fifty-one

Of course, that’s not all that matters. There’s the small detail of escaping and praying we can escape what is almost certainly a trap. I’m helping her from the room, wiping away my tears so I can see my path.

I hear something like paper rustling, and I turn sharply. There’s a sheet of paper tacked to the wall with a knife. Jude’s taking it down. He reads it and his face contorts in disgust and horror. He balls up the page, throws it aside, and takes a deep breath, shuddering.

“Just hold on,” I murmur to Cadence, and she leans against the wall as I hurry to pick up the paper.

Dearest Jude,

Congratulations. If you’re reading this, you got past the dogs. I knew you would or I would never have set them on you. If you did fail, you wouldn’t be the young man I believe you to be, so your loss, while regrettable, would not be overwhelming. But you are the young man I expect, of course. And here is your reward. A reward and a choice. I’m sure you’ve left Winter someplace safe. You may return her sister to her…or you may not. The girl is yours, either way, to do with as you will. If you make the choice I hope you will, you do not need to fear repercussions. I’ll take care of everything.

I look at Jude, and he gives another deep shudder of revulsion, his look still shock, as if he can’t believe what he read, the interpretation he reached. I pocket the note and give his hand a squeeze.

“Let’s just go,” I say.

He motions to Cadence that he’ll help her walk, saying, “May I?” and she nods.

We return to Reject. There’s no time to examine the dog now. No time to do more than stop and tell her that I’ll be back, and I know that’s pointless—she can’t understand—but I do it anyway. When we start to leave, she limps after us, and I can’t take that. I just can’t.

It isn’t just me, either. Neither Cadence nor Jude tells me to leave Reject. Finally, Jude says, “Can you help your sister, Winter? I’ll carry the dog,” and that’s what we do—I support Cadence and Jude hefts Reject into his arms, and maybe that’s not the smart move when you expect a madman to return at any moment, but it’s what we have to do.

We make it to the pit without incident. I go up first. Cadence follows. She’s weak, but insists she’s uninjured. Then Jude ties the rope to Reject, and I hear the dog make that feeble and harsh whimpering sound, and he’s talking to her, his voice low, soothing. He comes up next, and she whines and tries to yelp, but he climbs quickly and then hauls her out. When Reject is up top, I expect she’ll realize she’s free and try hobbling off into the forest. Instead, as Jude unties her, she only licks his face, and then she lets him pick her up again and we head for Reeve’s End.

Cadence doesn’t say much. Nothing really, no more than, “I’m fine, Win, really,” when I keep giving her anxious looks. Partway there, she pulls me into a hug and says, “Thank you, for coming,” and I say, “Of course I’d—” and she presses her finger to my lips, motioning at the forest, reminding me to be quiet, just in case.

I still sneak glances at her, and it’s not just to be sure she’s okay—it’s to reassure myself she’s actually there. She’s cut her hair. It used to stretch down to her waist and now it’s barely past her shoulders. It looks good on her. She’s put on a little weight. That looks good too—I used to worry about how thin she was, blaming Colton, who’d make snarky comments if she gained a pound.

When we near town, there’s only one place I even consider going. I know he was coming back tonight, but I call first to be sure he’s home. He is. I warn him we’re coming, and I don’t say much, just that Cadence is home and something’s happened and I need to bring her to him.

We’ve barely reached the highway when I see the taillights of his old minivan. Those taillights flash, and he pulls a U-turn and veers onto the shoulder in a cloud of dust. The van hasn’t even stopped before the passenger door opens and Mrs. Southcott is climbing out and hurrying toward us, seeing us filthy and bloody and saying, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“We’re okay,” Cadence says.

“The dog’s hurt worst,” I say. “We need Doc to take a look at the dog.”

She looks from one face to the other and gives a choking laugh and then turns to Doc Southcott as he approaches, leaning on his cane.

“They’re worried about the dog,” she says.

He shakes his head. “Of course they are. Get in the van, and I’ll decide who needs medical attention first.”

