Chapter 21
Thora screamed, frozen in place. Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t supposed to fear snakes as badly as she did, but her
gut did not care about her intellect.
Lee came running, saw the snake, and pulled her out of the bathroom. In doing so, Thora’s feet came out of her slippers, and
she stepped backward barefoot. A splinter embedded itself into her heel, making her shriek even louder in pain. Lee shut the
bathroom door and ran to get bedding from the Blue Room, wedging it under the door so the snake couldn’t slither through the
gap.
Standing on one foot and leaning against the wall, Thora pulled the jagged bit of wood from her foot. It came free and she
hissed, loudly enough for the rattlesnake to hear. A crimson orb of blood dotted her skin.
“That’s it,” Thora proclaimed when she could breathe again. “I’m done. Something in this house does not want me here, and
it’s escalating.”
“It’s going to be okay, Thora,” Lee said, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“This time, it’s not that weird. Of course a snake would want to come in from the cold.
It’s not like this old house is impervious to wildlife.
It’s scary, but we’ve been away for a day. Animals can take advantage of that.”
“No, Lee. I’m done. If you want to stick around, be my guest. Don’t come crying when you’re racing to the emergency room looking
for antivenom.”
Was she being dramatic? She might not be dramatic enough, honestly. Lee’s mouth was in a tight line. His face searched hers,
and she had no idea what she was supposed to show him anymore.
“Are you giving up this easily?” he asked quietly.
That question touched a nerve, and it was the single nerve holding her together.
“Is that what Cody told you I did?”
He held out his hands as if trying to calm a feisty pony. “Whoa. I didn’t say anything about Cody.”
“But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? You saw me give up on Cody, and you think I’m giving up on this house . . .”
“You said you’re done with the house. How am I supposed to interpret that?”
Thora kept rolling. “And now you’re trying to push me away because you think I’ll give up on you, too. So you’re beating me
to it.”
“Thora, please.”
“You told me you wouldn’t lie. What did Cody tell you about the end of our relationship?”
“Nothing bad, but I don’t want to betray his confidence.”
“See? Your loyalty to him is always going to be an issue. You told me there wasn’t a situation where it would come up, but
here it is. If Cody poisoned the well by making you think I give up easily, I think I should be able to defend myself.”
Lee spun around in place. “How did we get here? Where is all this coming from? Can we deal with the snake and your foot?”
“My foot is fine. I don’t know how to deal with the snake. I fucking hate snakes and I’m losing my goddamn mind. I don’t know
how to handle anything that’s happening in this house.”
“You’ve been here less than a week. You don’t have to have all the answers right away.”
“No, but I need to stay alive. And I’m starting to wonder whether that’s possible here. I don’t think it’s too much to ask
that I feel unquestionably safe in my own house.”
Lee scrunched his face.
“What?”
“Safety is an illusion. Worry too much about safety and you’ll miss out on a lot in life. There’s a million things that can
and do go wrong in houses that leave people hurt and dead.”
“Maybe I can find a house with only nine hundred thousand things that can go wrong, none of which are rattlesnakes. It doesn’t
seem like too much to ask for.”
Lee tugged at his hair. “What are you proposing? You want to sell Juniper? After you finally got it to a place where it can
be properly cared for and loved by future generations?”
She couldn’t possibly care about future generations. “Maybe.”
“You wanted me to hold people to account. You said influencing people’s behavior for the better is part of being in a relationship
with them. That’s what I’m doing. I want you to think about what you’re saying.”
“And can’t you see it’s the wrong time? There is a venomous snake in this house with us, and we are very, very far from medical
care.”
Rain began pelting Juniper’s tin roof. The initial droplets made a syncopated rhythm that quickly built to a continuous roar.
Summer storms at Juniper, where thunder shook the whole house and rain came down in torrents, were always a fun treat.
The freight train sound of the rain on the roof was an irrefutable reminder of the awesome power of nature.
This rain was not falling in the biblical quantities summer could bring, but it was loud enough that Thora felt like shouting over it made sense.
If she was going to fuck up her life even more, she might as well do it loudly.
Meanwhile, Lee maintained his infuriatingly calm demeanor. “I’m here with you. If we stay together, we will be okay. Nothing
will hurt us.”
“You thought George would be okay staying in this house, and look how that turned out.”
Thora knew she wasn’t fighting fair. She knew everything she was saying was coming from a place of fear. But the fear was
protecting her at the moment, and Lee was not. He was throwing her to the wolves. Literally throwing her to the fucking snakes.
Still, he wouldn’t rise to meet her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’m in distress. I need to leave. I need to go back to Woodhill House. You can do whatever you want, but you parked me in,
so you’ll have to move your truck.” She pushed past him to collect her things from the bedrooms.
“Can’t we please talk about this?” Lee implored.
“I’m not sure what there is to talk about. Apparently you’ve been holding me up to some impossible ideal since our freshman
year of college over ten years ago, and I’m never going to live up to it. You should let me go and come to terms with the
fact that whoever you thought I was for all these years is not the real me.”
“What is the idea of you that you think I have?”
He would never stop asking questions, would he?
“I’m someone you can fall on your sword for and that makes you feel big for some reason. I took advantage of you in college, stealing the credit for your comic. Are you trying to sacrifice yourself again? Get bitten by a fucking snake to prove something to me?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything.”
“You’ve never had a girlfriend. You string girls along all the while hoping some gesture is going to be the one that wins
me over.”
“I’ve kept relationships casual while figuring out my priorities. You make it sound like I was burning love poems about you
in my fireplace every night.”
If she could get him to say something genuinely unkind, it would hurt in the way she needed badly, to make all this easier.
“Oh, am I being dramatic?”
“A little! And it’s okay. I love your dramatic flair! Look at how you channeled it into such great purpose in college. You
can be dramatic and you can also put some trust in me. The snake isn’t going to kill us. We can get through this night together.”
They were going in circles, so Thora had to set them straight. “I think it’s best if we don’t. It’s never going to work, and
it’s going to break my heart to pretend otherwise tonight.”
Lee couldn’t argue with that. “Okay. But please don’t rush to sell Juniper. I don’t want you to do something you regret because
you’re mad at me.” His voice, usually as steady and firm as he was, wavered.
Maybe he had a point, but Thora was simply too distressed to see it. At this moment, if she could hand over ownership of Juniper
to someone else—not Lee—she probably would.
“I’ll move my truck,” Lee said with resignation.
Thora began packing some things into a bag. She could come back for the rest later, or she could make Mack do it. Within a minute, not enough time for Lee to perform the tricky maneuvers between trees to get his truck out of the way of hers, he was back.
“That was quick,” she said.
“Come look,” he said.
They went through the Great Room onto the porch, where they could see the Jeep, the truck, and the driveway cutting through
the forest.
A tree was down over the driveway. The storm hadn’t seemed strong enough to blow down any trees; it must have been diseased
or otherwise weakened.
But another tree lay behind it across the driveway. Perfectly parallel.
“There are more beyond those two,” Lee said.
They were trapped.