Chapter 27
In the days after his mother’s broken fingers, she’d repeated, “I can’t believe I let it happen.
” Bram, unnaturally tolerant, tears in the corners of his eyes that never fell, doled out tense, one-armed embraces to Zach and Bonnie, a thing so foreign they went as still and stiff as cornered rabbits.
Aunt Felicity listened over speakerphone while their mother cooked dinner, breezily recounting how she’d fractured all four fingers on her right hand. “My reflexes are terrible, Fee. Seriously, I watched it happen and didn’t even move.”
“Grace,” his aunt said at last, “stop with this passive voice BS. This didn’t just ‘happen.’ He did this. He shut the door while your hand was there. You and the kids need to get away from him. He’s not—right, you know?”
His mother’s face hardened, and she took her sister off speakerphone.
“He’s complicated. But he’s a good man. My kids have a good life, better than you and I had.
And you know how I feel about this, how I hate the way he bosses me around, and then you go ahead and do the same?
” Zach rarely heard his mother angry. Watched with interest as her expression sharpened.
“You’re just like him, Fee, think you know better than stupid little Grace. ”
What his mother didn’t tell his aunt but weepily confessed to the children was that she’d been drunk.
Too drunk to do the obvious thing, which was to move her hand when she saw Bram closing the door.
Her drinking was why she and Bram had been arguing in the first place.
If she hadn’t been so out of it, so slow to respond, hadn’t been holding on to the doorframe to pull herself up from the floor, her fingers would never have been crushed one-two-three-four in an even line as she gripped above the door hinge.
With the way she swayed, caught her feet, tipped over so easily in the evenings, the children didn’t ask why she had been on the floor in the first place.
Months later, after their mother was gone, Bram had handed Zach the phone to talk to his aunt.
“Tell me the truth, Zach.” He’d instantly known the thickness in Aunt Fee’s voice meant she’d been crying over the report that had listed Grace’s blood alcohol level; the one that said she’d had some kind of medication in her bloodstream, too.
“Do you think they’re right? That she’d been drinking?
Do you think your dad’s right that your mom had a problem? With drinking?”
When he’d said yes, Aunt Fee had gone quiet. “You aren’t just saying that because your dad’s there?”
“No! I’d never.”
“I know you wouldn’t. I know what she means to you.
” Then, hesitant, as if unsure she should ask a child the question at all, “She’d taken some pills, too, Zach.
Did she do that a lot? Or do you think…” Here Felicity had to gather herself, audibly breathing deep, exhaling, before continuing.
“Do you think she could’ve done it on purpose? ”
“I don’t know.” Zach bit hard on the inside of his cheek, but despite the distraction the pain offered, his voice still cracked in the middle as he said, “Maybe? She was…sad a lot.”
Aunt Fee had sobbed, then, seeming at last to accept it.
Or accept it enough that she stopped questioning Bram whenever she called, got rid of the lawyer she’d hired to press the police to investigate further, stopped withholding the money for Zach’s and Bonnie’s tuition.
Even so, the fact that their mother had left Aunt Felicity in control of money at all, money, Bram said, that should have gone directly to Zach and Bonnie, enraged their father.
After Felicity refused to hand over these funds and quietly paid their school directly instead of sending Bram a check, he’d refused to let Aunt Fee speak to Bonnie and Zach.
It had been more than a month since either of them had been in contact with their aunt.
“What does she think? That I don’t know where you go to school?”
When his mother had hurt her fingers, Zach asked if they’d stay with Aunt Felicity again so she could tend to their mother, help her feel better, recalling the time two years before when Grace had packed them all off to Michigan.
Their mother had worn sunglasses indoors because the bright lights of the airport, the sunlight through the plane window, made her wince.
He and Bonnie had shared the couch, Aunt Fee on an air mattress beside them, and their mother in Felicity’s bedroom because it was darker in there.
