After dinner, I brewed him some of the smelly kind of tea he liked. “You should go to bed, Rennie,” I said. You’re falling asleep in the chair.”
“I’m not,” she argued, eyes half-closed. “I forgot to tell you. I met a man today.”
“What man?” I asked, too quickly, as Mr. Sung watched, sipping his tea.
“His name is Seth. He said he used to know you when you were my age. He was at the picnic, but he didn’t have any children with him. He asked if I had brothers or sisters. I said no and he said he didn’t have any either. He said his brother had died and his mother had died and now, he didn’t have anybody left at all. He was so sad. I felt sorry—”
“Go to bed.” I got out of my chair so suddenly that Mr. Sung’s tea spilled all over the table, and for a moment I glared at him. He was staring straight at me with the steady gaze and impassive face I’d grown used to. Rennie got up and obeyed me without further argument.
“Were you there today when that man talked to her?” I asked after she had gone.
He nodded. “I don’t want him around her.” He nodded again. “If you ever see him near her—”
“Don’t worry.” His face wasn’t sympathetic and if he were feeling some emotion, it didn’t show on his features.
“I do worry. I’m afraid that—”
“Don’t be afraid. He can’t reach her.”
I didn’t understand what “reach her” meant and I assumed it was one of his misuses of figures of speech. I would have pursued it, but he immediately said goodnight and went up to his room.
Days of waiting followed, during which the slightest sound, the slightest stirring, would make me whirl around, ready but never truly prepared, for what was I to do to prepare? Keep the shotgun loaded and by my side at all times? Not sleep? Not let my child play out of my sight for a moment? I decided yes and did all those things as much as possible. I slept like a dog with one eye open and one ear cocked. I didn’t let Rennie out of my sight, and it made her hate me a little. I wouldn’t even let her go to school. I would rather have her ignorant and alive than educated and dead. And, yes, I carried the shotgun loaded and with me from room to room even though I’m sure Mr. Sung thought I was insane. To his credit, he never called me on it. Instead he acted like it was the most normal behavior in the world.
Then, strangely, things around me began to reflect my fear back at me like a mirror. One night I was reading from Peter and Wendy to Rennie as she lay in our bed. “Was that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting with his dagger in his hand? There was no way of knowing…”
In those days, I ate, worked in the fields, cared for what little livestock we had, andslept fitfully. But mostly, I waited, for I could smell it in the air, carried on the wind—the sickening smell of revenge long planned and relished. Where would he strike and how? In the house, appearing at a window, or in the orchard, stepping out from behind a tree? With a gun, the way I’d killed his brother, or a knife, hacking away till his rage was spent? And most important, on who would he choose to vent himself? I was the obvious one, but Seth Hamilton, always so much quieter than Aaron, so brooding, would be more devious than that. I had killed someone he loved. Would he take Rennie, thinking to do the same? I could fight him. I would fight him, and if I was killed, it would be with his skin under my fingernails and his flesh in my teeth. But Rennie couldn’t fight him. She wasn’t waiting. She didn’t know enough to be waiting in spite of all my crazy behavior. And in the end, if I was killed, what would happen to her? Would someone in Galen take her in? I doubted it and even if someone did that would be terrible in itself. She was too strange and fey a child to be raised by anyone but Luca or me.
I decided to write my last will and testament and leave it with Mr. Sung. I read it to him:
I, Darcy Willickers, leave all my earthly possessions to my husband, Luca D’Angeli. It is my final request that my daughter be delivered safely to my husband who currently resides in prison.
I gave the address and
