She looks at the Ruger. “I’m.” Her voice shakes; the headlamp shudders as she adjusts its angle. “I’m looking for a family. A man and a little girl.” She looks toward the car, sizing up the distance.
I take a step closer, and fear flickers across her face, her features accentuated and strange with the angle of the headlamp. “Who are you?” I hiss. The possibility that Judge and Mrs. Judge have found us and coordinated some sort of plan to take me down flickers through my mind. Because if they were gonna do it, they would do it with stealth and flare, same way they did before. Get my guard down, then make their move.
“I’m very sorry to have disturbed you,” the woman says in her shaky voice. She has the slightest hint of an accent. “It’s clear I’ve come to the wrong place. I must’ve gotten turned around on the back roads. It was getting dark. I apologize.” She steps sideways toward her car. “I’ll be on my way now.”
“Not before you tell me who you are, you won’t.”
She swallows hard. I see the movement of her throat, gray in the shadow of her jaw. “I’m just making a delivery, that’s all. My family owns a cabin out here, and supposedly my brother’s friend is staying in it for a while. He gave me a list and asked me to bring supplies. That’s all I know. I’m late, but again, I’m just making a delivery. Please—”
I’m still suspicious. Which, if you knew Judge and Mrs. Judge, you’d understand. “How late?”
Her brow furrows, the headlamp flickering its light. “A week. I was supposed to come on the fourteenth. But I had to work and then my car was in the shop and I couldn’t.”
“You got the list?”
She nods, begins searching her pockets. “Here,” she says finally, handing me a piece of paper. “I have food in my car. Food and batteries, all sorts of stuff. Everything on the list, actually. You can have all of it if that’s what you’re after. Take it, please. I just need to be on my way.” She takes another step toward the car.
I hold the note in the light of her headlamp: it’s my handwriting. Things begin to make sense.
It has been ten years since we saw each other. “Marie?” Jake’s baby sister.
She tilts her head. “Do we know each other?”
“We met once, years ago. You and Jake met me here.”
“Kenny?” She squints, studying my face. “I didn’t recognize you.”
Strange, hearing that name, after all these years. “Yes.”
She seems unsure.
“I go by Cooper now,” I add.
“Oh.” She frowns. “Jake didn’t tell me.”
“Is he all right? Jake.”
She shakes her head, the light of the headlamp flickering in the dark. Her face falls, and that look—I know it, all too well.
Jake’s dead.
“Six weeks ago.” She wipes her jacket sleeve across her eyes.
I turn away because I want to let it all spill—sadness, anger, loss—but I know I can’t. Not here, not now. Not with Marie and a car full of supplies and Finch hiding behind the house and dark pressing in and a thousand things to figure out. Jake, my only friend. Jake, who kept us alive all these years. I’d known, I guess, based on our agreement, and then him not showing. Well, I’d known something had happened. Something was wrong. But still. Suspecting something is different from having someone tell you for sure that it’s true. Now the news pushes down on me, a heavy, dragging thing that pulls and yanks. My knees threaten to give so I let them. I lean against the hood of the car.
Marie clears her throat. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. And please understand: I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I should get the car unloaded and be on my way.”
“No, you can’t do that, just turn around and drive home. How many hours you been on the road to get here?”
“Nine.”
I shake my head, my senses blurry but returning. “Naw, Jake wouldn’t have that. It’s not safe. You need to rest up a bit. We’ve got supper on inside.” I slide the gun into my back pocket. “Sorry about the gun. Sorry for scaring you. It’s just—nobody ever comes. I didn’t know who you were. Have to be careful out here.”
“Yes,” she says, looking at me. “One does have to be careful.”
Well, I guess I can see how that might’ve sounded a little off to her. Me with the gun, me towering over her and scaring her as she exited the outhouse. Meanwhile it’s fully dark now and here she is, out in the woods with a complete stranger. She wrings her skirt. She walks to the car, opens the trunk, grabs a reusable blue bag packed with groceries, and heads up the hill to the cabin.