Chapter 21 Eva
Eva
It could have been an animal.
The words beat a frantic rhythm in Eva’s head as she cleared a fire pit.
The slink of vinyl and the clatter of tent poles rang out behind her.
When Arthur swore, she peeked and caught him nursing a smashed thumb.
Gloves on, of course. With a rock, he hammered the stakes of their tent into the ground.
At least they still had that. With the disappearance of her pack, they’d lost one of their sleeping bags, their first aid kit, and half their food. Too stressed and frustrated to speak without sniping at each other, they’d stopped talking altogether.
A strip of bark flared, then caught flame. Eva blew on the ember to make it grow. They still had an hour of daylight left, but the mountains got cold at night this time of year, and Eva needed to busy herself with a useful task to distract from her spiraling thoughts.
It could have been an animal.
But wanting something to be true didn’t make it so.
If an animal had smelled the food still in the backpack and dragged it off, wouldn’t there have been some kind of mark in the soil?
Eva hadn’t seen any tracks. It was as though the pack had disappeared into thin air.
She thought of the sheriff, who certainly would have pulled together a search party.
But if Dane and his deputies had tracked them down, they wouldn’t hide in the trees or steal supplies.
They wouldn’t keep their presence a secret.
She could make neither head nor tail of it, but the sensation of being watched made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She cut a glance over her shoulder to the trail of wildflowers she’d left in her footprints. Anxiety buzzed inside her.
This forest was unlike any other she’d been in.
Eva couldn’t put her finger on what about it unnerved her, exactly, only that it seemed somehow more…
conscious. Not like an animal but more than any stand of trees she’d ever come across.
The communal hum of roots beneath the surface had started to grate against her skull.
She needed to shut down her brain. To stop catastrophizing.
It was hard not to let her father’s stories creep back in.
As she worked on their fire, Eva’s memory drifted back to other hearthside moments in their cottage, when Dad would gather both his girls on his lap with a giant bag of chocolate-covered popcorn and tell them stories about his fictional honeyman.
“He used to be an average-sized sort of fellow, until magic stretched him into a giant.”
That one had made Eva giggle, and Dad had tickled her ribs.
“He spoke the languages of trees. He knew the sounds they made when they were happy”—Dad had pointed to the crackling log in their fireplace—“and when they were in pain.”
A flame caught and licked across the lichen-covered log Eva was hovering over, pulling her from the memory she’d all but forgotten.
She moved back, giving the fire space to grow as she stuck a finger in her shoe and lifted her heel out to give the growing blister some relief.
Usually, such wounds healed faster than this, but even her quick healing couldn’t quite keep up with the torment of too-small shoes over miles and miles.
A zipper whined behind her. She turned to see Arthur kneel inside the tent and unroll their single sleeping bag. When his back muscles flexed taut, her mouth went dry.
At least they’d switched packs, or else they wouldn’t have the tent at all.
The kitten had curled up like a pill bug in the grass. The cans of chicken they’d planned on giving her had been in the pack too. Eva had peaches, but she was pretty sure she’d read somewhere that cats shouldn’t have peaches. So, for now, her sandwich bread would have to tide the kitten over.
Guilt wormed inside her as she wondered again if they’d made a mistake. Between Arthur’s stitches, the rough terrain, and the kitten’s hungry mewls, it certainly hadn’t been the strongest start to their quest.
Worse was her father. Eva hadn’t told him goodbye. What if his body gave out before they could return? Had she surrendered her last days with him for nothing?
No. No, they could still do this. They just had to get to the wildflower fields.
The fire hit a water pocket in the wood and sparked a bright scarlet. Eva dug a few cheese sticks out of her pack. Tonight, they would eat and rest. Tomorrow, Arthur would be well, and together they would finish the trek to the meadows.
They had to.
The tent door fluttered in the breeze as she approached.
“I can sleep outside,” Arthur offered cautiously.
Snapshots flicked through her mind: the withering branches of her father’s tree, the depression in the grass where her pack should have been. “It’s not safe,” she said carefully.
“It’s not safe for me to be inside either.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
It felt like a confession to admit she still believed that, despite the ache of the last eight years. It also felt a little bit like a lie. They both knew he had hurt her, his absence a bruise that time couldn’t fade.
