Chapter 19 #2
Christine meant the words as a bridge, but to me, they were a blade, severing the last threads of my hope.
I had never considered that the good of my sanctuary and the good of the town could be diametrically opposed.
I had never believed Christine and I could end up on opposite sides just by holding true to what mattered the most to us.
I couldn’t even explain myself, couldn’t tell her why without unburying the ugliness of the past, the ways I’d deceived them, the deals I’d made.
“I see,” I said hollowly. “I’m sure that will make Evelyn happy.”
“Tess, you have to talk to her.”
“No, I don’t. She clearly thinks I’m a monster, and every time she opens her mouth, it’s a new accusation.”
Christine hesitated, and her eyes shifted away from mine, but something hard settled into the planes of her face. “She’s not the only one accusing you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Rachel—Rachel told me you left that thing in their house. The thing with the skull and the sticks. Did you? Did you want to scare them off that badly?”
It was not the apprehension and disappointment in her eyes that made me lie, but the abject failure. If it had worked, I would’ve claimed it, but I couldn’t bear to take responsibility when it had ended up some impotent trinket trotted out for show-and-tell.
“Of course not,” I snapped back. “You believe her?”
“Tess, tell me the truth.”
“I am.”
I felt like a teenager again, telling my mother I had not spoken to Norman in the woods, I had not raided her stores of vetiver roots for perfume, I had not stolen a razor to make my legs clean and smooth. My mother had never believed me, and I could see Christine didn’t either.
“They’re not bad people,” she said quietly. “They didn’t deserve that.”
“Well, I guess I’m the bad one, then.”
“Tess, wait—”
But I didn’t wait. I slammed the truck door behind me, threw the truck into gear, and gunned away.
As soon as I caught a glimpse of my own gate through the trees, I knew something was wrong.
There was a flash of bright, raw metal that didn’t belong, and only the thought of the fox in the back kept me from roaring straight up to it.
I swallowed hard and took a deep, calming breath, but the accumulation of every slight and stressor of the past few weeks rose to the surface of my skin as sweat.
Even though I knew something was wrong, I couldn’t stop a gasp from spilling from my mouth at the sight of the gate.
It had been rammed so hard the metal had buckled and, in some places, broken, and it was the shiny, jagged edges glinting in the sun that I’d seen from afar.
The lock was all but sundered, the bolt barely clinging to the housing, the intricate details of the casing bent and disfigured.
I got out of the truck, my heart climbing into my throat, but getting closer only made it worse.
This was far beyond my skill and resources to repair.
Even if I somehow found room in the barn for this project—a miracle in and of itself—it would take weeks to source the materials and longer to do the labor.
Something crunched beneath my foot that wasn’t gravel.
I glanced down and finally noticed the shattered bits of headlight on the ground, the streaks of rust and blue paint left on the bars.
The paint was a ubiquitous shade, caught somewhere between cobalt and navy.
It was the color of Georgie’s car, the color of my neighbor’s truck, the color of hundreds of cars.
This one, most likely, had been pulled out of a scrap heap for this task and then returned.
I reached for my phone, briefly determined to call the cops. I was still a taxpaying citizen even if I was a pariah, and I deserved to have this willful damage to my property investigated. It wouldn’t be hard to find the car, not with the front-end damage it obviously sustained.
Just as quickly, my hand stilled. Broder didn’t care about my rights; he’d take this opportunity to gloat at my misfortune and mock me for calling. For all I knew, he was the one who arranged it, hoping to remove this obstacle to him entering the property without a warrant.
I went over to the lock and worked the bolt free of the housing, bits of metal and old springs rattling to the ground. When they’d come apart, I found a place where the metal wasn’t shorn to razor edges and pushed.
It opened. The noiseless, gliding swing was gone, replaced with a juddering shriek, but it opened. That was all I needed.
If Broder thought he could make me lower my defenses, he had another thing coming.
Early the next morning, when the first set of chores was done, I dug the four-wheeler out of storage, loaded it up with every spare bit of detritus I could find—chicken wire, welded wire, bits of chain, old T-posts, roofing metal—and drove it down to the bent and broken gate.
