Chapter 41
Carrie
When I hear the knock, my mind leaps to Matthieu. I trip over my own feet on the way to the door and throw out a hand to catch myself. My breath is uneven as I grip the handle, pulling it open, heart pounding in my ears—
“Oh,”
I say, deflating against the doorframe. “It’s you.”
“Can I come in?”
Tom asks, face set in stone, just like the last time. I haven’t seen him since that night he sat in my car, which feels like a lifetime ago now. Only a handful of months have passed, but everything is different. And somehow we have managed to avoid each other in this small, sleepy town.
I shrug, not bothering to show him false politeness—we’re too far past that now—and move off into the cottage, beckoning with a hand. He shrugs off his coat, unlaces his boots, and then follows me to the kitchen. I sit on a barstool at the island, and he takes the other and drags it a few paces away. We eye each other, and I wonder what he’ll hurl at me this time. What I’ve done to overstep some invisible line he’s drawn around himself and Jess.
“There’s no easy way of saying this,”
he begins, clearing his throat. He breaks eye contact, gazing toward the window, a dark maw opening onto the night. “But it has to be said.”
I reach for the bottle of wine in front of me, tipping a couple more inches into a long-stemmed glass. I swirl it around, watching the ruby liquid stick to the sides like a rising tide. “Do you want some?”
“I’m driving.”
“Sure.”
I pause, taking a tiny sip, and look over to find him staring at me. “Well, go on, then. Tell me.”
“It’s about Jess.”
“Isn’t it always?”
He curses under his breath, shifting in his seat. “Yes, Carrie. Yes, it’s always about Jess . . . because it’s always been about Jess. I love her. I love her so damn much, and all I do is hurt her, all the time—”
“And what do you think you’re doing right now? Coming here?”
“Straightening things out.”
He wets his lips, a slight frown dimpling his forehead. “I’m sorry I asked you to leave a few months ago. I—I can’t take that back, just like I can’t expect you to vanish like smoke. I thought it would be the best thing for Jess. For . . . us. But it isn’t. She misses you, and when you left, it was what she was most afraid of. She won’t make the first move, Carrie. You have to.”
I place the wineglass down carefully and push it away with the tips of my fingers. It slides across the surface of the kitchen island, and I allow his words to echo around us. When I speak, my voice comes out thicker than I intended. Rife with a decade, a lifetime, of emotions. “I’ve been back for months. Why tonight?”
“Jess is pregnant.”
I still a hiss on my tongue, eyes snapping to his. “And she’s all right?”
“She’s fine.”
He sighs. “Baby’s fine. It’s me. I—I didn’t handle things right at all.”
I take a deep breath. “What do you want, Tom?”
“Can you . . . speak to her?”
he asks, opening his arms wide. “See a way of patching things up? Find some common ground, be civil with each other. Something. You’re both too big a presence in Woodsmoke to exist apart. There’s too much history. This will keep simmering away, and it’s already a weight on her, it’s already affecting her. If you’re staying, then at some point you’ll bump into each other. You have to fix—”
“Does she want that? Did she send you?”
“No, no, she didn’t—”
I laugh, reaching again for my wineglass. I bury my hurt in a quick sip, letting the taste linger on my tongue before swallowing. If Jess had wanted to see me, if she had wanted this . . . but no. This is about Tom wanting his life to go smoothly. His stumbling way of making his wife happy. “Time to go, Tom.”
He swears again, dropping his gaze to the floor. He keeps it pinned there for a moment, and I can feel the desperation seeping from him. “I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to lose what we have, Carrie. And I realize now that I shouldn’t have told you that you shouldn’t have come back. This is your home too, Woodsmoke is yours as much as ours. I see that now.”
A part of me thaws, just a little. “Go on.”
“I think Jess has been looking over her shoulder this whole time, hoping to see you, missing you. I don’t know. I can see how that would cut a person up, make them miserable. And what if you did come back looking to stir things up? Maybe that’s what she’s afraid of.”
