Mattie checked the fire and started preparing breakfast as she always did. It was so much a part of her that she did everything automatically.
“What can I do to help?” C.P. asked.
She was slicing the bread when he said this, and the question shocked her so much that she nearly sliced one of her fingers.
“Help?”
“Yeah, you know, I could set the table or toast the bread or whatever.”
He wanted to help. William never helped. Kitchen work was for women. It was the responsibility of women to prepare the food that men had hunted.
But he didn’t hunt all of it, did he? He went to the supermarket and bought it and carried it home and forced you to feel grateful.
“I can toast the bread on a fork,” he said. “I’m really good at that. I do it around the campfire all the time.”
Mattie never made toast. William didn’t like it.
“Yes, that sounds like a good idea,” she said. “Just leave me enough room to cook the bacon, please.”
Soon they were sitting down to breakfast and again the cabin felt cozy and safe, filled with the smells of food and the wood burning in the fire. Mattie reflected that she’d never felt this way with William, even with the same fire burning and the same food on the table.
C.P. shoveled food into his mouth with abandon. “God, I’m so hungry. I shouldn’t be this hungry, not with Griffin gone and Jen in the state she’s in and who knows what waiting for us outside. But I am. I’m starving.”
Mattie watched him dip his toast into his egg yolk. She’d never done that before. She copied him and took a bite and discovered she liked it.
I feel like a baby animal, learning the world anew, she thought. William took so much from me.
“So what are we going to do?” C.P. said. “We left the packs somewhere. I don’t know what I was thinking, doing that. I don’t even know how we’ll find them again but we need that stuff, because we’re going to have to spend at least one night outside. Jen can’t walk, obviously, and we’re going to have to fix up some way to drag her. Make a travois or whatever.”
“Travois?”
“Like a sled, but with long poles to pull instead of a rope.”
“The sled!” Mattie said. “I forgot about it. William bought a sled so he could carry the bear trap. I wonder where he put it. I saw it yesterday morning.”
“It wasn’t in the back,” C.P. said. “I would have noticed.”
“Maybe he put it behind the storehouse,” she said.
“I’ll look after I have some more magic bean water,” he said.
“Magic bean water?”
“Coffee,” he said.
“You say a lot of funny things,” Mattie said, then covered her mouth with her hand, shocked that she’d said that out loud. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“Nah,” he said. “I bet a lot of things sound funny to you. You’ve been here for a long time, and I don’t see a TV or a radio or anything. Or even books.”
“I’m only allowed to read the Bible,” she said, and she hated how she sounded when she said this, like a docile cow herded into a pen.
“Well, if we can fix up the sled for Jen then we can get out of here and try to find the packs again and then get off this mountain, or at least get to where there’s a cell signal again. I had a spotty signal for a while, but it was closer to the base. If I can call 911 and give them our location then we’ll be saved. Someone will come and get us with a helicopter or ATVs or whatever.”
He used that word a lot, whatever. It was a strange word, vague but at the same time full of possibilities.
After eating the eggs and bacon, C.P. ripped open the box of coffee cakes and dumped the wrapped cakes on the table.
“Here, try one,” he said. “They’re not as good as a real home-baked coffee cake but they’ll do in a pinch.”
Mattie picked up a cake and started unwrapping it, then stopped.
“Where does he get all the money for these things?” she said.
“Does he have a job?”
“No,” she said. “He’s always here, unless he’s hunting. And speaking of money . . .”
She dropped the cake on the table and went over to the couch, kneeling in front of it and reaching underneath for the roll of money she’d hid there yesterday. For a moment she thought William had found it but then her fingers brushed against paper and she grabbed it.
“What are you doing?” C.P. asked, his mouth full of coffee cake. Mattie had a sudden idea that he was eating to hide his grief—that if he kept eating, kept busy, then he wouldn’t have to think about what happened to Griffin.