by Noelle Adams
“This deer?” His voice was skeptical, but he couldn’t help it. How the hell could someone tell one deer apart from another?
“Yes. This one.” She swiped away the tears. “Look at its ear.”
He did as she said, and he saw a tear down one ear, slashing the soft flesh almost in half. It had obviously been hurt in the past, and the ear healed itself up with that slash. “Oh. I see. So does it normally live around here?”
She shook her head. “It only started coming with the others to eat my apples on Tuesday. I don’t know where it was before.”
“It must have been sick,” Cade said, scanning the dead body again. He wasn’t particularly sentimental about animals, but it was strangely sad to look at the strong, young body so lifeless at his feet. “Does it normally come this far out onto the sand?”
“No. They always stay in the woods. I don’t know why it’s down here. You didn’t hurt it?” She looked back up at him, her silvery-gray eyes narrowing.
“Of course not! Why the hell would I hurt a harmless deer? I don’t even hunt.”
This was evidently the right thing to say since her face relaxed, although another tear slipped out of one eye to stream down her face.
“We can’t leave the body like this,” he said, trying to think clearly and use this opportunity to his advantage. “It will attract birds and bugs and everything.”
“No. We can’t do that.” She wrapped both arms around her chest as if she were hugging herself.
“I’ll call animal control,” Cade decided. “They’ll come out to remove the body. They might be interested in knowing what killed it anyway in case there is disease or something.”
“No. No!” She suddenly stiffened like she was about to run.
“Why not?” He knew why not, but it seemed natural to ask, so he did.
“I don’t want them here.”
The dead deer was not on her property, so she didn’t really have a say in the matter, but he wasn’t about to argue with her and get on her bad side, not when he had an in like this fall into his lap. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure what else we could do though. I guess we could bury it.”
She nodded urgently.
Cade groaned silently at the thought of all the work involved in digging a hole deep enough to bury this deer in, but he didn’t voice any of his reluctance. This was better than he could have hoped for, in terms of a way to talk to her, connect with her, get her to trust him a little. “Okay. I guess we could do that. Where do you want to bury it?”
“I know a place.”
He let out a breath, summoning his energy for the task in front of him. “Okay. Do you have a shovel? I’m on vacation, and I don’t have any tools at all.”
“I have what we need.” She gave him a long, assessing look, and he was pretty sure she was deciding whether he was someone she was willing to work with or not. “Stay here.”
Cade wasn’t used to being ordered around like that, but he didn’t object.
He stood next to the deer’s body and thought.
It would take a couple of hours to move a body this size, dig a hole, and then bury it. Surely after he’d gone to so much trouble for her, she wouldn’t send him away without a word.
This could be a means of bonding with her. Maybe she would trust him afterward—at least enough to answer some of his questions.
What he really needed was for her to be okay with hanging out with him, because he suspected she’d have to get to know him a lot more before she would start to spill any of her secrets.
Ten minutes later, Holly reappeared again. She wore a serious expression, and she was pulling a hand truck with four wheels. On the truck was a folded piece of canvas, probably to wrap the deer up in, and a large shovel.
The hand truck was a very good idea, he realized, relieved at the sight of it. He was in good shape, but he wasn’t a lumberjack or woodsman. He tried to imagine himself draping the dead deer over his shoulders and carrying it that way and almost laughed at the visual.
“Okay,” he said. “This should work. Good thing you have that hand truck.”
She didn’t comment in response. She just started to unfold the canvas cloth.
Cade supposed she would need to have a hand truck if she lived all alone and never had anyone over to help her.
“By the way,” he said, holding out a hand to her. “I’m Cade. What’s your name?”
She straightened up, staring at his hand warily.
Cade held his breath as he waited to see what she would do. If she didn’t give him her name, then his hopes of getting to know her were pretty much hopeless.
Finally she let out a breath and slowly reached out to take his hand. “I’m Holly.”
Five
Holly didn’t know why she’d told the stranger her name.
Her name wasn’t any of his business. He shouldn’t even be here. There was something decidedly strange about his happening to be on the beach on the property next door to her, when she’d seen him in the drugstore on Tuesday. She should be cautious, suspicious. The last thing she should want to do was give him her name.
But she had.
He didn’t scare her. She realized he might be up to something, but he wasn’t a danger to her. There might be ghosts dogging her steps, but he wasn’t one of them. She was absolutely sure of it. And she’d been so upset to see the deer with the injured ear dead on the beach that it had overwhelmed all her other instincts.
At first she’d assumed he had killed the deer himself, but now she realized he could help her bury it.
She’d buried another deer—one who had died on the property two years ago—but it had taken her all day and she’d barely been able to move after all the physical exertion.
Cade was strong. He could help.
Then she could send him away.
She felt a wave of grief as she leaned over to grab the two front legs of the deer. It had only been coming to feed on her land for the past couple of days, but that was long enough to feel like it was hers, like she was responsible for it.
