Chapter 5 #2
“I didn’t even know they were there,” I said, my voice barely audible. What the heck was going on?
“You just showed us where they were,” he countered.
“I came home yesterday,” I said faintly, gesturing at the hole. My mind was racing. Was it booby-trapped? I lived right on top of it. What if I’d climbed down there the night before? “And someone had been in here. They put wood on the fire.”
“Okay?”
“I noticed that there was a lip in the floor that wasn’t there before.” I looked at him. “So I opened it. I don’t think I was supposed to know they were there.”
“Where were you yesterday?” Otto’s dad asked.
“The doctor.” I looked at Otto and then quickly away.
“No car outside. How’d you get there?”
“My uncle and aunt picked me up.” I crossed my arms over my chest, uncomfortable with the interrogation. He was asking questions so fast that I was having a hard time following.
“Not your parents?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long you been livin’ here?”
“Fifty-five days,” I replied, making him frown.
“Since the day after Thanksgiving,” Otto murmured, running his hand through his short hair.
“Good guess.” I looked at him in surprise.
“Let me take a look,” one of the younger guys said, pushing his way to the edge of the hole and laying down on his belly at the edge of it. “Can you turn on the lights?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again, my cheeks heating. “There are no lights.”
“What?” the big younger guy asked.
“There’s no lights,” I repeated. “There’s no electricity.”
“You’ve been livin’ here for two months with no electricity… in the middle of winter?” the older guy asked incredulously.
“There’s a fireplace,” I said, gesturing toward it with fake nonchalance. “It keeps things warm in here. Plus, it puts off light at night.”
Otto cursed and spun away, walking toward the small kitchen area.
“It’s really not a big deal,” I said, knowing even as I said it that these men were looking at me like I was a complete freak. “I’ve got everything I need.”
“Well, I still need a goddamn light,” the man lying on the floor growled, his voice vibrating with anger.
“Here,” someone else said, handing him a phone with the flashlight turned on.
It was quiet in the cabin for a few moments.
“We’ve got wires down here,” the man on the floor said grimly. “A fuckin’ spiderweb of ’em.”
“Get her out of here,” Otto’s dad barked, gesturing toward me.
“What?” I stuttered as hands pushed me gently away from the hole in the floor.
“You got anythin’ you need in here?” Otto asked, coming up beside me.
“Everything,” I said faintly, looking around the room.
“Not carryin’ out the couch,” he replied dryly. “Could you be more specific?”
“My suitcase.” It was behind one of the men, and I would’ve gone to get it, but before I could move, Otto had his hand on my shoulder, stopping me from moving any further into the room.
He strode over to it and made sure it was zipped before lifting it carefully off the floor with one hand.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my coat off the couch. “You can put this on outside.”
I followed him numbly, shoving my boots on by the door as we went. Once we were outside, he helped me into my coat and led me to the passenger seat of the truck.
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly, looking out at my cabin. It was unnerving by being so close to him. I’d imagined him so often that it was startling to actually have him there.
“Those guns are wired,” he replied angrily through his teeth, helping me with my jacket.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means they’re rigged to explosives.” He stared at me, willing me to understand. “Bombs, Esther. You were livin’ in a place with no electricity and fuckin’ bombs under your livin’ room.”
I wanted to tell him that of course I knew what the word explosives meant, but I couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying.
Of course there weren’t explosives under the floor.
Why in the world would someone put explosives under the floor?
I was pretty sure it had been my dad that put those guns there, because I wasn’t even sure who else knew about the cabin, but even though I wasn’t sure why he’d put them there, I knew he wouldn’t put a bomb in the house where his daughter was living.
That was absurd. He was strict, yes, but he wasn’t crazy.
My dad wouldn’t even know where to get explosives. He owned a nursery for goodness’ sake.
Our attention was diverted when the men poured back outside, coming down the steps and toward the vehicles. A couple of them walked a little toward the woods, watching the ground as they pulled phones out of their pockets.
Otto’s dad and the big guy walked toward us. As I watched them, I realized why the big one looked familiar—he looked like a slightly older version of Otto.
