Chapter 37 Ashes And Quiet
Ashes And Quiet
The next thing I remembered was the sound of the fire ticking down to embers and the silence after, too complete, like someone had muffled the rest of the world with a pillow.
I jerked awake on the couch, every muscle protesting, and found that I was still in the cabin, still in the middle of nowhere.
Still alive.
I took inventory. Limbs: sore but functional. Head: attached, though full of gravel and smoke. Heart: doing its best to punch a hole through my ribs.
I also noticed that my scraps and wounds were cleaned and patched up, which was not something I remembered doing myself, nor something I would have trusted to just anyone.
The stinging along my arm was less intense, covered by neat little makeshift bandages and tape.
My knuckles looked less like hamburger and more like skin.
I blinked, trying to piece together who had done all this. The air was heavy with the faint antiseptic tang of alcohol wipes, mixed in with the lingering smoke and a trace of cut pine.
It slowly dawned on me that the careful patching wasn’t the work of some night nurse or Good Samaritan. It was the work of someone who cared but didn’t necessarily know what they were doing, a study in well-meaning overkill, or just maybe because they never needed it.
That narrowed the list of suspects to approximately one person. I glanced around the cabin but found no trace of him.
Aiden.
Mateo had curled up next to me in the night, a tangle of knees and elbows, jaw tight even in sleep. At some point, he’d kicked off his shoes and most of his dignity, leaving only a single filthy sock as proof that the world still followed its own laws.
My throat was raw, my mouth tasted like old pennies, but my first thought was: he’s hungry.
Not just metaphorical hunger but actual physical, “if I don’t feed him soon, he will start chewing the furniture” hunger.
I sat up, blinking sleep grit from my eyes. Aiden was nowhere to be seen, but the fire had been restocked, and someone, probably him, had left a note on the kitchen table in handwriting I would have described as “aggressively masculine” if I were in the mood to categorize such things.
It read: “Back in a few. Get some rest.”
Which was adorable, really. As if rest was a thing that happened on command.
I ruffled Mateo’s hair and let him be when he didn’t stir.
I tiptoed to the kitchen, if tiptoeing could be done by someone as ungraceful as me, and rummaged through the cupboards.
There was a lot of canned soup, some random boxed pasta, a jar of coffee, a full loaf of bread, and a brick of real cheese in the ancient fridge.
I put water on to boil and set to work. Slicing bread, buttering both sides, and laying thick slices of cheese between. The familiar rhythm, stack, layer, press, fry, brought my mind down out of orbit, even if my hands shook a little with the effort.
I’d never been one for domesticity, but in this moment, the act of feeding my son felt like the only thing separating us from being animals.
I found a battered saucepan and dumped in a can of tomato soup, adding a splash of milk because that’s what you do if you’re trying to prove you’re a “Real Mom.” I even sprinkled a little dried basil on top, because somewhere deep in my memory was the sneering ghost of my grandma’s voice insisting that “presentation matters.”
Halfway through melting the cheese, Mateo stumbled into the kitchen, eyes still glued half-shut with sleep.
“Mom,” he said, voice croaky, “are we gonna get in trouble for using someone else’s kitchen?”
“Only if we burn it down,” I shot back. “But between you and me, I’m pretty sure the health inspector has bigger problems with this place.”
He grinned, and for a split second, the old Mateo, the one before all this madness, peered out from under the mess of dark hair.
“You’re doing it wrong,” he said automatically. “You’re supposed to flip it before it burns.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Chef Mateo. Should I call the Food Network? You can stir the soup,” I said. “But if you redecorate with tomato, you’re licking it off.”
“Gross,” he said, but there was pride in his posture as he grabbed the wooden spoon and set to stirring.
We worked in silence, broken only by the sizzle of cheese hitting cast iron and the gentle swish of spoon on soup. I cut the sandwiches into triangles, because that’s how Mateo liked them, and poured the soup into mugs instead of bowls, because it just seemed cozier that way.
I set everything out on the battered wooden table, and we sat across from each other.
He eyed the sandwich like it might bite him first, then tore in with a hunger that was part survival, part victory lap.
He devoured the first triangle in three bites, then dipped the second in his mug and grinned at the resultant orange mustache.
I’d never loved anyone more in my life.