In a way, he’s right. Maybe Jess was right to be afraid, maybe there was a part of me that wanted this town to implode with my homecoming. I always felt like I was out of step, like Woodsmoke didn’t accept me. But as soon as I got engaged, when I agreed to wear that pretty white dress, suddenly I was the golden girl. Suddenly I was valued. But I couldn’t fit into a version of myself that wasn’t real. And the bitterness of feeling that I couldn’t just belong as me, that I had to be what folk wanted me to be, lasted for years and years.
But I don’t feel like that anymore. Not after this winter. It’s as though the frost has cooled the bile inside me, allowing this homecoming to be more healing than I ever imagined it could be. I think of Matthieu, of the shop in town that could become something else. I think about the spring and how the mountains are changing. And about how I’ve changed since I returned, how I’ve begun to feel like this is home. Like I’ve found it. Like I belong somewhere and with someone. “I’ll talk to her,”
I say quietly. “Not tonight, but I will. You have my word.”
He blows out a breath, and I swear his edges sharpen. He sits up straighter, regaining some of the old Tom. The apple thief. The boy who hopped the wall of the Morgan garden on a dare, even though the town whispered of curses and witches. Who played bass in a band, swaggering around town like he would conquer the world one day. “Thank you.”
“You should probably go home. She’ll—Jess will be worried.”
He hesitates, his eyes flicking up to meet mine. There are still shadows there, ghosts that have not been dispelled. I brace myself. “There’s one more thing. You have to know . . . it’s about Cora.”
Our eyes meet, and I nod slowly. “Jess went to her before the wedding, and Cora said she’d take care of it. Of us. And that was when I saw Jess properly; it was like a gauze had been ripped away. I didn’t want to leave Woodsmoke, like we planned anyway, and after that day, I was even more sure about that. And then you ran on our wedding day . . . and I don’t know. I guess Jess has been in torment ever since. She told me tonight. And I don’t know how much of it I believe, but deep down I’ve always loved Jess. I know this is important for her that you know what she did, so that she can let go of the guilt . . .”
My breath catches and I swallow. Jess went to Cora. She went to Cora knowing full well what that would mean, after seeing glimpses of the magic herself throughout our childhood . . . she went to my great-aunt and asked for her help. I take a sip of wine and feel it burn all the way down my throat. Cora, with her bony, pinching fingers. Cora, with her intense, strangling love . . .
“Of course,”
I say quietly. “It always comes back to her. Always.”
“I’m sorry, I just thought you should know the whole truth, Jess is in bits—”
“It’s okay.”
I run my hand over my forehead. “Please tell her it’s okay, and I’ll come over there and see her soon.”
Tom nods, saying nothing, and begins to slide off the barstool. “I know we can’t . . . it’s impossible to make it right between us. But Carrie, you were my friend too. I shouldn’t have implied you shouldn’t stay when you got back. I’m sorry.”
I breathe through my nose and fix on a smile for him. “Honestly, put it out of your mind. It all makes sense now. More than you know.”
I frown down at my wineglass. Piecing together the weeks leading up to the wedding, piecing everything together. “Cora warned me about Matthieu, how he could disappear, and now he’s missing. I can’t help thinking . . . I . . .”
“Who’s Matthieu?”
“A friend.”
I smile, feeling the ghost of a kiss, the touch of his hand. “More than a friend. Cora told me he wasn’t real, and that he would disappear as the frost thaws, and I haven’t seen him since yesterday. Haven’t heard from him. Maybe it sounds unbelievable—”
“Since the frost thawed . . .”
Tom says softly.
I nod and sniff. “Exactly.”
Tom rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Look, we both know Woodsmoke and the mountains are . . . an unusual place.”
“To put it mildly.”
“And I know Cora meddles in people’s lives when she shouldn’t. But real people don’t just . . . disappear like they’re a spirit in the old tales. They don’t.”
He bites his lip. “Where does he live?”
“He’s got a cabin up in the mountains. You remember that one we found when we were kids? Past the lookout, up in that clearing?”
