Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Seth
I’d thought the new neighbor was being torn apart by a cougar.
She’d screamed, unending, for over a minute.
My heart had nearly dropped out of my chest as I grabbed my shotgun and ran towards her house.
She was lucky I’d been in the barn late, unloading some hay.
But when I’d reached her, it became clear she wasn’t in danger. Not in the traditional sense.
She was screaming, crying, and pounding the ground with an axe like she had a vendetta against it.
When I’d asked her if she was okay and she told me, no, that her husband died and left her with no cut wood, my heart fissured.
I didn’t even know the woman. I’d seen her one time in church with her husband when they first moved to town.
I’d intended to give them a few weeks to settle in before introducing myself.
But at that moment, I’d wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her.
She was so broken. I could see the wild look in her eye, the one that said she was on the edge of losing it.
Or maybe she’d already lost it. The rage poured off of her, and it broke my heart.
By the time I got home, I could barely think straight.
I couldn’t get her wide, beautiful, sorrow-filled blue eyes out of my mind.
I just wanted to do something to ease the pain.
Anything, no matter how small, to make what she was going through a little more manageable.
Because I’d been there. I’d been in the depths of that drowning river, and it was not a place I wanted her to go. But I feared she was already there.