Chapter Nine
Abigail
Time in the Bitterroot Mountains did not move in hours or minutes. It moved in shadows.
It had been four days since the man named Will Hammond had driven his ATV out of her clearing, leaving her with five gallons of water, a bag of melting ice, and a profound, echoing silence.
In her old life, four days was a blink. It was a Tuesday blurring into a Friday, measured only by the number of emails answered, fires put out, and cups of lukewarm espresso consumed.
Out here, four days felt like an epoch.
Abby sat on the mossy bank of the creek, the early morning sun just beginning to burn the mist off the rushing water. She was perfectly still, her breathing slow and measured, her eyes locked on a small, calm eddy behind a cluster of river stones.
She held a makeshift spear in her right hand—a straight, sturdy branch of lodgepole pine she had spent three hours whittling down with her heavy hatchet and a pocket knife. The tip was sharp, hardened by the edges of her evening fire.
Her right leg was extended carefully in front of her.
The knee was still an angry canvas of yellow and faded purple, but the swelling had drastically reduced.
The jagged laceration beneath the butterfly closures was dry and healing cleanly.
She still walked with a pronounced limp, but the deep pain had receded into a manageable, dull ache.
She was surviving. And today, she decided, she was going to do more than just survive on instant oatmeal and filtered water. She was going to eat.
A flash of silver darted into the calm pool behind the rocks. It was a mountain whitefish, no bigger than her hand, hovering in the cool, glacial current.
Abby held her breath. Wait.
She remembered a Girl Scout summer camp when she was twelve. A counselor with a braided beard had taught a group of impatient girls how to account for the refraction of the water. Aim lower than you think, the memory echoed.
She didn't let her mind drift to the boardroom. She didn't think about David, or mergers, or the suffocating weight of her Los Angeles apartment. Her entire universe narrowed down to the wooden shaft in her hand and the silver scales beneath the surface of the water.
She thrust the spear downward with a sharp, violent exertion of breath.
The water splashed, soaking her shirt, and the wooden tip struck the rocky creek bed with a dull thud. For a split second, she thought she had missed. Then, the shaft vibrated.
Abby pulled the spear up, letting out a breathless, shocked laugh. The small fish was pinned securely on the sharpened point, thrashing weakly.
It wasn't a marlin. It wasn't even a large trout. But as she scrambled backward onto the dry moss, securing her catch, a wave of profound, electric triumph washed over her. She had caught it. With a stick she had carved herself.
She sat there in the dirt, her clothes damp, her hair a tangled mess, and she smiled. It was a genuine, unforced smile that reached all the way to her hazel eyes.
Over the last four days, a fundamental shift had occurred inside her.
The frantic, buzzing anxiety that usually hummed just behind her ribs had finally burnt itself out, starved of the adrenaline and stress it needed to survive.
When she closed her eyes now, she didn't see the senior partners staring at her.
She didn't feel the terrifying sensation of her lungs locking up.
Instead, she felt the rhythm of the woods.
She took the fish back to her camp. The clearing looked completely different than it had a week ago.
The chaotic pile of supplies was gone. Her dome tent was staked taut, the guy lines reinforced with heavy stones.
Her firewood was stacked neatly in descending order of thickness under the protective overhang of a massive spruce branch.
Her clothesline made of nylon rope held her washed tank tops, drying in the hot mountain breeze.
It was a primitive, meager home, but it was hers. She had built it. She had organized it.
She knelt by her fire pit, pulling a handful of dry pine needles and twigs from her scavenged stash. She didn't hesitate or fumble. She struck a single waterproof match, cupped it expertly against the faint wind, and coaxed the orange flame to life in under thirty seconds.
As she prepped the fish, her mind wandered to the broad-shouldered property owner with the intense grey eyes. Will Hammond.
He had said he would check on her, but he hadn't returned.
Part of her was deeply relieved; she didn't want to explain her presence or defend her feral appearance to anyone.
But another, traitorous part of her mind kept recalling the sheer strength in his hands when he had caught her mid-fall, and the kindness when he left the water and ice.
He had looked at her not with pity, but with a quiet, piercing understanding. It was as if he had seen the broken pieces of her and decided they weren't a liability, just a fact.
He's just a local doing his job, she reminded herself firmly, setting the small fish on a flat stone near the edge of the coals to cook. You came out here to be alone.
She looked up at the towering canopy of the pines, listening to the wind rustle through millions of needles. She was alone. And for the first time in thirty years, she was completely, unequivocally okay with it.