“I remember. The Vickers place,”
Tom says, a faint smile whispering over his features. “Have you gone up there?”
“Not yet. I didn’t want to hassle him. He might just need time or space—”
“Has he done this before?”
“No—”
But I stop, suddenly remembering the last time the frost thawed, that day I went to the cabin to find him. How the place was deserted, how I felt eyes pressing into me . . . “Actually, yes. He’s done this before.”
Tom nods. “All right. Well, there’s not a lot you can do tonight. If this is a pattern, Carrie, I’ve got to say—”
“It was the last time the frost thawed.”
I frown, blinking back sudden tears. “Tom, what if Cora’s right? What if he is . . . a curse? What if the mountains have cursed me for leaving and Matthieu isn’t . . . real?”
Tom stands staring up at the ceiling for a minute, as though gathering his words. Both of us have seen what Cora is capable of. And neither of us fully grasps why there are things we can’t explain—in our own lives, in the stories, in the snatches of fable woven into the fabric of Woodsmoke. The warnings we were given as children to not stray from the mountain paths, to always greet the mountains when we return, to never trust our eyes and ears . . . and to never fall in love if we know it’s a love that could be cursed.
“There’s a chance of that,”
he finally says. “But . . . there’s also a chance she’s wrong.”
I stand as well, crossing my arms over my chest. The cold has crept in, stealing into my heart, and all I can think about is Matthieu. “I’ll go up there. Tomorrow. I’ll go to the cabin.”
“Carrie, I know you know the mountains, but . . .”
Tom stares at the dark window. The one facing the mountains. All those old warnings, those old tales, are in his mind too, swirling behind his eyes. It’s a shared understanding we all have here. Finally, he looks at me. “The snow will have thawed, ground will be slippery. Don’t . . . don’t leave the path. If you hear a voice, or a cry, don’t follow it. Be careful.”
I leave at dawn.
This time I pack a rucksack with more than just a day’s worth of food. I pack medicine, bandages, and a torch. And as I pack, I tell myself it’s unnecessary. He’ll be there, in the cabin, probably absorbed in another project. Or he’s taken on work at another site, or he’s just ill, as I thought last time. I can’t believe Cora’s tales. I can’t believe in my legacy, the old stories threaded through the mountains. I can’t believe in any of that and still know that he is real. He’s a new beginning. A fresh start. He’s the first man I’ve truly cared for since Tom, and I’m not ready to give that up.
As I climb, my breath hangs in uneasy clouds, materializing like little ghosts before disappearing in my wake. I climb steadily, walking with the rhythm of the thoughts driving me forward. I picture him, his hand holding mine, the night under the stars, the scrape of ice under our skates on the frozen lake. I picture all of this and never falter, never flag. And as the sun climbs the ladder of the sky, casting the mountain in an eerie glow, I reach the clearing and the cabin.
The quiet is deafening. As it did the last time I was here, unease steals over me. I step forward, and the mountains ruffle and sigh. I can almost imagine them breathing my name, whether in warning or as a greeting, I’m not sure. All I know is that the mountains are on edge. That I’m standing on the threshold of something I do not fully understand.
“Matthieu?”
I say softly, my gaze tracking right and left as I cross the clearing. Unseen eyes, pressing, burning into my spine, send shivers skittering over the back of my neck, and I have to force myself to walk evenly. To breathe evenly. It’s instinct. It’s that gut feeling you can’t easily explain. It’s that needling, that insistent finger tap of fear or excitement or panic that tells you what you should do.
Mine is telling me that something is very wrong.
I knock first, listening for any sound, any sign at all that he is here. When there’s no response, I close my fingers over the door handle and shake it, leaning my forearm against the old wood to shove the door in. “Come on, bloody thing.”
Heat prickles along my hairline, but when I snap my gaze back to the clearing, there’s no one there. All is silent. Watchful. The mountains are waiting for something . . . but I don’t know what.