We’re at Doc Southcott’s house. We hold off on our explanation until we arrive, and then I tell the story. The whole story.

Cadence fills in the part I don’t know. Somehow her captor knew our father phoned her, likely tracing the call or accessing the message. As she was still trying to figure out how to respond to Bert’s plea, she got a call from a man who claimed to be a new guidance counselor at my school. He knew our father had contacted her and he wanted to be sure she understood the severity of the situation, just how distraught I was over Edie, that I wasn’t coming to school and I really needed my sister, and he said he’d gladly buy her a bus ticket if she came home right away.

She said no, she’d buy her own ticket, and she would come, and he told her that the last bus left in two hours and she promised to be on it. She arrived in Reeve’s End and had just started walking home when the “guidance counselor” pulled up and offered her a lift, wanted to talk to her about the “delicate situation” with me. She got in. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in that hole.

Doc Southcott tries to work on Reject as we explain, but he keeps stopping to stare, just stare, and then I take over what he’s doing with Reject.

When we finish, he’s speechless. Mrs. Southcott is not. She rants about the sheriff and the deputy, and then takes the phone into the next room.

I ask Cadence about the so-called guidance counselor. She tries to describe him, but it was dark and she didn’t pay much attention. She remembers dark hair and blue eyes, which is why, when Jude rescued her, with the dim light, she thought she was seeing her captor again.

I’m holding Reject as we talk and Doc Southcott sews one of her larger bite wounds. He’s given her a local anesthetic, but he’s afraid to fully sedate her, not knowing what else she’s been drugged with. My job is to soothe her. She licks my hand and watches me, and I try not to cry, thinking of what she’s gone through. Doc Southcott says she’ll pull through, and the damage to her vocal cords doesn’t seem permanent. Maybe, when she recovers, she’ll go back to being that half-wild beast, but this isn’t about feeling empathy for a pet dog—it’s about feeling empathy for a living creature.

“Not such bad bedside manner after all, huh, Winter?” Doc Southcott murmurs. “It’s okay to feel for a creature in pain. And it’s okay to recognize that sometimes we can’t afford to feel, that it’ll hurt too much. You need to protect yourself and you need to let people in. It’s a matter of finding the right balance.” He glances at Jude. “I think you’re figuring it out just fine. You two did amazing work on this. Together.”

Mrs. Southcott’s voice rises in the next room. “You listen here, Ronnie Slate, I’m going to pretend that was some kind of joke, a very poor one at that. You are going to get your ass over here and— What? Don’t you even—!”

Doc Southcott limps through the door and takes the phone as his wife says, “He’s still trying to say Winter and Jude did this. Kidnapped her own sister for attention. I told him about the poor dog and…and I don’t even want to repeat what he said.”

Doc Southcott gets on the phone. “Is that right, Ronnie? It’s awful late, and Patsy’s distraught over these kids, and I’m hoping she’s misunderstanding what you said. Tell me she’s misunderstanding.”

Silence as he listens.

“Are you drunk, Ronnie?” Doc Southcott’s voice turns sharp. “Please tell me you’ve been drinking or smoking up or something to explain the abject stupidity of the words leaving your mouth.”

Pause.

“Hell, no. Don’t you threaten—” Pause. “If you set foot on my property, I swear I’ll meet you with my hunting rifle.” Pause. “Don’t you hang—”

Silence. I can hear Doc Southcott breathing hard and his wife trying to calm him and then asking, “What’d he say?”

“He’s coming to arrest Winter and Jude.”

Doc Southcott keeps his voice low, as if hoping we won’t overhear. Jude and Cadence and I all look at one another as Mrs. Southcott explodes in a fresh tirade.

“Can he…can he do that?” Cadence whispers to us.

“He’s the local law,” Jude says. “It won’t stick, but he can do it.”

“The doc and Mrs. Southcott won’t let him.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I murmur. “I don’t want them to get in trouble.” I look at Jude. “We need to leave. Get to your father. Sort this out. Once the sheriff throws us in a cell, we’re there for a while.”