That first night as they fell asleep on the couch, Bonnie asked Zach what he thought had happened. “She probably drank so much,” he said with authority, “that now she’s hungover for days and days and needs Aunt Felicity to take care of her.”
Bonnie had nodded in disappointed agreement.
Whenever their mother emerged from the darkened bedroom she’d put on a tense smile.
“Such a fun vacation, right?” And despite their mother being cloistered away, the constant murmur of her voice through the wall either arguing with her sister in person or her husband on the phone about how long, exactly, the three of them would stay in Michigan—Bram wanting the visit cut short and Aunt Fee wanting them to stay for always—for Zach and Bonnie the trip had been fun.
Felicity laughed loud, easy, and often, wrinkling her nose whenever the children told her something she’d suggested doing was against Bram’s orders, winking as she said, “Let’s do it anyway.
” She took them to see movies in the theater where she bought them candy and popcorn.
Showed them the wonders of the local arcade.
“That’s ’cause hoity-toity places like where you live look down on cheap thrills,” she said when they told her their town didn’t have an arcade at all.
Sometimes Zach still dreamed about Skee-Ball, the ka-thunk of a shot dead center into the 300, the thwip-thwip of the machine rolling out an orange tongue of tickets.
There’d be no trip to Michigan this time, Grace said. But things would change. She would change. She’d be better. For all of them.
Alight with self-reproach and bolstered by Bram’s repentance, she’d managed a few months of sobriety.
But by the time her hand was out of its cast, Bram’s awkward affections were a thing of the past, and her promises to Zach and Bonnie were soaked with the rotting smell of alcohol-sweetened breath as she repeated that things would be better, that she’d be better, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…
There in the hut Zach hung his head, feeling the words People love a dead girl as a personal indictment.
Because it did sometimes feel like he loved his mother more now than he had when she was alive.
Alive she’d so often been a source of irritation, so imperfect, so flawed beneath her flawless beauty.
But dead, he missed her in a way so painful it made it difficult to be alive.
Now that she was dead, when fury sliced through him over her weakness, that she’d left him behind, the knife was always edged with Zach’s own self-blame.
“What’s crazy is that whoever it was, they might have gotten away with it,” Bram said. “If it hadn’t been for that avalanche Ginny might not have been found for months. Might not have ever been found.”
Zach’s voice came out as a pale squeak as he recalled Ginny’s ribs. “Maybe it was a stranger? She was so…torn up.”
His father waved this off. “Just some scavenger like got at the elk, probably. Unless whoever did it went really psycho. Which”— Bram snorted—“is possible. Maybe he wanted to make her suffer. I know they sell you that bullshit in school, stranger danger and all that, but these things are almost never random. No one can piss you off like someone you know. And out here? In a storm? There would’ve been nowhere to find shelter but this hut.
” Bram sighed deeply and shook his head.
“What an unlucky damn break with Shane. As long as I get Dave’s kid back here and he gets home safe, Dave, at least, will owe me big time.
But after today, you can bet Pike’s not putting in another dollar unless I find a way to force him.
Arlo would’ve made all the difference. But the only way I’ll get more from him now is if he thinks he needs to shut me up. ”
Bram moved in so close his pant legs touched Zach’s knees.
He leaned down, breath smelling sickeningly of banana, and pressed a finger under Zach’s chin, tipping Zach’s eyes up to his.
“Don’t you even think about telling anyone about that earring.
I’ll deal with this. Your job is to zip it. Understand?”
“Yes.”
At this, Bram stepped back. Stared at Zach in a way so quiet and strange it was impenetrable.
“We better hope I find out,” Bram said at last. “We better hope I can use it.”
His father swept from the room, leaving behind air gone tight with the residue of a threat Zach couldn’t grasp.
Sitting on the hut’s bunk and rubbing his knuckles into his temples, Zach recalled his father’s mimed strangulation.
In his imagination, Ginny’s turtleneck now hid the bruised imprints of cruel hands.
Zach’s mind slipped somewhere safer. What was Bonnie doing?