With a groan, the door gives, and I fall inside, my boots clattering on the floorboards. I quickly right myself and push the door closed. My whole body is heaving, my lungs tight with the need for air, and I breath wide and deep, flooding them with oxygen. The feeling of unseen eyes fades, leaving only the imprint behind. The mountains are far too watchful today. As though waiting to see what I discover.
I turn to the room, looking first to the kitchen, then the lounge, then the door left ajar that I know leads to the bedroom. I swallow, wetting my dry throat. “Matthieu? Are you here?”
Silence.
It’s dense as fog, and I’m wary of walking to the bedroom, of what I will find there. I cross to the door in only a few steps, though it feels like a mile, an endless stretch of floorboards to the other side of the room. I steel myself, then push the door open wider. All I find is a well-made bed and a stack of well-thumbed paperbacks with cracked, weary spines. The window is slightly open, and damp air is whirling in with the scents of pine and loam. I breathe out a sigh, releasing the tension in my shoulders, and walk to the window. I pull it closed, fastening the handle, and stare out at the tightly packed trees. Shadows form between them, taking the shapes of men, of monsters, of the things in the old tales that are always hungry, forever restless.
“Where are you?”
I ask the silent room. “Where have you gone?”
The cabin is more homely than it was the last time I was here. As though warmth and life have suffused the space, flooding the corners, softening its jagged edges. I brush my fingertips along the stack of paperbacks at his bedside. All nature and history books, they’re creased and have frayed covers, as though handled many times. There are no photographs displayed on the chest of drawers, only a comb. A half-used bottle of shampoo. No indication of what he was before I met him. Who he was.
I know who he is now after working alongside him this winter, sharing everyday moments and stories from my past. Someone whose mouth and hands and skin I am discovering, whose soul is slowly cleaving to mine. With his absence now, with this fear that he is not quite real, I’m afraid he may be the person I’ve been unconsciously searching for—a soul that matches my own.
In this room, I see pieces of Matthieu now. In the woven blanket tucked over his bed, in the clothes in the dresser. I smell the scent of his skin lingering on the pillows. I pick up little clues of who he is to me, and yet nothing here tells me of his history. No breadcrumb trail planted in my memories runs through here, telling me where he could have gone.
I move back into the lounge and eye the map taking up the far wall. It takes me a moment to register that it’s different now. The crisscrossed lines have grown frantic, and the map is now covered, practically coated, in handwritten notes. I step forward and time slows around me, dripping like honey. He’s searching for something. Searching across the length and breadth of the mountains, each careful handwritten note a question, an answer, a date—
My head swims and the ground tilts under me. There’s a note stuck to the left edge of the map, where there’s no place mark on the map itself. It has yesterday’s date on it—and an answer.
The last trail we were going to explore together.
This must be it.
He’s still searching for clues about Henri’s disappearance.
I breathe out, tremors shivering to my fingertips as I pull the note off and examine the place it was tacked to. My eyes trace the lines, back and forth, feathering out from the cabin like veins.
Matthieu isn’t fine. He isn’t safe, and he isn’t well. If this note was made yesterday, if he set out early and never returned—
He’s missing.
If what I believe is true, he’s somewhere in the mountains. And no one has seen him in two days. And . . . he’s real. Very real. Not some tale conjured from the frost and the mountains, not some phantom or spirit that disappears with the spring.
This is real.
Stars explode, clouding my vision, and I sink to the floor. I clutch the note in my fist, trying to steady my breathing, even as the panic, the absolute terror, sets in . . .
“Breathe. Just breathe,”
I say to myself, as though it can somehow slow my racing pulse, the quickening of my fear. I fumble for my phone and curse the lack of signal as I register the time. It’s just past ten in the morning. The last time I saw Matthieu was yesterday morning, my mouth still swollen with his kisses as I left to meet Cora at the shop in town.
I assumed . . . I thought . . . I swallow, closing my eyes. I was the last person to see him or hear from him, and now he’s been missing for nearly thirty hours. Knowing these mountains, knowing the number of people who have gone missing, never to be found again . . .
“Oh God,”
I say into the strangled silence. “Matthieu, where have you gone?”