Mattie didn’t dare look anywhere except William’s face. He still had the rifle trained on the stranger. Mattie saw death in William’s eyes, a longing to pull the trigger, to avenge his insulted manhood.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. Then he abruptly dropped the muzzle toward the ground. Mattie hastily released his arm and took a step back.
“Search parties,” William said, glancing at her. She thought she saw something move across his face, something like fear, but it disappeared in an instant and Mattie decided she must be mistaken. “This has been a wasted day. There are chores to finish. I should have been out hunting stores for the winter instead of wasting my time on this bear that frightened you yesterday.”
The creature hadn’t frightened Mattie the day before—at least not right away. She’d only thought the death of the fox had been odd. But it was going to be her fault that William had wasted his time today, and she was sensible enough not to remind him that he’d decided that very morning that the bear was a threat.
That was why they’d spent the day away from their usual tasks—because of William’s decision, not hers. She didn’t remind him, either, of the creature’s strange behavior—the cave of bones, the pile of organs. She wanted to go home and forget all of it. She hadn’t shaken off the nausea completely and she wanted to lie down.
Not that William would allow her to rest, of course. Resting was for when her chores were finished. Resting only came after she’d done her nightly duty for her husband.
William stalked away from the meadow, taking huge strides. As always, he moved forward without checking to see if Mattie was behind him. He expected her to follow, and that was that.
Mattie looked back at the stranger one more time, and found he wasn’t where they’d left him. He was climbing the slope toward the caves.
What if the stranger finds the bones and is interested in the creature? What if crowds of people come up to the mountain to find out about it?
William would be furious if that happened. Though perhaps one of those people would take Mattie away, if she asked.
William said you belong to him and nobody could take you away. A wife belongs to her husband.
But what if somebody did take her away? What if somebody with a kind face, kind eyes like that stranger had, what if somebody like that helped her? What if she could find the place again, the place where Heather was?
William said that place isn’t real, it’s a dream, a dream sent by the devil to tempt you away.
She stared at the back of his jacket, at the graying hair he kept cut close to his head, at the huge hard hands that swung at his sides. One of those hands held the rifle, and Mattie had a sudden burst of insight.
He never taught me how to use the rifle because he doesn’t want me to use it on him.
Mattie would never do that. She would never hurt her own husband. Would she? She didn’t think she would do that. She didn’t want to hurt him. She only wanted William to stop hurting her.
What would have happened if she’d asked the stranger in the meadow to take her away?
William would have shot you both dead on the spot, that’s what.
He was going to beat her when they got home. Probably worse than he had in years, Mattie knew. He was angry about so many things at the moment, and all of those things would be attributable to her somehow.
She heard his breath, harsh and fast, and knew without seeing his face that he was remembering everything that happened earlier and arranging it to his liking.
Mattie turned her eyes up to the trees, wanting to see anything except William’s back, the angry set of his shoulders, the corded veins in his neck.
She halted, her mouth suddenly dry, shaking her head because it didn’t seem possible that she was seeing what she thought was there.
Up above, hanging from nearly every tree, were animal corpses. Most of them were small animals—chipmunks and squirrels and possums and field mice—but some were larger. She saw at least two foxes and even a lynx.
Each animal was arranged neatly over the path that Mattie and William followed. There were one or two animals per tree, each one tied to a branch by a bit of its own viscera.
Like Christmas ornaments, and the thought made her sway on her feet, for a memory pushed through the fog in her brain.
The enormous Christmas tree in the living room, far too big for the space, and all the pretty colored lights winking, the silver star on top and the piles of gifts underneath wrapped in red and green paper.
Christmas, and one pile is for me and one is for Heather. There are our stockings with our names on them. One says HEATHER and the other says SAMANTHA.
“Samantha,” she whispered. “Not Martha. Samantha.”
“Mattie!” William roared.
She looked at him, not really seeing him, still seeing the blurred outline of a name on a stocking, and it wasn’t the name he’d called her all these years.
“Mattie!” he yelled again.
She shook away the stocking, the ornaments, the girl who might have been called Samantha. William had gotten much farther along than she, and he beckoned to her so that she’d catch up.
Mattie remembered the animals then, all the little rabbits and rodents hung in a row, like strange breadcrumbs showing the way to the meadow.
“William,” she croaked, her throat hardly able to say his name. “William.”
He stomped back in her direction, and she knew she should be afraid, because his face said that he wasn’t going to wait until they got home. He was going
