15 Summers Later

Chapter 15

We plunge into the wilderness, guided only by the dim moonlight filtering through the thick canopy above. The forest floor is uneven, and each step is a silent dance to avoid twigs and fallen branches that threaten to betray our escape. Long nights stretch into an endless procession of uncertainty, the chill settling into our bones as we navigate the labyrinth of trees, desperate to put distance between us and the people who once held us captive.

—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks

Ava wiped at the corner of her mouth and stared at herself in the large mirror in Tilly Gentry Walker’s powder room.

She looked haggard.

That was the only way she could describe it. She had deep circles under her eyes, which contrasted vividly with her sallow skin, and her mouth was pinched, tight.

Was it any wonder Cullen wanted nothing to do with her right now?

At least her stomach seemed to be settling.

She took a deep breath, Luke’s words bouncing around in her head like an out-of-control Ping-Pong ball.

Pregnant.

She couldn’t possibly be. She was vigilant about birth control, taking the little pill on a regimented schedule.

Okay. She might have missed a few pills the week before the book came out, she acknowledged. She had been so busy trying to finish the school year while simultaneously fighting the horrible fear that agreeing to publish her memoir had been a hideous mistake.

She surely couldn’t be pregnant after missing three or four pills, could she?

Ava closed her eyes to block out that wretched image of herself in the mirror. Was it possible? Her period was late, but she attributed that to all the stress over the book release, throwing their story out to the world and the instant publicity that had exploded around her.

And after her husband had read the book in its entirety, instead of the small samples she had showed him in the past year during her road to publication, everything had changed.

Panic fluttered on bat wings. If she really was pregnant, what was she going to do?

They had talked about having a child or two in some nebulous future. Of course they had. Any partners who didn’t have that discussion were setting themselves up for a potential disaster if one wanted children and the other didn’t.

Both of them definitely did. Cullen had talked about taking a baby hiking with him, going on nature walks together, Christmas mornings and birthday dinners and first days of school.

Both of them loved children and somehow had become the honorary babysitters among their friend group when the other young married couples needed a night out.

Cullen was wonderful with children of all ages. He had a knack for teasing a smile out of the crankiest of toddlers, at knowing how to persuade a finicky preschooler to eat, at being able to nap on the sofa with a sleepy baby in his arms.

She wanted to be pregnant. And she wanted his child. A vast yearning opened up somewhere deep inside.

She imagined a baby with his long lashes and that little dimple in its cheek as it gave a toothless smile, chubby arms flailing.

They had decided starting their family should wait until they were more settled, until his assistant professor job was more secure and they could buy a house near campus, something small with a backyard and an office corner for her to use for writing.

One of the many reasons she had agreed to the unexpected publishing offer when it came her way had been for that very goal. With some of the substantial advance she was being offered and perhaps subsequent royalties, they would be able to reach their goal more quickly and could start their family now, instead of waiting a few more years.

As much as she wanted a child, right now seemed the worst possible timing. Would she and Cullen even be able to reconcile after this summer? She had no idea. He had been rocked by the autobiography and the vivid reality she had painted of their experiences during those long months with the Coalition.

She pressed a tentative hand to her belly. She didn’t want to believe it, but somehow as the seconds ticked by and the pieces slotted into place, the idea didn’t seem completely radical.

Even before Cullen left, she had been queasy, much sleepier than normal, with roller-coaster emotions and achy breasts.

She couldn’t know yet. In the morning, she would rush to the drugstore for a test so she could have more to base the information on than the suspicions of a veterinarian, however well-meaning Luke might be.

She closed her eyes. If she found out she was pregnant, she would have no choice. She would have to go up to Ghost Lake so she could tell Cullen. If they were going to have an unexpected child, he needed to know as soon as possible. She couldn’t hang around town, waiting to tell him until she bumped into him again at the farmers market.

How would she make it up into the mountains? When she and Madi left, she had never wanted to return.

One step at a time, she told herself. That was the very basic mantra that had helped them find the courage to leave, knowing the risks and dangers ahead of them.

Simply focus on doing the next right thing. That’s what her mother had always told her.

With one last shaky breath, she dried her hands on the towel and walked out of the powder room to find Tilly alone in the big kitchen, transferring brownies and cookies from various plates and pans to make an assortment on one tray.

Ava hadn’t had the chance to speak alone with the woman since arriving at the house. Now she wished she had stayed in the bathroom longer so she could have avoided her.

She had nothing against Tilly. She was a kind and generous woman, lovely inside and out.

But she also had become a widow because of Ava.

She forced a smile, which Tilly returned with a warmth that made Ava’s throat feel tight.

“How are you, my dear?” Tilly asked, her gaze concerned. “You seem under the weather. Are you ill?”

“I’m fine,” she lied. “Only tired. It’s been a busy few weeks.”

“I can only imagine.”

She smiled as she set a few more cookies on the platter. “I’m absolutely thrilled your book is doing so well. It’s all anyone in town wants to talk about.”

“Is it?”

Tilly nodded. After careful scrutiny, her expression slid once more into one of concern. “I hope you’ll forgive me saying this, but you don’t seem tremendously thrilled by the response. I would have thought you would be over the moon to know your words are having such an impact.”

Right. Like a meteor plummeting to earth, causing her marriage to implode along with it. And now she might very well find herself a single mother in eight months or so.

She made a raw sound that seemed to scorch her larynx, but she managed to conceal it with some judicious throat clearing.

“It doesn’t seem real, to be honest. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.”