“That’s my brother Micky,” Otto said as I continued to watch them. “The loudmouth one is my brother Rumi.”
“Rumi looks like your dad,” I mumbled dumbly. “You don’t.”
“Got his eyes. Not the color—the shape,” Otto replied distractedly as they reached us.
“Callin’ in reinforcements,” Otto’s dad said. He looked at me and held out his hand. “I’m Tommy.”
“Esther,” I replied automatically, shaking his hand. Politeness had been ingrained in me since I was born.
“Nice to meet you, sweetheart.” He smiled, and I realized that Otto had also gotten that from his dad. “Sorry we’re meetin’ like this.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said honestly. The older man somehow put me at ease while his son—whom I’d actually been wishing for—didn’t.
“Well,” Tommy said with a sigh. “Those crates are wired so that if we tried to get down there or take any of ’em, they’d blow the fuck up.”
“Are you sure?” I asked dubiously.
“Pretty fuckin’ sure,” Otto’s brother Micky mumbled.
“We’ve got someone comin’ out that has some experience with this shit,” Tommy said with a nod. “He’ll take care of it.”
I stared at the cabin. “And then it’ll be safe to go back inside?” I asked, thinking of all the food I had inside. The stacks of firewood I’d brought in that morning. The phone that I’d left on the table like an idiot.
“Should be,” Tommy confirmed.
“Okay, good.” I murmured, not really sure what to say. “It’s cold out here.”
“I’ll turn on the truck,” Otto replied quickly, walking away so he could climb in the driver’s side.
“Can’t believe you’ve been livin’ in there,” Mick said, looking over at me.
“You get used to it,” I replied with a shrug, my cheeks burning. “It’s really not so bad. Whoever built it did a good job.”
“You—”
Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off as the other older guy came stomping toward us.
“Mouth and one of his guys are on the way.”
“Fuck,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “I thought he and Ceecee had headed south already.”
“Tomorrow,” the older man replied.
“Good timin’.”
“I’m Will,” the older guy said to me. “That bozo’s uncle.”
I looked between Tommy and Will suddenly understanding the weird genetics they had going on in their family. Will was as big as Micky and Otto, while his dad and brother Rumi were a bit shorter and about half as wide. Very strange.
“He took all the food when we were kids,” Tommy joked, correctly interpreting my look.
“Fuck you,” Will replied with a chuckle.
I’d gone to public school and had probably heard every swear word there was, but their casual use of them was a little disconcerting.
I ignored it. The truck was running with the heater going full blast, but it was still a little chilly with my door open.
Zipping the front of my jacket all the way to my chin, I pulled the hood up, too.
“Someone’s been out here, choppin’ wood,” Otto’s brother Rumi said with a scowl, walking toward us.
Timidly, I raised my hand. “Uh, that was me.”
Rumi did a double take. “Say what?”
“I chopped the wood,” I clarified, nodding toward the side of the cabin. “Well, most of it. There’s about three rows at the bottom that were here when I moved in.”
“That stack is as tall as I am,” he replied flatly.
I shrugged. “I’ve been here a while.”
“Bullshit.”
“There’s not a lot to do.”
“You’re tellin’ me that you chopped all that wood?”
“That’s what I said.”
“By yourself?”
“Do you see anyone else here?” I was starting to get a little irritated by that point.
My mind was hopping from one thing to another.
I was sitting in some random truck, the father of my child that I’d only talked to twice was sitting behind me, there was some kind of bomb in my cabin, and he was questioning me about firewood?
“Think we should keep an eye out for whoever else is living here,” Rumi said, dismissing me as he looked at his dad. “They gotta come home at some point.”
“Are you joking?” I asked under my breath.
“Enough, Rumi,” Otto barked.
“Look, man, I know she’s your…whatever. But facts are facts.”
Otto was out of the truck in less than a second, rounding the hood in long strides. “What facts?”
“There’s freshly cut wood next to the cabin,” Rumi said slowly, like Otto couldn’t understand him.
“A fire goin’ in the fireplace, guns and explosives in the floor…
and oblivious Esther livin’ here in the middle of it all with no electricity?
