ever did on our property line.”
Lucas dropped his fork on the carpet and barely noticed. “Wait. We’re in the Boundary Waters?”
Harry nodded. “Starts at this shoreline here and stretches right out to heaven.”
Lucas half turned and his eyes lit up with the knowledge. The impulse to get up, to escape into the forest, shimmered through him as clear as sunlight and I felt torn in half—wanting him to disappear, to leave before the authorities found us, and yet aching for him to stay, to keep looking at me the way he had ever since I lifted that ski mask and showed him who I was.
“The last time I saw this one”—Harry gestured to me with his steak knife—“I’d been out fishing on Basswood all day and what do I find when I pull up in front the house? A gangly girl, sitting cross-legged on my front step with dried blood covering her face. She stared at me like she’d been waiting all day and I was late.
“Are you all right? I asked.
“I killed someone over there. She pointed toward their cabin. With this rock, she added and held it up, like she’d be happy to use it again if I took a wrong step. It gave her a power, I saw. She was safe with that rock.
“I went to the cooler in the back of my pickup and held up the pike I’d caught. I fished these today, I said. Have to go around back and clean them. Do you want to come?”
Harry rocked a little as he told the story, looking past this room to a place where only the two of us could go. I closed my eyes and let myself remember.
“I didn’t know what she was going to do. She might have disappeared if I turned away, so I was careful not to move quick, not to get too close, and she stood up and followed me to the fish house with that rock still in her hand.
“She watched me fillet each fish while I tried to figure out what to do. I’m not what you’d call a social man. I mind my own business. Don’t have much use for townsfolk or police, but in the end I didn’t see what choice I had. Brought her inside and she sat right where she’s lying now while I made the first 911 call of my life and she turned that rock over and over in her hands. When the police came, they asked her who she was. Maya, she told them before she handed over the rock. Red Maya.”
The room was quiet after Harry finished. Both men looked at their plates in the shadows of the room.
“I never thanked you,” I said after the silence had stretched out.
“Hell, it wasn’t a count your blessings kind of day.”
“But you let me in. You’re letting us in now.” The simple, rough-edged space wasn’t designed for company. There was a single couch, an old cathode ray TV sitting on a block of wood, and a row of books neatly lined on a homemade bookshelf made out of planks and stones. He’d tacked blankets up over the windows to keep out drafts and the scuffed wood floors had seen better days. In all the summers of my childhood, I’d never noticed another person on Harry’s property.
He nodded to the cross-stitch on the wall, the one piece of color in the room. “ ‘Be not simply good, be good for something.’ ”
I tried to think of a way to voice my gratitude, but an overwhelming drowsiness had begun to blanket my brain. The lidocaine was still working, easing away the pain of the stitches, inviting me into the blackness. I struggled against its pull.
“Sleep, girl. There’s still a few hours until sunup.” Harry put a small quilt over my shoulders, leaving the stitched up wound open to the air. “I’ll set your protector up on the floor next to you.”
I gave in and let myself drift off, but not before mumbling into the blanket, making one last thing clear.
“I’m his protector.”
24
* * *
I WANTED TO leave right away the next morning, but Harry and Lucas took one look at me and both insisted I needed to rest. My heart stuttered every time I heard a car pass, knowing the houses weren’t tucked far enough into the trees to be completely invisible, not with November’s bare branches. A blanket of snow had covered Butch’s car during the night, but even that camouflage wouldn’t be enough if the police connected me to the kidnapping and started canvassing the area. My mother’s cabin would be the first logical place to look. We were exposed here, vulnerable. How long would it take them to knock on this door? How long would it take my father to come home and for Butch to report his car stolen?
“Hey, it’s Maya.” I’d left a message on his voice mail before leaving the house last night. “I’m taking off for a little while. Jasper should be fine until you get back.”
My voice had almost broken on Jasper’s name, just like I’d bitten back tears when I installed the pet door going out to the backyard and topped up the automatic feeder to the three-week line. He wouldn’t need nearly that much—Dr. Mehta would contact Dad, too, as soon as it was clear I was missing—but I still felt horrible leaving him. My loyal German shepherd, my guardian and friend, had watched me go with sorrowful eyes.