It hurt her that it had died like this. She hated the sight of the dark, empty eyes and motionless face.
She glanced up when Cade failed to take hold of the deer’s hind legs. She raised her eyebrows at his questioning, when all he did was give her a surprised look.
He blinked and shook his head, hiding what looked like a smile. “I thought maybe you’d be more squeamish about touching it,” he said.
Together they lifted the deer onto the canvas she’d stretched out beside it and then rolled it in the canvas to lift onto the hand truck. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded since the deer was large, heavy, and awkward, and she had some trouble getting her end up enough—but eventually they got the body positioned.
“Why would I be squeamish?”
“You seemed like you… like you knew it.”
“I did know it,” she told him. “But now it’s just a body.”
She’d never been squeamish about death. She’d had encounters with death far too close to feel the same delicate reserve so many people expressed whenever they encountered something that was dead.
Cade probably thought she was strange, unnatural. She didn’t care.
“Then why go through the trouble of burying it?” he asked.
He wasn’t complaining—she could tell from his expression. It was a genuine question, an answer he wanted to know.
“Because it was alive yesterday, and it doesn’t deserve to be left out in the sun to rot and get pecked away by birds and bugs.”
He nodded, his eyes still resting on her face.
She didn’t know what he was thinking. She didn’t know him well enough to read his expressions. “Besides,” she added. “It would start to smell soon.”
“Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t be pleasant.” He stepped over to the handle of the hand truck. “Where do you want to bury it? Do you know of some place that would work?”
“I do.” She sigh
ed, feeling a familiar resistance to his presence on her land, in her home. She was briefly tempted to tell him to go, that she would take care of it herself.
But he was already pulling the hand truck down toward the damp sand, where it would roll a little easier. It was rough going, even there, since the wheels weren’t made to use on sand. He was obviously heading for her walkway.
She didn’t want him on it—not because she thought he was a threat but because it was part of her safety zone, her sanctuary, the small piece of the world where no one but her was allowed.
It would be foolish to insist he try to roll the deer over the dunes though. She wasn’t sure it would even be possible. They would have to try to drag the carcass the whole way.
So she swallowed her reluctance and followed, carrying the shovel.
The time to stop this from happening was a few minutes ago. Now the best thing would be to get it over with quickly so she could be by herself again.
Cade had reached the bottom of the boardwalk and was waiting for her. He looked casual and completely innocent, like it never crossed his mind that she might have a problem with his being on her property this way.
For most people it wouldn’t be a problem.
Holly always told herself that her lifestyle was a choice and not a psychological illness. She’d been raised this way, and she was content with this life. She was usually convinced this was true. Occasionally, she couldn’t help but wonder though.
Maybe she had no other choice but to live this way. Maybe she really was trapped, as she’d secretly been fearing for a while now.
This would be a test then.
If she could handle Cade’s presence for an hour or two while they buried the deer, then she could be confident that her prolonged isolation wasn’t a sign that she was mentally damaged.
She would feel better, proving that to herself.
She would also feel better once this poor deer was buried.
She stepped in front of Cade and led the way up the walkway. When they’d reached the end, she saw him eyeing her house, but she purposefully turned to take the dirt path that led to right.
She wasn’t going to invite him into her house. That would be one step too far, even in the interest of proving her psychological health.
“This way,” she said.
Cade glanced back toward the house, but he didn’t hesitate in following her down the path and into the woods. Up near the road, there was a wide stretch of grassy lawns—a few acres of high grass, wildflowers, and the occasional tree. The land sloped up into a high hill and then down again, where it finally met the road, which couldn’t be seen until you reached the top of the hill.
The path ended when the meadows began. “You’ll have to roll it over the grass a little ways,” she said.
He nodded. “Just lead the way.”
It was nice that he wasn’t interrogating her about where they were going or why she knew exactly where they should bury the deer. It was nice, but she realized it was also unusual.
Either this man was strangely laid-back, or he was intentionally holding back natural questions.
She wasn’t sure which she’d prefer.
She led him halfway through the width of her property where the long grasses and flowers tapered off into bare dirt.
He paused, scanning the large patch of dirt, some of which was raised into small mounds. “You’ve buried other things here,” he said softly.
She nodded, feeling another wave of grief. “Animals die sometimes. I don’t like to leave them out, forgotten.”
She wished she hadn’t said it, after the words came out, even though they were true and didn’t reveal anything very important. In addition to the deer she’d buried two years ago, there were birds and rabbits and a couple of squirrels—mostly small animals that were easy to dispose of.
“That makes sense,” Cade said in a low voice, almost reverent, as if they were standing in a graveyard. “You’ll have to tell me where to start digging.”
She walked over to the far edge where the grass was starting to grow. “There should be room here.”