I don’t buy it.” He paused to pull the hood of his sweatshirt up as it started to rain.
“Somethin’ stinks. I’m guessin’ Esther here was the lookout.
Good chance she already called someone.”
Ignoring their argument, I slid down from the truck and through the group of men who moved out of my way. There was a lot I couldn’t explain, and I was having a really hard time wrapping my head around what the heck was going on, but there was one thing I could clear up pretty easily.
Without a word, I walked over to the stump I used for splitting and pulled it away from the side of the cabin, just in case there really was a bomb inside.
I looked around for a round that was reasonably dry and found one leaning against a tree a few feet away.
It was easy enough to perch it on the stump.
I could feel their eyes on my back as I stripped my coat off and draped it carefully so it wouldn’t get wet inside.
Then, grabbing the axe, I lifted it over my shoulder and swung it as hard as I could, splitting it halfway through.
“Esther,” Otto called, coming toward me.
I waved him away silently and lifted the axe again, splitting the round completely through the center.
“Esther,” he called again, his voice sounding closer and exasperated.
“Just a minute,” I grunted, re-settling the half-round on the stump. With two more whacks, I’d split it into small enough pieces for the fireplace.
Turning around, I looked and found Rumi still standing next to the truck. “I split the wood.”
“Clearly,” Otto’s uncle Will said in amusement.
“Come away from the goddamn cabin,” Otto snapped, grabbing the axe from my hands as he shoved me toward my coat. “Jesus Christ.”
“I was just showing him—”
“I know what you were doin’,” he said as he tugged me back toward the truck. “Ignore him.”
“I should call my dad,” I said, my mind finally clearing a little as I pulled Otto to a stop. “I’ll ask him if he knows anything about the crates.”
Otto stared at me like I had two heads.
“Sugar, you realize why we’re here, right?” he said gently, leaning down to look closely into my eyes.
“You think those crates are yours, right?” I said, glancing toward the cabin. “And someone stole them and hid them in the floor.”
“Right.”
“Well, why don’t I just call my dad and see if he knows anything about them?” I said. It sounded rational to me. “It seems like it’ll save you guys a lot of trouble and then if that stuff is yours, you can just take it, and I can go back inside.”
“What?” he asked in disbelief.
“Why don’t I—”
“No, I heard you,” Otto said, carefully ushering me the rest of the way to the truck. “You’re not callin’ your dad.”
“But—”
“And you’re not steppin’ foot back in that cabin.”
“That’s where I live.”
“Not anymore,” Otto replied grimly.
“She okay?” Micky asked.
“Shock maybe?” Otto replied out of the side of his mouth.
“I’m not in shock,” I argued.
“She’s not really graspin’ the situation,” Tommy said softly.
“Please stop talking about me like I’m not here,” I snapped.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Tommy replied.
“Can you guys please just leave? Or wait out here until you figure out whatever you need to figure out?” I asked tiredly, finally losing my patience. “I want to go back inside. I’m cold and I’m hungry, and I’ve got a perfectly good fire and breakfast waiting for me.”
“Can I have a word?” Tommy asked Otto, putting his hand on Otto’s shoulder.
As they walked away, the ringing in my ears that I’d been able to ignore since I opened the cabin door got just a little bit louder.
I clenched my hands in my lap as I tried to keep my breathing slow and regular.
I could tell that Otto’s brothers and uncle were watching me and I didn’t want them to see how scared I was.
By that point, I no longer feared the men.
They seemed like they were nice enough and if they were going to hurt me they would’ve already—plus, I didn’t think Otto would let them.
I was more afraid of what was going to happen next, once they took the guns.
I didn’t know why my dad had them, it must’ve been some mistake.
My dad co-owned a nursery. He went to church every Sunday and Wednesday.
He was a deacon for Pete’s sake. What would he do with a bunch of rifles?
But part of me, deep down, knew that if he’d taken so much care to hide them he would be really angry they were gone.
I’d screwed up big time. This was probably the type of emergency that constituted using that phone I’d left inside. Now, they would never let me come home.