Lovely Wild Read online

  “Hey, you! Hey, girl! What are you doing?”

  Kendra turned. “Hi, it’s me. Kendra Calder. I’m staying—”

  “Oh, you.” The old woman, Rosie, frowned. “What are you doing lurking around? If your mother wants me to come do cleaning for her, she’ll have to wait. My fibromyalgia’s acting up.”

  Kendra shook her head. “No, sorry, I just got a little turned around when I was hiking. I ended up here, I didn’t mean to. Sorry.”

  “Hiking around? What were you doing hiking around? Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the woods?”

  Another apology rose to Kendra’s lips, but she bit it back. Her parents had taught her to be respectful to strangers and older people. But her mom had also taught her to stand up for herself, especially when she wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  “I didn’t see anything dangerous,” Kendra said and took a few backward steps, trying to escape.

  Rosie came onto her front porch, moving pretty fast for a woman who was supposed to be suffering. “It’s what you don’t see that’s the most dangerous, girlie. Don’t you know that?”

  Tightness squeezed Kendra’s throat. “I’m just gonna get out of here, okay? I’m sorry I bothered you. I didn’t mean to come in your yard and stuff. Sorry.”

  Rosie stopped, breathing heavily, leaning on her porch railing. “You see anything up there? In the woods, on the top of the mountain?”

  “No.”

  Rosie snorted. “Didn’t your mama teach you better? City girl like you should be more careful. People can hurt you.”

  “I thought you said I had to worry about bears and coyotes,” Kendra said smartly.

  “Them, too. But they’re not the only dangers in the woods.”

  “Well,” Kendra said, feeling bold. “What is?”

  From behind her, the crunch of tires on the gravel turned both of their attention to the car. Her mother behind the wheel, Ethan in the backseat. Mom looked surprised.

  “Kiki?”

  “Mom!” Kendra hurried toward the car. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to the library and the grocery store.”

  Kendra got in. “Can I come along?”

  “Hi, Rosie,” Mom called, but Rosie had already gone back inside the house. She looked over at Kendra, brows raised. “What’s that all about?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mom gave her a long, silent look that cut right through her, but Kendra didn’t say anything, and finally, her mother started to drive.

  TWENTY-ONE

  RYAN HAD MEANT to get up early, start working on the book, but hell. He’d been getting up early every day for years. Out here in the fresh country air, with no alarm to wake him or commute to make, Ryan had slept in to the glorious hour of...ten o’clock.

  He stretched and rolled in the bed, feeling without opening his eyes but already knowing Mari was up. She was always up. Sometimes he liked to joke to her that she went to bed when it got dark and got up when it got light. Like a pioneer woman. Old habits, he guessed.

  He heard the rattle of plates from the kitchen downstairs. Voices. Ethan and Mari, singing one of their silly songs. Ryan stretched again and scrubbed at his face, then swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  He padded down the hall past Kendra’s half-closed door, then down the creaking wooden stairs to the kitchen. The door at the bottom of the stairs had been propped open, and he paused in the doorway to look at his wife, who was up to her wrists in soapy water and staring out the window over the sink.

  He opened his mouth to say good morning, but stopped. Covered in a thin sheen of soapsuds, her hand lifted. Pointed. Then the other. Both hands went up in front of her face, palms upward, pinkies touching. Then, twisting at the wrists, she pushed outward, toward the glass. His stomach twisted.

  “Babe?”

  Mari startled and turned so fast she splashed water all over herself and the floor. She didn’t scream, but instead gave a low, hissing gasp he didn’t have to try too hard to interpret as terror. She blinked rapidly, her gaze unfocused, not seeing him, until she swiped a soapy hand across her forehead and burst into laughter.

  “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” He hopped down the last two steps that stuck out beyond the enclosed staircase and into the kitchen. “What were you doing?”

  “Hmm? Washing dishes.”

  He poured a cup of coffee and turned with it cupped in two hands to lean against the counter. “What were you doing before, though. With your hands?”

  She tilted her head for a moment. “Hmm?”

  Ryan put the mug on the counter to demonstrate. He said casually, so casually, “Tai Chi?”

  His wife only stared, then shrugged. She turned back to the sink and fumbled with the water. In the next moment, the drain gurgled. She ran water from the faucet to rinse her hands and then the sink. She stared outside again, through the glass.

  “Are you going to write today?”

  “Yeah. Gonna get right to it.”

  From outside, someone screamed.

  At their house in Philly, Ryan was used to the sound of kids outside. The whole damned neighborhood in the summer was full of hollering and shouting. It was easy enough to differentiate the cries of children at play and the sounds of distress.

  He’d never heard anything that sounded like this.

  Mari was already out of the kitchen, through the screened porch and out the back door before Ryan could even put down his mug of coffee. He was after her in a minute or two, but it was Mari who got to Ethan first.

  He’d been messing around in the creek or something. Up to his knees in wet. Ryan’s first and horrifying thought was that something had bitten his son, a snake, oh shit, were there poisonous snakes in Pennsylvania? But then the scream came again. Farther away this time, and definitely not from Ethan’s mouth.

  “Mom! What is that?”

  “Jesus,” Ryan muttered. Running out to make sure his kid was safe, he hadn’t noticed his bare feet and pajama bottoms, but now he couldn’t ignore the fact he was squelching the swampy mud at the edge of the yard and that both his feet and pj’s were filthy.

  The scream rose again, coming from the woods. It sounded like a kid screaming before the cry guttered away into a series of weird clucking noises. It didn’t sound so creepy now.

  “Mama?”

  Mari shook her head, but her hands moved as she spoke. The fingers of her left hand fanned out and touched the fist she made of her right. “It sounds like a bird. Just a bird, I think.”

  Ethan brightened. “Could it be a peacock? Is that how they sound, Mama?”

  Mari had taken a few steps in the squelching ground, toward the trees, but now she looked down at their son. “Oh, Ethan. What did I tell you about getting wet?”

  “I fell in.”

  “I see that.”

  “Will they scream again? Hey, Mama, can we go see if we can find them?” Ethan danced in excitement, but Ryan had had enough.

  “I’m going back in the house. I need to get started on work.” Ryan turned to head back to the house. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.

  The entire side of the house had been splashed with mud. Fist-sized splotches.

  “Ethan!” Ryan turned, furious. His kid wasn’t an angel, Ryan knew that for sure, but this kind of shit just wasn’t acceptable. “Did you do this?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  Ethan gave his mom a pleading look, which only infuriated Ryan all the more. The kid was always looking to his mother to protect him. Hell, both kids were always playing him against his wife. It was like they had their own damned club, and he wasn’t allowed in.

  “Ryan.”

  “No, Mari, don’t give me that look.” He pointed at the house, then at their son. “If you didn’t do this, who did?”

  He crossed to the boy and grabbed his hand—a guilty hand, Ryan thought, covered as it was in mud and dirt from the stream. Ethan didn’t yank it away, j