Cade wore a pair of casual tan shorts with cargo pockets and a blue camp shirt. As she had noticed before, his clothes looked expensive. He was strong—obviously in good shape—but he didn’t look like he was used to manual labor. He probably had some sort of high-paying job—lawyer or accountant or executive in some company.
He wouldn’t be used to digging graves.
He didn’t hesitate though. He lodged the blade of the shovel in the ground and stepped on it to break the hard surface. Then he threw the shovelful of dirt to the side and broke out another piece.
She watched in silence for about ten minutes. The sun was hot today, and the humidity seeped into every pore. She was sweating, just standing and watching him work. Perspiration was already pouring off him.
He’d made a good start on the hole, but it would need to be a lot deeper to fit the body of the deer. She stepped over and put a hand on the handle of the shovel. “Let me,” she said.
This was her idea. He didn’t have to do all the work just because he happened to be male.
“I’m fine,” he said, looking surprised and a little offended.
She didn’t argue with him—just reached to take the shovel with both hands until he had to either release it or fight with her for it.
He released it.
Relieved that he wasn’t irrationally stubborn or macho, she started to dig.
His work had softened up the dirt quite a bit, so she was able to get several good shovelfuls before she had to really start fighting the ground. She was aware that he was watching her, but she didn’t really care.
She didn’t like to be watched in town since she felt like people were trying to figure out what she was up to and what she was doing. But Cade already knew what she was doing, and she wasn’t revealing anything else about herself.
He could look at her body if he wanted. Her body was what it was, and she’d never been particularly self-conscious about it.
Your body didn’t reveal anything about who you truly were. She never understood why people got so hung up about showing a little skin.
She wore a sundress today—another one that had belonged to her mother. It was short enough to not get in her way as she dug, although soon she could feel the fabric clinging to her skin as it got wetter from perspiration.
She’d been digging for maybe five minutes when Cade took the shovel from her.
He didn’t ask or make a sign that he wanted it. He just reached over and removed it from her grasp as she was pausing to catch her breath.
She didn’t argue. She was tired and didn’t feel like talking.
They traded off on digging for a long time, although Cade always took the longer shifts. When he was digging, she would stand and stare at him, and she started to instinctively admire the breadth of his shoulders, the way his biceps rippled as he moved, the way his wet shirt revealed the tight line of his back and abs.
He was a very fine specimen of masculinity. She had no qualms about admiring it when she saw it.
Looking at someone else’s body was as harmless as letting them look at hers.
Finally she assessed the depth of the hole, and she decided it would do.
“Okay,” she said.
He was in a kind of digging trance, completely focused on the task at hand, and he didn’t seem to hear her.
“Okay,” she said again.
When he kept digging, she stepped forward and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.
She pulled her hand back almost immediately, but she was startled when he jerked in response.
“Okay,” she said again when he turned to look at her. “I think this is deep enough.”
He cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing dirt onto his skin. “Okay. Sounds good.”
He climbed out of the hole, and they both went over to the hand truck, taki
ng a few breaths before he leaned over.
She reached for her side, and together they lifted the deer by the edges of the canvas and hauled it over to the hole. Then they lowered it in.
Holly was more tired than she’d realized, and her back caught as she bent over far enough to lower the deer. She jerked in pain and lost hold of the canvas.
Her side dropped, but it was far enough in to not be a problem. Cade let go of his side too, and the deer was in position.
“Now we just need to cover it up,” he said. He still sounded casual, laid-back, as if none of this was a big deal.
It was a strange reaction from a man who didn’t know her, who was doing this to help her.
Surely most men would find it strange, disconcerting, annoying, pitiful, something.
Again she wondered if he was holding back on purpose. And then she wondered why.
It took quite a while to return the dirt to the hole to cover up the deer’s body, but at least it was easier work than digging it out. Finally the dirt in the hole reached the rest of the ground, and Cade flattened it with the shovel while Holly walked over it to make sure it was filled.
“Good,” Cade said at last, releasing the shovel. It dropped to the ground beside him. He wiped off more sweat with his forearms. “Good. I think that will do.”
Holly nodded, closing her eyes as she thought about the deer, remembering how it had eaten her apples for two mornings, wondering how it had hurt its ear, hoping its life hadn’t all been pain and suffering.
It had returned to the earth now, and at least its body wouldn’t be torn apart by other animals.
That was as much of a prayer as she knew how to make.
Cade was silent until she opened her eyes.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He nodded, his eyes sharp and intelligent, even though the rest of his face and his body looked miserably hot and tired. “You’re welcome.”
“Let’s go.”
He followed without question, wheeling the empty hand truck while she carried the shovel. They took the path that skirted the edge of her woods and ended up back on the other side of her house.
She hesitated briefly, because she wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible, but it would simply be too unfeeling to send him away without anything, after all the work he’d just done. So she steeled herself enough to say, “There’s an outdoor shower down there at the start of the walkway. You can use it if you want. I’ll go get some water.”