Halfway through the meal, Mateo looked up, eyes less haunted now, and said, “Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?”
He hesitated, mouth twisting as he searched for the right words. “I feel…weird. Inside.”
My chest tightened. I set down my mug and waited.
He poked the sandwich, picking at a crumb. “It’s like…I’m buzzing. Like when you put your tongue on a nine-volt battery. Only it’s everywhere, even in my toes.”
I forced a smile. “That’s just adrenaline, kiddo. Happens when you go through something scary. Your body’s trying to catch up to the rest of you.”
He looked unconvinced but nodded. “But what about the colors? When I close my eyes, I see, like…shapes. Moving around. Is that normal?”
I reached for his hand and squeezed. “Honestly, Mateo, after the day we’ve had, I think normal is whatever you say it is. If you’re seeing colors, that just means your brain is working overtime to keep you safe.”
He stared at our hands. “Are we safe? Like… actually safe? Or safe like when you tell me the thunder can’t hit us?”
I wanted to lie, to say yes, to promise him the world and a hundred years of grilled cheese dinners. Instead, I squeezed tighter and said, “Right now, yes. We’re together. And that’s all the safe I need.”
He looked at me for a long time before he smiled, a little, just enough to let the relief bleed through.
He finished his sandwich and asked if we could have cocoa.
I found a packet in the cupboard, probably left over from Aiden’s childhood, but I nuked it with milk and topped it with a dusting of cinnamon anyway.
He sipped it carefully, burning his tongue on the first gulp, then cradled the mug in both hands like it was the only thing tethering him to the planet.
We didn’t talk about what came next. We didn’t talk about what happened in the clearing, or the wolves, or the look in Kyle’s eyes when he reached for my son.
We just ate. And drank. And let the quiet inside the cabin fill up with small, stubborn hope.
Afterward, as I cleared the plates, Mateo trailed behind, stacking them with more care than I’d ever seen him use at home. “You’re not mad?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
I dried my hands on a towel and turned to him, kneeling so we were face-to-face. “Why would I be mad?”
He shrugged, eyes darting away. “Because I got you in trouble,” he said. “If only I hadn’t listened to the dreams…”
I felt something in my chest break, slow and quiet. I gathered him into my arms and held him, tighter than I probably should have.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, and my voice shook, but I kept going. “You’re my whole world, Mateo. There is nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you. Nothing. Got it?”
He nodded against my shoulder, then pulled away and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Okay,” he said, and I believed him.
I made him promise not to touch the fire, not to open the door for anyone but me or Aiden, and not to eat anything out of the fridge unless it was in a sealed package and didn’t have moving parts.
He grinned. “You’re so weird,” he said, and this time, the laughter was real.
We finished cleaning up, and for a while, the world felt like it could keep spinning, even if just for another day.
After the last dish had been stacked with careful precision, and the battered Formica table wiped down with a rag that had seen better days back in the early 2000s, I made a halfhearted attempt at tidying the counter, mostly to avoid the sight of the sticky tomato ring left by Mateo’s mug.
I could have left it for later, but there was something almost sacred about cleaning up after a crisis, as if I made the physical world neat enough, the rest of it might follow.
“Ok, that’s clean enough,” I called, giving Mateo’s knee a gentle prod. “Shower. Use actual soap. Don’t just stand there and let the water do all the work.”
He groaned, but there was no real resistance.
He trudged off like a boy personally betrayed by soap.
I watched him disappear down the narrow hallway, his head ducked, the sound of his footsteps echoing softly against the creaky floorboards.
Each step was a reminder of the weight of the world on his small shoulders, a rhythm that punctuated the stillness of the cabin.
That was when the front door opened, letting in a shaft of gold and a breath of cold pine. Outside, the sun was shining, and the chirping of birds and other animals could be heard. It was an idyllic late-summer morning, quite the contrast with the nightmare we’d just lived through the day before.
Aiden slipped inside, carrying a bundle of chopped firewood and the faint, wild scent of sweat and morning. He was dressed in a thermal shirt, threadbare jeans, and boots, and he looked more like the ghost of a hunter than a man.
The dead quiet of the cabin turned electric for a second. I straightened, self-conscious of my tangled hair and the fact that I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, still with the smell of the savage encounter on them.