Maybe eating dinner, watching a movie on Ximena’s phone.
Ximena reading to her in the pink glow of the bedside lamp.
Bonnie falling asleep the way she always did, wrists and hands twisted funny to tuck under her chin.
But it was still light out. Bonnie wouldn’t be in bed. Why had he thought that? No, she’d probably just gotten home from school.
Today was Sunday. No school.
He couldn’t think right. Something dark and buzzing floated over cleaned bones and tidy eviscerations, moved over Ginny’s body before leaving their work half done.
No blood around the elk. No blood here in the hut.
Again Bram’s strangling hands leapt forward.
There might not have been blood at all, just the earring left behind as Ginny struggled.
The dishes. He’d forgotten the dishes. Those had been left behind, too.
One pan, a spatula, one fork, one knife, one plate.
Breadcrumbs that had frozen but still looked somehow soggy suspended in ice.
The pan had been difficult to clean, something burned on it.
A single meal cooked for a single person.
How long would that much water take to freeze? Longer than a few hours. Had Ginny made that meal?
Maybe Ximena and Bonnie were waiting in line at Paradise Bakery with all the tourists to get a ginger molasses cookie, Bonnie’s favorite.
Or maybe Bonnie was pouring Goldfish crackers into her applesauce.
“Fish and apple soup,” she sang, “kind of tastes like poop.” But maybe she didn’t sing like that when Zach wasn’t there.
Maybe without him to gross out she didn’t enjoy that at all.
Who knows what people do when you aren’t there?
Zach sucked at his bleeding cuticle. All the bonds he’d felt knotting the men together the night before, the threads of friendship that had seemed to interweave so seamlessly, had been snipped, untethering him among the remains of connection and hope.
He let tears come. He wanted to go home. He wanted Bonnie.
Bram had been so angry, said such mean things about Ginny being late.
But Ginny must have been dutifully hiking long before dawn, long before he and his father.
Or maybe, and yes, as the thought occurred it was at once obvious, she’d done exactly as she’d promised and come to the hut the day before them.
“Get down here!” Bram yelled up the stairs and Zach leapt to his feet, wiping tears away with a sleeve.
At seeing Bram packing, Zach didn’t wait for instructions. He bagged food, added ibuprofen from the first-aid kit, and filled water bottles for his father to bring to Russ and Dave. Pike still lay on the couch, a half-empty glass of brown liquid now sitting on the table beside him.
“Keep your radios on. I’ll call if there’s an emergency.”
“Use a different channel for emergencies,” Pike said without looking at Bram. “Don’t want you and Dave radioing back and forth waking me up.”
Pike didn’t see the knife-edged look Bram shot him.
“Right. Channel two will be emergency use only.”
“Should I—should I look in their packs? For dry clothes you could bring them?” Zach asked.
“They aren’t going to be changing clothes out there.”
They probably should. Might even need to. But Zach only nodded.
Bram shuttled everything to his sled, already loaded with Zach’s skis, and the skis and poles Pike had used.
“I’m outta here, guys. Rest up, I guess.”
“Good luck,” Pike said.
“Thanks. And look, man. Tensions were high. I get it. I’m not proud of how I acted. No grudges from me, okay?”
Pike sat up at this. Nodded. “I appreciate that. Same here. Same to you.”
Zach had never seen his father come so close to an apology.
As Bram reached the hut’s threshold, Zach went to him, encouraged by this openness.
The people who loved Ginny had to know she hadn’t left them by mistake, by weakness, or on purpose, the way his mother had.
They had to know there was someone to hold responsible.
Someone other than God to point to and say, “See? It’s his fault. Punish him.”
“When we get home, we’ll tell the police, right?” Zach whispered. “Give them the earring?”
The waning daylight around Bram shimmered, his face utterly still but for the slow, forced stretch of his lips into the facsimile of a smile. Zach recoiled, took a step back from the unsettling discordance of it as Bram said, “Sure, kid. Of course we will.”