He walked into the kitchen and stopped. He turned his face away. He didn’t like blood. He stepped carefully around the pooling liquid, making sure to grab his father’s gun from the kitchen counter. He turned off the lights and did a quick visual check that everything looked tidy before closing the door behind him. He cracked the door back open and grabbed his father’s car key off the front hook. He climbed behind the wheel of the blue Saab and typed the location from the picture into the GPS: Frosty Ridge Cabins, Loon, New Hampshire.
ONE DAY
BEFORE THE CABIN
ANNE
“Amon-oo-sock?” Anne tried out the letters on the small green sign pointing to the winding road through the mountains.
“Amo-nu-sux.” Rose squinted at the sign through the passenger-side window as the bulky SUV slowed and turned off Rum Hill Road of Bath, New Hampshire, onto the mountain road. “Try saying that ten times fast.” Rose laughed and reached her hand into the back seat. Thea reached for Rose’s outstretched fingers with the hand that wasn’t playing Fruit Ninja, or whatever other game from the list of “acceptable apps” Anne had compiled, on her phone.
“What, Mimi?” Thea asked, and then looked at the sign. “Oh, Ammonoosuc.”
“However you say it, this is the road we take to the cabin.” Anne smiled in the rearview mirror at her daughter.
Anne watched from the corner of her eye as her mother dug into a paper bag at her feet and pulled out three chocolate chip cookies. “I think it’s time for these,” Rose declared, handing a cookie to Thea.
“Yesss! Thank you, Mimi.” Thea grabbed the cookie and tossed her phone onto the empty seat beside her.
Anne kept her eyes on the road. “Can you just break me off a small piece, Mom? I need both my hands on the wheel right now.” The road twisted higher and snow swirled lightly against the windshield. Rose broke off a small chunk and placed it in Anne’s palm. “This is pretty neat, huh?” She popped the cookie into her mouth and glanced back at Thea again.
“Yeah. How much farther?” Thea asked, through a bite.
“It’s about thirty minutes on this road, Thee.” She heard a groan and added, “Oh, come on, it’ll go quick and it’s beautiful.”
It was beautiful. Anne tried to take in the snowcapped mountain peaks looming ahead while keeping her eyes peeled for other cars zooming around the switchbacks in the road at sixty miles per hour.
The last time she had been to a cabin, she realized suddenly, was with Thea’s father before Thea was born. The memory of sitting around a fire, her head against a soft flannel shoulder, flashed into Anne’s mind. She pushed out the image just as quickly. She had always believed in being truthful, especially with Thea, about difficult subjects. She’d always trusted her daughter’s intelligence, intuition, and perceptiveness, even when Thea was a small child. But she had never told Thea the whole truth about her father. She was going to—she told herself she was waiting for the right moment, for Thea to be an appropriate age, and then they would sit down and Anne would tell her everything. Two years ago, though, instead of telling Thea her biological father’s name, Anne had blurted out another name. She had panicked; it had just happened—but afterward she felt immense relief. It was done. She was safe inside her lie. If Thea ever googled the name Anne had given her, a million generic results would pop up. She would never have to break Thea’s heart and she would never have to talk about him again. The last time Thea asked about him, Anne told her daughter, yet again, that there really wasn’t anything to tell—he vanished shortly after she was born and then they moved, just the two of them, from New York to Vermont, and it had been the two of them ever since. “Not everyone who has a baby is actually ready to be a parent,” Anne had explained again. But that last time, instead of asking more questions, Thea had snorted and walked away. Anne had heard the expression, about how silence can be a lie, but whoever came up with that didn’t comprehend there are some stories that don’t need to be told.
Eyes on the road, Anne commanded herself, and thoughts away from him. The road really was becoming a bit treacherous. Anne’s too-big SUV hugged the outside of the mountain as they climbed higher and higher and the road itself was covered in a light sheen of ice.