The provisions, the cash purchases, the untraceable phone—none of it would have been necessary if I’d resc
ued any other patient in Congdon. The authorities couldn’t care less about Greta, or suicidal Eliza, or Big George. None of them had been featured on national news. They hadn’t been written about in Time magazine, or garnered over a hundred thousand social media fans who picketed outside the gates, or been vilified with signs reading KEEP THEM IN JAIL in the last town they’d known as home. This was Lucas Blackthorn, the boy who came back from the dead, and they weren’t going to let him off the grid again, not without a fight. So, I put Jasper out of my mind and concentrated on the present and on the fact that—so far—I was winning. I’d gotten Lucas out.
I only agreed to rest longer because of the pain. Although it was more manageable this morning, a slow walk across the living room was about all I could handle. Harry gave me some of the antibiotics from the first aid kit and didn’t listen to any of my arguments about not taking the pain pill—they weren’t meant for me, someone else needed them more than I did—and made me swallow one anyway, which turned the flame down to a warm ache and made everything else uncomfortably fuzzy. He went fishing after breakfast, trying to get the last catch before ice-in, he said, but I suspected that, even though he’d insisted we stay, three people in his house were two too many. After he left I sent Lucas to the car to retrieve the clothes I’d bought for him, and it was jarring when he walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later, to see him dressed normally.
When I commented on it Lucas gave me his this-place-is-beyond-messed-up look. “What’s normal?”
I waved to the blue all-terrain pullover and cargo pants. “That’s normal.”
He grinned. “You think that because you were born and raised in Duluth. Normal might be completely different if you came from somewhere else.”
I sighed and rolled gingerly onto my back, swimming in the medication and fighting to keep my head clear. “The answer is always a pullover, cargo pants, and hiking boots.”
“I used to make myself bracelets out of bark.”
“And that’s why they assigned me to be your cultural ambassador.”
“Right. Thanks for showing me that part about prison breaks. I think I’ll fit in pretty well now.”
I laughed and immediately clutched my side, wincing.
Lucas crossed the room, laying his hand on top of mine and waiting as my breathing evened out.
“Better?” he asked.
“It’s fine.” I ignored the pain growling through the drug haze, ready to lie to anyone if it meant we could leave sooner. Most people appreciated bullshit, especially when it helped them dismiss you, but Lucas wasn’t having it. He sat next to me on the couch looking awkwardly out of place, a model for Outdoorsman magazine trying to play nurse. I attempted a smile and it didn’t hurt.
“Swearing. Sarcasm. I think your speech therapy is almost complete.”
“I’m a quick learner.” He returned the smile and we stared at each other as the wind blew snow dust against the window. Sitting with Lucas, arguing with Lucas, being able to smile at Lucas without wondering how many people at Congdon were watching us—it was almost worth being shish-kebabbed on a stump of rebar. He must have been thinking along the same lines, because he bowed his head and gave my hand a hesitant kiss.
“It’s still hard to believe I’m free, that we’re here together.”
The warmth of his breath against my knuckles cut through the medication in my system, providing a sudden, not unwelcome point of focus. “They’re going to be looking for you. You’re not safe here.”
“I dreamed about this, about being with you.” He worked his way up, tracing the outside of my arm like he was drawing a picture in the snow, then his eyes flickered up, narrowing. “Except in my dreams you weren’t bleeding.”
I propped myself against the cushions and trapped his face between my hands, arresting his attention. “Ice-in is almost here. Soon the lakes will be frozen over. I want to come with you, but—”
He stopped my mouth with a kiss. I didn’t have a lot of experience with kissing, and none where the kiss softened you, inhaled you, twisting into your fingers and toes and making you forget, for a mindless second, that you had a seeping hole in your side. Maybe I could’ve been more clinical, felt it less, if he’d been like every other guy, steeped in all their insecurities and sexual myths about what a kiss did or didn’t mean, but Lucas possessed none of that crap. He moved slowly and artlessly, cupping my shoulders like I was a snow sculpture come to life and might break apart if he wasn’t careful.
I wove my fingers through his hair and pulled, anchoring him to me as we explored, pulses thrumming, beating faster and harder against each other in a race neither of us knew how to finish. Then I made the mistake of stretching, bowing my body to get a fraction closer, and broke away in a sharp gasp of pain.
“Are you okay?” Eyes dilated, breath unsteady, he watched me clutch my stomach.
“This is my ow.” I breathed through clenched teeth.
