Chapter 30
Thirty
Living with you is like being in jail. I never know when I’m going to be fucked or shanked.
—Odin to Constance
Constance
I was cold.
As in, freezing my hands off, about to go into shock cold.
And not because of getting lost or anything.
But because I couldn’t move.
Why couldn’t I move?
Because when I’d been hiking earlier, we’d gone off course again. Peanut had taken me to a stream with water, and I’d gotten the most up close and personal photos of a family of owls that I’d ever had the chance of seeing.
It was the absolute cutest thing in the world.
As I took shot after shot, Peanut curled into my side.
Possum watched from a branch above our heads, watching the owls like they were about to commit murder.
Possum and Peanut got along as well as could be expected now.
But Possum was still very protective of me.
Oh, and he hated Odin.
It was quite hilarious to see the two of them together. Possum swooped down low over Odin’s head, and Odin would try to catch him.
Neither ever accomplished their goals.
But it was cute to watch, nonetheless.
Peanut went alert and turned.
I did, too, hoping there was no stalking wolf behind me thinking I was fresh meat.
There wasn’t anything, but it did remind me that it was time to go.
I was going to be late if I didn’t leave now.
Wendy needed to be picked up in an hour and forty-five minutes, and I was forty minutes from the trailhead as well as thirty minutes from her school.
And, because I was a worrier, I had to make sure I got there a full twenty minutes early, just in case.
No way was my baby sitting there waiting for me to pick her up.
I’d just started down the bumpy trail, Possum in the sky above me and Peanut on his leash beside me, taking photos of the surrounding landscape as I did.
I was about halfway down the trail when I heard it.
Yelling.
I paused and tried to listen, but all it sounded like to me was panicked voices.
I hurried down the switchbacks, my camera bumping me in the back as I moved.
I’d have a bruise tomorrow but…
I came around a corner and came to an abrupt halt.
“You should have listened to me, Mother!”
Eustace.
What the hell was he doing out of jail?
“I’m not listening to a nutcase like you!” she snarled.
I crouched down low behind a spruce, hoping that the leafy branches covered in snow would block me from their sight.
It did, but barely.
Peanut curled into my side, not understanding what was going on.
The sweet, spastic lug.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “You have to be quiet.”
I looked at my watch and realized that I’d made worse time than I thought, and I only had an hour and ten minutes until I needed to get Wendy.
But there was no way to get down this mountain the rest of the way without going straight through the two of them.
I shifted from foot to foot, indecision making me hesitate.
But before I could make any decisions, Eustace shoved his mother.
She went ass over tea kettle right off the side of the mountain.
Eustace snorted. “Fuck you.”
Then he marched down the mountain, disappearing into the trees.
I waited quite a long time to make sure that he wasn’t going to come back.
I gave it a solid ten minutes before I rushed to the side of the mountain where she disappeared, fully expecting to see her broken body over the ledge.
What I saw when I got there were two really big eyes that were staring at me pleadingly.
“Are you okay?” I rushed out.
“This branch is going to break,” she told me. “It’s already pulled halfway out of the ground.”
I surveyed the branch and saw that she was right.
The tree she was holding on to wasn’t going to hold with her weight on it.
I caught her shirt and pulled, but we only managed to get her even more unbalanced.
“You’re going to have to stay,” I said. “I’m going to let go and use my phone to call someone.”
Or I would have, had a foot not slammed down onto my hand when I reached back for it. “No.”
I cried out in pain and looked up to find the douchebag kid back, a gun in his hand.
My stomach sank.