Doc Southcott comes in and says, “Okay, kids. I’m going to ask you to go on upstairs and get some sleep. Whatever you hear—”

“We already heard,” I say, and I tell him we’re leaving. He argues and Mrs. Southcott argues even harder, but Jude and I make our case quickly, and they finally agree that we aren’t children—we’ve proven ourselves very capable so far and this is the right decision.

We need to leave Cadence with the Southcotts. That’s the hardest part. It’s also the right decision. No one is threatening her, and she’s still weak and shaken from her ordeal.

“Sir?” Jude says to the doctor. “Do you think we’d have time for me to bring the car back before the sheriff arrives? Give Winter a moment with her sister?”

“I can talk to her later,” I say. “We should—”

“I’ll drive you to your car,” Doc Southcott says. “We have time yet. Ronnie lives way over on the county line.”

I mouth a thank-you to Jude as they go. Mrs. Southcott says she’s going to pack us something to eat and hurries off to the kitchen, leaving Cadence and me alone.

“I made so many mistakes,” Cadence says.

“Later,” I say. “Right now—”

“No, Win, right now I’ve got to get this out. I made mistakes. Over and over, I made them. I left you. I left you long before I left Reeve’s End. You were my baby sister, and I abandoned you.”

“You didn’t—”

“I did. I wanted to forget how bad things had gotten. It was easier to stay with friends and pretend you were fine at home. I knew Daddy would smack you when he got into the bourbon, but you were stronger than me. I told myself you could handle him. I told myself if it got bad, you’d come to me. But you would have never come to me. You’d have taken whatever he dished out and kept going, and I am so ashamed….” Her voice catches.

“It’s okay, Cady.”

“No, Winter, it is not, and please don’t say that.” Tears stream down her face, tracks through the dirt still on her cheeks. “I was selfish and I was jealous. You were tough and smart and you’d get out and so you could take it, and I couldn’t. And then Colton…”

“Cady, really, we can talk—”

“Please, please just listen. I said you talked me into going to college and leaving him. That was a lie. I wanted to go. Wanted to go so bad. Not just to go, but to get away from him. I was afraid, though. He said he needed me. Said he’d hurt himself if I left him. Then he’d get drunk and he’d hit me and I’d think it was my fault, that I wasn’t giving him what he needed, that I wasn’t enough. And deep down, I just wanted to escape. You telling me to go to college gave me permission.”

She stops and shakes her head hard. “No, that’s a lie. It gave me someone to blame. I could pretend I was doing it for you, to set a good example. And then he…he did…he did what he threatened, and I couldn’t handle it because he’d warned me, which made it my fault. You did nothing wrong, Winter. Absolutely nothing.”

She hugs me so tight I can’t breathe and she says, “I didn’t know how to come home. I didn’t know how to say I was sorry. I told myself I was waiting until you left for school so I could visit you at college, but that was just an excuse. I didn’t know how to face you after what I did.”

I hug her. That’s all I can do. That and say, “I love you, Cady,” and her grip tightens and then there’s a quick honk from the driveway, and she lets me go, saying, “Jude’s a great guy, Winter.”

“We’re not really—”

“I don’t know what you two are, but I can tell he cares about you. He thinks about you. He treats you the way you deserve to be treated. That’s how it should be, whether it’s a friend or something more. Such a simple concept. Such an obvious concept. And I don’t know why I never saw it before.”

“Maybe you didn’t think you were worth it before.”

Another tight squeeze and a soft laugh. “You’re smart, little sister. Anyone ever tell you that?” She steps back and waves toward the door. “Go on. Find Edie. Help Jude find his brother. Just be careful. No more running into abandoned mine shafts. Use his dad’s influence and get the police involved. The real police.”

“That’s—”

“I know. That’s what you’ve been trying to do, ’cause you’re, you know, smart. Both of you. But you’ve got a witness now, a witness with a story that anyone but that idiot sheriff and his idiot son will believe. Bring them to me. I’ll tell them.”

Another quick hug, and I’m gone.