He laughed once and hovered anxiously, waiting until my breathing returned to normal before easing me back against the cushions. We stared at each other, inches apart, until the drugs smoothed everything over and I forgot about my stomach again.
“What will they do if they find you?” he asked.
I added up the charges. Grand theft auto, B&E, identity theft, kidnapping, and assault. “Jail. Probably prison. That’ll be a change of pace.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re coming with me.” Then he touched my cheek, frowning. “I’m not losing you now. I’m not going to trade you for him.”
“I’ll be a liability. I’ll slow you down.” My eyes drifted closed and I struggled to blink them back open.
“Get stronger.” He murmured and before I could respond, the sound of tires on gravel cut through the front yard. Lucas jumped up and checked the window, relaxing as he saw who it was. “Harry.” Then, glancing down at his new cargo pants and clearing his throat, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I grinned as he retreated down the hall.
* * *
For lunch Harry fried walleye and I was able to walk to the kitchen without too much trouble and eat at the table. The two of them talked fishing through the whole meal, swapping stories and techniques, and Lucas asked a hundred questions about licenses, regulations, and enforcement. By the time we were washing the dishes, we’d gotten a full retrospective of the DNR, the evolution of sport fishing in the Boundary Waters, and the fight against a new copper mine some of the locals had convinced Harry to join. Harry was working through a list of invasive species when Lucas glanced at me as he wiped and stacked the plates. In some other world this could be our life. A warm room at the edge of the woods, chipped plates, laughter, the call of the wind in the eaves. It flared in his eyes, too, longing for a homecoming we’d never have. After everything was cleared and cleaned, I retreated back to the couch, feeling heavy and listless, and fell into an instant, dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, I was curled into a sweaty ball. No one else was in the living room and the house was quiet.
“Lucas?”
No answer.
Carefully, I stretched my arms and legs and sat up. A jar of ibuprofen lay next to the couch and I ignored it, examining my abdomen instead. Harry’s stitches were neat and even, reminiscent of the cross-stitch that hung on the wall. A stain of blood still coated the skin around the wound, but it was dried and dark—no bright red to speak of—and when I got up to go to the bathroom the raw pain had dulled to a nagging throb. With slow movements and deep breaths, I was good as new.
I splashed some water on my face and found a rag to do a quick hospital-style sponge bath. I had clean clothes in the car if I’d felt motivated enough to attempt the trip. Instead I traded my bloody shirt for Lucas’s hospital scrubs and crept through the house, peeking in doors, looking for any sign of life.
“Harry?”
Harry’s house wasn’t big. It was a single-story rambler with a few small bedrooms clustered on one side and a living room and kitchen on t
he other. I found a door that led to a pitch-black basement, but I didn’t feel like pushing my luck on the stairs.
“You guys down there?”
Then I heard it—a cracking, punching noise from outside the cabin. I crossed to the kitchen window, searching for the source, then hurried back into the living room and pulled on my boots and coat to head into the blinding sunshine. Harry’s classic Chevy was parked next to Butch’s car in the driveway and everything from the trees to the steps were covered in a thin veil of snow. A sign posted at the end of the driveway said the same thing I’d seen in town: FRIENDS OF THE BOUNDARY WATERS. Everything was bright white and silent until suddenly the punch of noise came again, louder now, echoing off the snow-covered branches. I ran along the siding, each step becoming more painful as the hacked-up muscles in my side took the impact, and rounded the edge of the garage, wincing and panicked.
Harry sat on a tree stump, arms crossed, face into the sun, as Lucas chopped firewood. Neither of them noticed me.
I heaved out a sigh and checked the tree coverage between them and the road, gauging the distance and speed of any potential cars. If someone wasn’t looking for an escaped mental health patient, they’d drive right by without a sidelong glance and Lucas, whether by design or accident, was facing away from the street. He looked more comfortable than I’d ever seen him, swinging the axe expertly, easily breaking logs with one or two swings and stacking them into a fast-growing pile of firewood. He’d probably performed the chore a thousand times. As the landscape settled into me and the pain quit snarling, my attention drifted to a log building obscured by pine trees in the distance. The cabin. My mother’s cabin.
I could only see the snow-covered roof and part of one wall, the logs dark and worn by countless winters. Sometimes birds had built nests under the eaves, defying gravity, weaving them from forest floor debris, and as a girl I’d crept up and listened day after day, waiting for the morning when I heard those first weak cheeps.
“Here.”