“What happened,” Tilly said sternly, “is that you wrote a lovely book filled with pain and sadness and truth that still somehow manages to resonate with hope and joy.”

The words stunned her into speechlessness. She blinked several times, soaking them in. “You...you can’t honestly say that’s what you took away from reading Ghost Lake,” she protested.

“I can and I do.”

Ava shook her head, still trying to process her words. “You lost your husband because of the Coalition, simply because Dan and your children happened to be the unlucky campers we stumbled onto in our most desperate hour. He was an innocent victim who did nothing but try to help two terrified girls. And he paid the ultimate price for his kindness.”

To her dismay, her voice cracked on the last word. Despite her best efforts at control, a tear slid out, trickling down her cheek, followed by another and another.

Before she quite realized what was happening, Tilly stepped away from the dessert tray and wrapped her arms around Ava, pulling her close.

“Oh, darling,” she murmured. “You cannot carry the weight of Dan’s death. He chose to help you girls because he wanted to help you. That’s the man I loved. The very best of men. I’m truly sorry you never had the chance to know him, except for that last horrible day.”

“I hate that you lost your husband,” she whispered, her voice muffled. “I wish we had never found their campsite.”

“If you hadn’t, those men would have found you. They would have beaten you, starved you, forced you to stay married to that horrible man. You would have been raped by him, again and again, and your sister eventually would have faced the same fate, married off to one of the other men, even though she was only fourteen years old.”

She closed her eyes, hating the memory of sloppy kisses and fumbling hands after Roger Boyle, the camp leader, had informed her she was to marry his brother, James, though she was barely sixteen.

She would bear him many children, James had said with that disgustingly lascivious light in his pale blue eyes as he confirmed his brother’s plan. It was for the good of the Coalition. Their children would be strong and valiant, would be taught correct principles so they could carry on the fight.

She had escaped on her wedding night.

Would she have left, if she hadn’t been compelled to protect her younger sister? It was a question that haunted her. She had dreamed of escaping every moment of every day, but she wasn’t as courageous as Madi. If not for her sister, Ava wasn’t sure she would have found the strength to flee on her own.

She had held on to the hope that someone would save them. Surely someone had noticed they had been missing for the past six months. Leona had to have been looking for them. Their school teachers and administrators in Oregon. Their friends back home, their parents, her mother’s friends.

Madi had wanted to flee every single day.

We can go over the mountains and make our way to Grandma’s house. It’s only twenty miles.

Ava had been the one to urge caution, frozen with indecision whenever she thought about all the risks that awaited them outside the camp.

She had urged that they wait until the time was right to give authorities as much space as possible to launch a rescue.

The only problem was, nobody had been launching any rescues. Their grandmother had gone to the authorities when her son-in-law and granddaughters broke off contact with her but hadn’t been able to convince them to listen to her.

The girls were with their father, she had been told. As their sole surviving parent, he had full custody and could move Ava and Madi where he wanted.

Because of Ava’s cowardice, she had been married in a ludicrous ceremony in the mountains to a man thirty years her senior, a disgusting human who had been divorced three times, who had long, straggly facial hair and a missing front tooth where a shotgun had misfired and knocked it out. The marriage hadn’t been legally valid, of course. It had been legitimate in no one else’s mind but James and Roger Boyle’s and their acolytes at the camp.

On what would have been her wedding night, she had finally been backed so far into the corner, she had nothing else to do, nowhere else to turn. Only then had she agreed to Madi’s outlandish plan to escape.

They had succeeded, but the cost had been so very great.

Ava pushed away the dark memories and found Tilly watching her with an expression of grave concern.

“You look so pale, my dear,” she said gently. “Is it your blood sugar? Here. Have some water and maybe a brownie.”

The stricture sounded so much like something her mother might have said that Ava had to smile.

“I’m okay. Thank you.”

“You should try a brownie, anyway. I don’t know anybody who makes brownies as yummy as your grandmother Leona’s.”

Mainly to appease the other woman, Ava took the small paper plate Tilly offered and selected a small brownie from the platter. She nibbled a corner, letting her tastebuds savor the rich fudge for this brief instant when she didn’t feel like hurling everything up.

Tilly handed her a water and Ava dutifully sipped at it. Maybe she was right. Ava did feel better from both the hydration and the sugar rush.

When the other woman seemed satisfied she wasn’t about to topple over in the kitchen, she reached again for Ava’s hand.

“I have to tell you this while you’re here. Ghost Lake is the most extraordinary, emotional book I’ve read in a long time. Maybe ever. While it’s certainly true I have a very personal connection that might be skewing my perspective, thousands of other people who don’t have that same personal connection have been forever touched by your words and your story. You should lean into that. Embrace it. Your words have power, Ava. You should never doubt that.”

Ava clasped Tilly’s hand in hers as the genuine praise seemed to seep through all her self-doubt to reach her heart.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“And that girl who had the courage to do what you did back then is strong enough to face anything,” Tilly went on. “Even your own unexpected success.”

Tilly smiled warmly at her and cleared her throat, withdrawing her hand. “I need to take these desserts out since it’s been all of ten minutes since people have eaten something.”

She picked up the brownie tray and headed out the door without giving Ava a chance to respond.

Alone in the lovely kitchen once more, Ava pressed a hand to her abdomen. When she was sixteen, she’d found enough strength to escape with her sister into the wilderness, even knowing they would likely be caught and punished severely for their disobedience.

Together, they had faced hunger, thirst, bug bites, cougar stalkings, even an attack by an unsuspecting porcupine.

If she was indeed pregnant, she would figure out a way to fix her marriage, no matter how hard it might prove to be.