Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

11. Wolf

Sun filtered through the trees, the shadows casting abstract patterns on the ground as I made my way along the trail in front of my mom. I still expected to look up and see her back. For years she’d led our hikes through the woods, pointing out things that were safe to eat, deer tracks, and broken branches that hinted at something bigger, a mountain lion or bear.

It was new for her to fall back, let me take the lead, but it felt natural, the way geese flew in formation, the ones in front dropping to the rear to rest, letting the others lead until they dropped back too.

It felt symbolic, a rite of passage that might have happened years earlier if I hadn’t been in prison.

I’d jumped at my mom’s invitation to go hiking. I’d missed her when I’d been in jail. We had a lot of lost time to make up. Plus, Daisy had only been living at Cassie’s for two days and I was already going crazy without her.

I’d been meditating and playing guitar to keep sane, but none of it was helping. It was Daisy’s voice that drifted into the silence of my meditating mind, her face I saw when I played the song that was beginning to haunt my dreams like Daisy herself.

My mom and I hiked mostly in silence. The trail was off the beaten path, unmarked on the maps given to tourists at the gate of the Blackwell National Preserve.

I reacquainted myself with the forest like it was an old friend, noticing the clues I’d been taught to notice, the clues my mother’s grandfather had taught to her. The wild huckleberries were in season — smaller than the ones you could buy — and a herd of deer had been through the trail in the last twenty-four hours.

Finally we broke through the path and spilled into a small clearing on the banks of the Blackwell River. It was wide here, about a half mile upstream from the reservoir where Daisy had been held prisoner.

I thought about the dead guards, the fact that they hadn’t been mentioned in the news, that there hadn’t been a whisper about the firefight or Daisy’s rescue.

It meant someone powerful was behind the men. Someone who had pull with the Blackwell Police Department. Someone who could keep things quiet.

Someone like Charles Hammond.

My mom and I positioned ourselves on a huge flat boulder near the water. It had been our favorite picnic spot since I was a kid, and she removed the sandwiches she’d packed, part of a well-worn routine that included bottles of water (her grandfather had drunk straight from the river, but that was before the world had become so polluted) and homemade monster cookies.

People from the city — people who didn’t know better — thought the forest was quiet. But my mom had taught me if the forest was quiet, something was wrong. In its most natural state, the forest was a symphony: the rush of the river, the scrabble of small animals, the chirp of birds and rustle of trees.

But only if you were quiet enough to hear it.

I let myself sink into it, tried to feel the cold boulder under my ass, the sandwich in my hand, the presence of my mom next to me. Tried to be present when my worry over Daisy was clawing at my mind like a rabbit caught in a trap.

I was halfway through my sandwich when my mom spoke.

“What’s on your mind, son?”

I liked being with my mom because we didn’t have to talk all the time. A lot of our communication was unspoken, a product of all the years when it had just been the two of us, moving together through our lives like musicians riffing, finding our way, making it work.

“What makes you think something is on my mind?” I asked.

“Because I know my son.”

I hesitated, trying to decide how much to say. “Daisy found out we killed Blake.”

It was the first time I’d said the words out loud to my mom. I hadn’t told her Jace, Otis, and I were going to confess. We hadn’t told anybody, not wanting it to become a production with lawyers and press leaks and pleas from our parents.

We’d been taken into custody immediately following our confession, and after that, every time I’d seen my mom it had been through the glass at Blackwell Correctional.

She’d never once asked if I killed Blake, and I hadn’t wanted to talk about it with the glass between us.

Now I’d confirmed it, and I almost held my breath while I waited for her reaction.

“She didn’t believe it?” she asked, her eyes on the river. “Before?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think that’s why she asked us to come work on the house. But she knows now.”

“That must be very hard,” she said. “For her and for you.”

“Why for me?” I asked.

She turned her gaze on me, the half-eaten sandwich still in her hand. Up close I could see the lines fanning out around her eyes, the slightly crepey texture of her skin, but she was still beautiful, her dark eyes still wild. She’d braided her thick black hair, and I could almost see her the way she’d looked as a little girl, when her grandfather brought her to the same rock for picnics.

“Because of the way you feel about her,” she said, turning her eyes back to the river.

“How do you know how I feel about Daisy?” I’d never said a word to my mom about my feelings for Daisy. Not before we went to prison and not in the weeks since we’d gotten out.

“It’s in the way you look at her — the way you’ve always looked at her — and in the way her name sounds in your mouth,” my mom said. “Will she forgive you?”

“I don’t know.” I hesitated, wanting to ask the ask the question that had been on my mind for the last five years whenever I thought about my mom. “Will you?”

She turned her head and her gaze bore into mine. “Was it a righteous killing?”

It would be a strange question coming from someone else — say, Otis’ straight-laced parents — but I wasn’t surprised to hear it come from my mom. In her world, the world of her ancestors, killing was part of life. Humans killed animals for food and territory and animals killed other animals for food and territory.

For my mom, it was always the context that counted.

I thought about Blake, about what he’d been caught up in, what he’d wanted to do to Daisy. I saw him the way he’d looked that night by the river, the party far away, happening on another planet where everyone was worried about getting drunk and getting fucked.

He hadn’t been sorry: he’d been defiant, a petulant prince finally being told no.

I saw the glint of his blood on my knife as I’d handed it to Jace. Saw the blood drip onto the snow as he’d handed it to Otis.

We’d done it together, like we did everything. We’d done it for Daisy.

Did that make it a righteous killing?

“I think so,” I finally said.

My mom nodded. “I forgive you, Wolf. I hope Daisy will too.” She reached for my hand and squeezed. “But most of all, I hope you’ll forgive yourself.”