12. Kristin
KRISTIN
Hailey was already stomping out onto the porch when I noticed the odd tilt of her head. She paused, one foot halfway out the door.
“Uhh . . . Mom.”
“What?” I called, bouncing Henry against me.
“The casseroles are gone.”
I stepped closer, tightening my hold on my baby, and looked over her shoulder. The porch was empty. No dishes and no trace they’d ever been there.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Your dad locked the gate last night.” I turned to Patrick, who was tugging on his coat. “Didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, distracted. “But that only blocks vehicles. The property isn’t entirely fenced in. There’re probably a hundred ways to just walk in.” His tone was casual, but his words snagged something deep in my rib cage.
The property was sixteen acres, a mix of woods, brush, wetlands, and old falling-over fences that time had twisted into nothingness. We’d never walked any of it. I hated that Judi Vee knew more about our land than we did and that she felt comfortable enough to wander onto it whenever she pleased.
Patrick kissed Henry and me goodbye, and then he and Hailey headed out to the car. After they pulled away, the quiet rushed back in.
I hummed while tidying the kitchen, trying to keep the silence from suffocating my existence. If I kept busy, my thoughts couldn’t spiral as they wanted to—couldn’t replay every single thing that had felt off since we arrived.
Henry’s eyes fluttered, fighting sleep. I rocked him until his body softened, then carried him to the nursery.
The second I laid him in his bassinet, my phone rang. Patrick.
“Hey,” I whispered, my heart already beating too fast. “Everything okay?”
“You need to call the DNR,” he said, breathless.
“What? Why?”
“There’s a dead deer stuck in our gate.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “What do you mean, ‘stuck’? Who put it there?”
Hailey gagged in the background. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“No one put it here,” Patrick said. “The gate’s usually open, remember? And there’re no lights up here, so it must’ve run right into it in the dark and gotten wedged.”
I closed my eyes. “Is it bad?”
“It’s dead, Kris. I got the gate open, so we can get to school, but I couldn’t get the deer out.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call.”
But the DNR refused to help. They said it wasn’t their responsibility, and apparently, wildlife getting stuck in residential gates was a common thing around these parts. It was my gate, and I had insisted that we locked it, so it was my dead deer to take care of.
I clipped the baby monitor to my jacket, checking the signal twice. The little light glowed steadily, and Henry’s soft breathing was a faint static murmur.
Cold bit my cheeks as soon as I stepped outside. The driveway felt longer than usual, and each crunch of snow sounded too loud. The trees, bare and black, leaned inward like they were watching.
When I came around the curve, I saw it.
The deer—no, the fawn—was wedged between the iron bars.
Its shoulders and torso had slipped through, but its hips hadn’t.
In its panic, it had twisted and kicked, gouging a shallow trench in the frozen ground.
Its stomach had been torn open on both sides, metal biting deep into flesh. It must have struggled all night.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, even though I knew it couldn’t hear me.
I tried pulling it free, but rigor mortis had hardened every limb, and the fawn was much heavier than it appeared. I knew immediately what it meant. The only way out was through. My stomach lurched. I backed away, pressing a hand over my mouth.
“Tools. I need tools.”
I headed toward the garage, but aside from crushed cardboard boxes, it was empty.
I ventured to the basement, hoping that the previous occupants might have left something behind that I could use.
The door at the top of the stairs creaked open with a groan.
At the bottom of the steps, I pulled the chain for the light, and it blinked a few times before buzzing on.
Dark stains mottled the cracked concrete floor.
They were old, irregular, soaked-in shapes that twisted my imagination.
It wasn’t paint or water, but something else that had been spilled long before we arrived.
An old splitting maul leaned in the corner of the back room.
It wasn’t ours, and I assumed it must have been left with the house.
The wood was coarse, and it was heavy and awkward in my hands.
When I pulled the light chain again, the bulb exploded. Glass rained down, sending me jumping back.
“Jesus,” I hissed, my heart hammering in my throat. “Is everything in this house an old piece of shit?”
Back at the gate, I took a deep breath and lifted the maul, trying to figure out how I should position my hands. I stumbled backward, the weight throwing me off balance. My arms burned, and sweat prickled under my coat, and that was just from carrying the stupid thing up to the gate.
“If any neighbor sees me,” I muttered, “I’m going to look absolutely insane.”
I swung at half speed, not sure how much force would be required to hack through the lifeless creature. The blade of the axe side thudded off the fawn’s rock-hard spine and fell into the snow. Only a few hairs ripped from the skin.
I tried swinging with all my strength but had again nearly the same result. I started hacking feverishly, over and over and over.
A truck rumbled, idling at the top of the driveway. It was a rusted, old Chevy with a loud engine.
The driver rolled down his window and just stared at me.
He looked to be in his fifties, with a weathered face and gray stubble.
A toothpick balanced between his teeth that he kept flipping intermittently from lips to tongue and back.
He didn’t blink as he took in the gate, the fawn, and me, holding a bloody maul.
“Hunting season ended last week,” he said.
“Does it look like I’m hunting?” I snapped, dropping the maul to my side.
A slow smile spread. “No. You don’t strike me as the type.”
The man climbed out of his truck, taking several slow, deliberate steps toward me. I tightened my grip on the maul.
“Painful way to go,” he said, resting a hand on the gate. “Trapped someplace, stuck, with no one coming to help.” The man looked at me. “That’s how we all die, if you think about it.”
He held out his hand, and I flinched.
“You want help or not?”
I hesitated. Every instinct screamed no, but the deer . . . I couldn’t just leave it like this, so I slowly handed the maul over.
“She’s pretty dull,” he said, examining the blade. “Gonna have to get creative here.”
He turned the maul around to the sledgehammer side and swung it over his head.
With a powerful, swift strike, the sledgehammer hit the spine of the deer with a deafening crack.
The middle of the body went limp as both halves now hung loosely between the bars.
He spun the maul around, and with a clean, brutal swing, he severed the fawn.
The two halves thumped into the snow, and a dark crimson spread over it like a sno-cone.
“Thanks,” I breathed.
“I didn’t do it for you,” he said, handing the maul back. “I did it for the deer.” The man climbed back into his truck and drove off without another word.
I stood there, chest heaving, hands trembling. The maul was slick in my palm. The baby monitor buzzed against my chest, and then a whisper cut through the static.
“Henrrryyyy . . . tell your mommy it’s time to leave . . .”
My blood went ice cold.
“No,” I breathed. “No, no, no.”
I spun and ran as fast as I could, my boots slipping on the icy snow. The house felt too far away and the air felt too sharp to breathe.
“Henry!” I sobbed. “Mommy’s coming.”
My foot hit ice, and my legs flew out from under me. The world rolled back and the driveway rushed up to meet me. My head struck hard, an explosion of pain and ringing in my ears and then nothing but black.