“You won’t,” Eva said more firmly, unsure which of them she was trying to convince.
Arthur’s eyes dropped to the kitten. “I could hurt Bug.”
She blinked. “Bug? What are you…?” She glanced at their furry companion. “You named the cat!”
Arthur flushed. “No.”
“You did!”
“She’s been pawing at bugs all day!” Arthur said with a defensive sweep of his arm.
Eva snorted a laugh. She couldn’t help it. “You named our cat Bug.”
“Our cat?” Arthur countered indignantly.
It was just enough to send her over the edge. Eva bent over giggling, tears salting her cheeks.
Arthur’s ears reddened. “Forget it,” he muttered. “She can be Snowball.”
“No, no, I think it’s cute.” Eva pushed herself up, swiping away the moisture in her eyes. Honestly, it felt good to cry for something funny for a change. “Sorry. I do, I… Sorry.” Another laugh slipped out of her. She pointed to her face. “This isn’t about you.”
The emotional release made newborn blades of grass push out of the soil at her feet. She scooped Bug up and followed a sulking Arthur into the tent, her lips still trembling with laughter.
“What do we do about this?” He nodded to the remaining sleeping bag they had to share.
It was a good question. The cooling temperature would leave them both shivering without a few extra layers. Luckily, they still had the clothes in Arthur’s pack, including the flannel shirt she’d worn in the van.
“Unzip it,” she decided. “We’ll dress warm and sleep underneath.”
“And the cat?”
Bug arched her back and pawed the floor of the tent, widening a sudden yawn.
“Oh, she’ll sleep with me. We cuddle now.” Eva nuzzled the animal close and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Isn’t that right, Bug?”
Eva used to love camping, priding herself as a child on her hardiness to the outdoors. It was something she and Dad had shared. So it irritated her no end that no matter what she did, no matter how the last few days had depleted her stores of energy down to the dregs, she couldn’t fall asleep.
She blamed the pine cones digging into her back. She blamed the cold. Most frustratingly, she blamed her proximity to the man beside her.
Arthur’s presence was distracting, from the telltale snluuf of his snores to the chocolate curl hanging over his nose. It took everything in her not to fix that lock of hair. Not that Arthur would have noticed, since he apparently slept like the dead despite the rough terrain and shivering cold.
Eva rolled over and stared at him in the dark.
He’d given her a sweatshirt from their remaining pack, taking for himself the flannel shirt she’d worn last night.
The shorts he’d given her had started to chafe her thighs, and after he’d fallen asleep, Eva had dug through the pack and pulled out the softest alternative she could find: a pair of boxers.
In desperate times.
At last, she gave in to the urge and reached to delicately lift the lock of hair out of Arthur’s eyes. He didn’t even stir. She studied his profile. Dry lips. Harsh cheekbones. A pained grimace, softened by sleep.
Eva couldn’t believe he’d wanted to come with her. It was so unlike him to stick around.
Rolling onto her back again, Eva closed her eyes.
On her other side, Bug slept in a T-shirt nest between Eva’s back and the tent wall.
Eva ran a finger softly down the kitten’s spine and tried counting sheep.
She tried flexing and releasing first the muscles of her toes, then her feet, then her legs.
She tried clearing her mind to a blank slate, but the harder she tried to sleep, the more awake she became.
With a huff, she finally surrendered and rolled onto the balls of her feet, ankles cracking. This is ridiculous. She eased the zipper open, glancing back. Arthur and Bug were both fast asleep, turned away from each other with an Eva-sized gap between them.
She quietly slid the zipper closed again, willing to chance a brief separation to relieve her screaming bladder.
The air outside tasted infinitely fresher. Eva craned her neck up at the stars. You never saw them this vivid down in the valley, where light pollution made them fade. Here, the constellations told a story older than honey itself.
When her skin goosed with cold, she rubbed her arms and dug out the roll of toilet paper from the backpack, slipping her feet into her shoes.
She quietly tiptoed past the tent to do her business, grateful that the forest was never truly quiet.
Night music filled her ears and settled her.
The burbling river. The orchestra of crickets.
The snore of pickerel frogs. If Arthur were awake, he could tell her what species of owl hooted in the trees.