I’d always prided myself on the appearance of my property.
It would’ve been easy to wave my hand and let nature do as it would, but I’d worked hard to cultivate elements of beauty that wouldn’t occur naturally.
I’d wanted my friends to feel welcome here, to marvel at the flowers and eat from the gardens and orchards.
I’d wanted the gate to stand as a sentinel, not necessarily a deterrent.
But those days were gone.
I brought my grinder and my toolbox down with me, thinking to dull the sharpest broken edges on the gate, but I ended up leaving them.
Instead, I took out my blowtorch and softened up the metal just enough to bend it, then pushed the bars out until the sharp edges pointed toward the road.
If the torch burned through one of the bars or it snapped off as I manipulated it, I didn’t care; I simply filled it in with wire.
I welded the T-posts in wherever they fit.
I put the roofing metal into the gaps, leaving it sticking out like the fins of a shark.
Where the elegant lock once was, I wrapped a length of logging chain around and secured it with a massive padlock.
When it was done, I’d added probably more than two hundred pounds to the gate, and it looked like the entrance to some apocalyptic hill person compound.
I stepped back and laughed a little as I inspected my work.
But the spots on either side of the posts—where my friends occasionally slipped through on foot if they didn’t feel like waiting for me to open the gate—were now weaknesses in my defense.
I dragged more wire off the four-wheeler and created an ugly, makeshift fence on either side; if someone wanted to go around the gate now, they’d be picking their way through brambles and ditch water.
Indeed, the brambles seemed to have sprung up by feet overnight, and the tree line that separated my property from the road was now a thick snarl of canes and thorns. The runes were finally at work.
As I secured the wire on the west side of the drive, I noticed the hinges were sagging under the new weight. I didn’t have any larger ones, nor the equipment necessary to hold the gate while they were replaced, so I’d simply have to add more.
I ended up having to run back up the driveway for a car jack, which groaned ominously under the weight of the gate even though I’d bought it for my truck. It did the trick, and after adding three more hinges, the gate sat almost level.
I was testing its swing when I heard a car approaching—no, a truck. Ignore it, I thought. How paranoid are you?
But my monstrosity of a gate answered that question now, and I moved to shut it.
After working in the heat for so long, I had sweat dripping into my eyes and down my arms, and when one of the old hinges caught, it was enough to make the gate slip from my grasp.
I was focused on the roar of the approaching engine, and my attempt to grab it was slow and clumsy.
The new weight made it swing out wide, out of my reach, and when the truck pulled in, it was only me in the center of the driveway with a wrench in my hand.
For a moment, Zeke sat in his truck, staring at me through the windshield. I made a show of dropping the wrench back into the toolbox. A scatter of fiery leaves whirled between us, driven by the wind.
“Not worried about getting caught in the rain?” he asked when he finally got out. He had a leather portfolio tucked under his arm but nothing else. I glanced up, saw for the first time the heavy clouds rolling in from the west. The storm I’d called had finally arrived.
“No,” I said. “We need it, anyway. It’s been too hot and dry for fall.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been enjoying the sunshine.”
“Is this about the fawn?”
He paused, the lines around his mouth deepening in confusion.
For a moment, I thought in horror that maybe Evelyn had been fucking with me, that David’s parents never learned about the bite and I had just given myself away, but then his expression morphed into recognition. He waved a hand dismissively.
“Ah, the one that bit my son, you mean? He got what he deserved. Maybe he’ll learn to listen to me and keep his hands out of places they don’t belong.”
“We can only hope,” I said acidly. “I can guess what brings you here, then, but I’ll save you some time. I’m not leaving.”
He laughed and made a show of brushing off his hands. “Well, that’s that, then, isn’t it? I’ll simply go back and tell those folks down in the village that God’s will won’t be done here, because Tess Wynne isn’t leaving.”
“None of them give a shit about God’s will.”
“They will. The disciple Thomas may have doubted, but Jesus still offered him proof. They will see, and they will believe.”
I laughed, an incredulous bark. My dry lips tore at the corners. “Sounds like you’re drinking a lot of your own Kool-Aid.”