“Anne, the next overlook we pass, should we stop in? These views are stunning.” Rose had her phone out, snapping wobbly pictures of the mountain in the distance.
“Sure, I could use a stretch, too. Sound good, Thee?” She looked into the rearview mirror to see Thea’s lips moving and head bouncing to whatever song pelted through her earbuds, fingers flying across the screen. “Who are you texting, Thee?” Anne rolled her eyes at Rose. “Great, perfect, glad you’re enjoying this family time,” she said at the girl in the mirror. She smiled and shook her head. “I have a preteen,” she whispered to Rose.
“How are things going on that front?” Rose asked quietly. “Still . . . tense?”
“I mean, at the end of the day we’re best friends, obviously.” She cringed at how desperate she sounded, but when she stole a glance at Rose, her mother was nodding along genuinely. “But, everything I do annoys her and we’re just having some . . . boundary issues,” she finished.
“Growing pains,” Rose responded. She was quiet for a moment and then, “She’s idolized you since she was a baby. You have always been her world. Do you remember how she used to cling to your leg every waking moment when she was a toddler?” Rose laughed. “Even a few months ago, you guys walked arm in arm everywhere. She needs to find out who she is beyond your relationship. It’s natural. You did the same thing.” Anne felt her mother’s glance. “You know,” Rose lifted her arms, “the whole spreading of the wings thing.”
“Idolize is a strong word.” She laughed, but tucked Rose’s words away for later. The spreading of the wings had caught Anne totally by surprise. Their Friday morning dates (Thea’s new school started late every Friday) had come to an abrupt halt a few weeks ago when Thea refused to get out of bed, and their weekend movie nights had been replaced by Thea asking to spend the night at Livi’s. Anne wondered secretly if Thea’s recent moodiness was correlated to the end of Anne’s “friendship” with Lyndon, the Canadian man she’d been seeing for the past few months. She’d introduced him as a friend and he’d only come over for dinner twice, but still . . . Thea had liked him. It was possible that she had secret pinings for a father figure and perhaps she had been hopeful Lyndon would fill that role. That would be completely understandable and normal. As a therapist, Anne understood that children, especially in the ten- to eighteen-year-old age range, constructed much of their own identities out of that of their parents, even absent parents. It was healthy for Thea to be interested in a father figure, and, of course, for her to wonder about her biological father, but at some point, Anne was certain, she would bloom into a young adult and begin to shape her identity based on her own beliefs and experiences. Thea would distance herself from Anne, as puberty set in, and begin to learn about the world for herself. In fact, that phase seemed to be already well under way. They’d had numerous discussions by now about different types of families, and Anne had always kept her dating life, or lack thereof, not secret per se but . . . private; there was no point in introducing Thea to someone unless it looked like it was getting serious, and that had only happened once, with the Canadian, who was now safely across the border. He’d told her, quite suddenly, that he no longer felt safe in the States, and that he had a flight home in a week. “The work relocation was always just a trial. I asked to go back to our home office and my bosses had no problem with it. So. Back I go. You know . . . you could come.” He’d said it cheerfully, casually. She couldn’t begrudge him his decision (it was the sixth mass shooting that had made national headlines since he’d arrived), but she was also taken completely by surprise. She thought, for an instant, about taking Thea and leaving the country, starting over up north; instead, she hid her shock by agreeing and demurring, also cheerfully, “Of course. That makes total sense. But I can’t yank Thea out of school again, so . . . good luck!” That was that. The friendly, short exchange felt bizarre yet mature. Anne cried that night after Thea went to bed, but it was for the best. She saw that now; much better to cut things off before they got any more serious. Now Anne was free to go back to the “good-timers” as she called them—the string of short-term yet somewhat sexually fulfilling occurrences. There was no shame, she thought, in calling up the lawyer with better-than-average foreplay skills (of course, she’d have to make it absolutely clear that she was not going to be calling him “Daddy” as he’d requested the last time).