Page 47

CHAPTER 47

REDLEY

I forgot how much I loved it out here. The birds sing all around me. The little hunting cabin is such a natural part of the forest that they perch on it just like the surrounding trees. Sun drenches the small space. And the usually clean air stinks like the cinders of my life. I don’t remember the last time I felt this peaceful, though I understand more deeply than ever that peace and happiness are scarcely the same thing. More importantly, this can’t last.

Despite my aching back and the sore spot on the side of my head, I’m feeling pretty good about not being dead. What they did to my cabin last night is a solid indicator they plan to kill me. I was smart to get scarce, but that won’t be the last they hear from me. They’ll pay for what they did. I shiver as I imagine what they would have done to me if I were home.

Would they have burned me along with everything I own?

My ears perk toward some commotion in the distance. I’m not sure what’s happening exactly, and sometimes sounds can be misleading with the way the mountains hang onto them, but I think something big is happening down in town, and things are finally quiet at the still smoking remains of my home.

They won’t find me, though. I’m almost a mile away tucked deeper into the mountains than anyone knows to look, and I’ll see them long before they see me. A few of my chickens however have found their way to me, not intentionally, but I caught them puffing along, and despite the fact they’re escape artists on their best day, I know this was Wolf.

The wood stove burned out late in the night, and it’s not throwing smoke anymore other than a weak puff that diffuses long before it can be seen. There are a lot of reasons I didn’t go home last night, and I’m grateful for this option for a place to hide. But what bothers me most is hearing how Wolf’s father talked about me, realizing that there’s really nothing happening between us more than some sick murderer playing with my feelings.

Most embarrassingly of all, I’m sad that he didn’t want to marry me. Hell, that diamond was probably a fake. No plot is worth the kind of money that thing would cost.

The most important thing I realized is that Wolf is loyal to his daddy, not me. Afraid of him, not me, and as much as that upsets me, I need to put my emotions away and take his father seriously too. I ignore the stupid part of my heart that twinges in pain when I remember the hatred in Wolf’s voice when he shouted at me to leave his house. I hated him too when I thought he killed my parents, so why wouldn’t he feel the same when I tried to kill his daddy?

I stretch, trying to work the worst of the kinks out of my joints. I’m hungry as hell, and I don’t have the time to hunt something, nor the energy to skin and cook it. Hopefully, one of these chickens laid an egg this morning, and I look out the window, planning to search for one. I turn back to the pile of supplies, thinking about getting the camp stove running.

It’s then I remember the box I found in the wood stove last night. It’s sitting on top of the wood pile, caked in soot like it’s been in there long enough for it to turn back into coal. I don’t get too excited. I know it’s not Uncle Lester’s money. That’s long gone. Forgetting food for the moment, I open it. Fortunately, the contents of the box have done much better than the outside of it, and seem relatively clean. It’s just a couple of dusty books. I’m not sure why they were hidden inside the wood stove, maybe old logs. I open one and immediately snap it back closed.

My eyes prick with hot tears. It can’t be. I open it again, and sure enough, there is my daddy’s handwriting. I haven’t seen it in so long I almost forgot what it looked like, but this is like walking back home after being gone too long. My hands shake, and I repeatedly wipe them on my pants, trying to remove enough soot that I feel okay touching something so precious. Daddy sure didn’t keep it in pristine condition, but it was his journal, and it’s not the same if I mess it up.

I take a few deep breaths as I hug it to my chest. I haven’t even read a single passage, just the date he started in this journal, the year he was killed. Time confuses the hell out of me. How can I be a grown woman and a little girl at the same time? How is my father gone, but I can feel him right here beside me?

I kneel on the ground and sob, sob for everything I’ve lost, everything my life should have been, everything Wolf has been so happy to take from me, but why ? Why did they take my whole damn life? What game have these Wolves been playing all along. I don’t have any real answers, and I’m sick to my stomach over it.

I really thought I was onto something with the power company and then finding his home? Obviously, it all brought me closer to the end, but did it actually help me? I’m out here alone, crying in the damn woods while they’re doing everything they can to tear apart whatever remains of my life. Was an ending actually better? Just because I’m hiding out while planning what to do doesn’t mean Carver Badgley will get away with it, I tell myself. He’s going to pay even if I have to take down Wolf too. I’m sorry, Daddy.

I finally stop my crying. I never cried this much when Granny was around. She would have beaten me senseless, and maybe I need a little bit of that now. I need to remember the tough-as-nails, mean bitch stock that I come from if I’m going to take on two wolves. I open my father’s diary again, just to feel his presence and maybe to know what he was doing in his last days. My hunger is long forgotten with my discovery. I open it back up and start to read my father’s very last journal entry, dated just days before he was killed.

April 15th 1963

I don’t think Elias is who he says he is. Jolene says I’m crazy, but I think he might be the Wolf.

He’s been following me, and every time I catch him, he’s got a convenient excuse. At first, I thought I was acting crazy, but after digging deep through great-granddaddy’s journal, I just don’t think so.

I stumbled into this, wasn’t even looking for anything in particular, just digging into family history and finishing great-granddaddy’s survey.

I don’t know what it is, but I think there’s something to find, just like great-granddaddy did, and I don’t trust those strange yellow eyes.

Elias? Something tells me I know exactly who he’s talking about, and my father was right. Carver wasn’t telling him the truth about who he was.

Flipping through the pages, I find a number of other entries mentioning his name, starting off positive, liking him, thinking they could be friends, and ending in the suspicions I read on his final days. Knowing that my father was killed by Wolf’s dad, knowing that those yellow eyes run in their family, I don’t have any doubt who befriended my father.

I close my father’s journal and open the one beneath it. My hands shake again as I realize what it is—the survey he was discussing following and finishing and great-great-granddaddy’s personal journal. There’s a line on the page that my father was following but never finished plotting. He was killed trying to finish the same survey Great-great-granddady died working on. Isn’t that convenient?

I tuck back into the cabin to read them both as thoroughly as I possibly can, and there’s one thing I notice, Daddy and Great-great-granddaddy both were bothered by their friends’ yellow eyes, and that’s ultimately what drove my daddy to believe he had befriended the wolf, and that he was inches away from finding out who the wolf really was.

There’s only one option that makes any sense to me. Find out what’s missing from that map, and what the hell did my daddy find that led to Wolf’s dad killing them. I need to figure this out, but if I’m going to be hiking, I’m going to need supplies. One fact rolls through my mind on repeat. My daddy knew the truth, at least some of it, and that’s why he died, but what about my brother and mama?

Why are they dead, and why did I survive?