Lovely Wild Read online

“Night, Mama.”

  “Night-night, baby. In the morning we’ll check out the chickens, okay?”

  “Okay.” He nods and snuggles down into the nest of his blankets he’s made since he didn’t really make the bed but simply tossed the sheets and comforter on top.

  Tomorrow, she’ll help him strip this down to the mattress and fix it, but for now it’s late. They’re tired. She kisses her boy again, holds him close for a minute or so. Then she says good-night, leaving the door open without being asked.

  In the bedroom she and Ryan will share, she finds him already in bed. Surprisingly, Ryan has a notepad and pen, his reading glasses slipped to the end of his nose. He’s scribbling furiously, but he looks up when she comes in and sets it aside.

  “I’m beat,” he says. “How about you?”

  “Yes. Pretty tired. Lots to do tomorrow.”

  He nods, though she knows of course he has no idea what she means or intentions of helping her do any of it. “But this place. Great, huh?”

  She sees so clearly in his eyes that he wants her to say yes, but how can she, when she’s not sure it would be the truth? “Ryan...”

  Before she can continue, her husband says, “Mari...listen.”

  She listens, silent and still.

  He runs his fingers over the hair falling over her shoulder, tangling his fingers in it. “I know this isn’t what you would have ever expected. I know this isn’t what you dreamed of.”

  He’s wrong about that. Mari has dreamed about coming home. A lot.

  “But I want you to know, this is going to be great. I promise. It’s going to be all right. I know it must feel strange—”

  “No. Not really.”

  It should be weird to be back here after all this time. After how she’s grown and changed. Yet nothing about this house feels strange, and that’s somehow both a comfort and a strain. She can’t explain it to him, not Ryan, who’s lacked for nothing in his life. He thinks deprivation and hardship is being forced to watch the commercials instead of forwarding through them. He would never understand how she feels. She’s not even sure how she feels, herself, just that there is something so familiar about coming back here that it’s almost as though she never left...and she definitely doesn’t want to tell him that.

  Ryan looks so relieved, almost like he might cry. “I want you to know how much I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I know. I love you, too.” She means it, of course. She has loved Ryan from the first time she saw him. A prince, come to rescue her.

  “This is going to be good for us, Mari. I promise you.”

  Ryan has broken promises to her before. Mari nods and kisses him. Long and slow. She can feel him reacting, though in truth she’s not sure if she intends to make love to him or if she’s simply seeking the comfort of his mouth.

  They make love.

  After, Ryan turns out the lights. Beside him, eyes wide-open to the dark, Mari listens to the sound of his slow breathing. “Ryan.”

  He mutters something that he probably thinks is a full reply.

  “How did you find this place? How did you arrange for this?”

  He snuffles. She thinks he might be too fast asleep to answer her, but he’s only taking his time. “What do you mean?”

  “This house,” she says. “How did you find it? How did you arrange to rent it for the summer? What happened to the people who were living here before?”

  “Oh. That. That was easy, babe, don’t you know?” He chuckles sleepily. “No, I guess maybe you didn’t think about it. I had the management company take it off the rental sites. The house came furnished. Not the greatest, but it’s only for a few months.”

  “You gave the...?” Mari sits. “I don’t understand.”

  “Babe, this house,” her husband says and interrupts himself with half a snore. “My dad was renting it out and when he died, I just kept up the agreement with the listing agency. It’s yours. It still belongs to you.”

  The bed shifts and rocks as he turns on his side. Silence. He’s asleep.

  Mari blinks. Blinks. Blinks. The sudden, raw and unusual sting of tears forces her to get out of bed and stumble to the bathroom, where she splashes her face with water over and over until she fears she’ll either drown or get washed away down the drain. She stares at her face in the mirror until she recognizes it. It takes a long time.

  “Would they have taken you away?” Kendra had asked, and Mari had answered yes.

  Yes, someone had come and taken her away. Someone had found her hiding beneath the kitchen table and pulled her out, kicking and screaming and clawing, desperate to get away. Someone had stolen and rescued her at the same time.

  And now Ryan’s brought her back.

  FOURTEEN

  KENDRA COULDN’T SLEEP.

  At home, her dad made them all close their windows in the summer to keep the air-conditioning inside. This house didn’t have air-conditioning, which meant open windows. Which meant she was like, sweltering. Even kicking off the blankets didn’t help.

  She turned on her side to stare at the two windows overlooking the backyard. The night was too dark out here. No street lamps, nothing. She knew the mountain rose behind the house and all she’d see was trees even if there was light, but trees would be better than the huge, blank void outside the glass.

  She just wasn’t used to this, that was all. Everything was too dark and too quiet. It was all too new, and not in the exciting way like the night before Christmas or a vacation or the first day of school. She yawned, eyes heavy, but sleep just kicked her in the teeth and ran away.

  She heard something outside.

  Something like a crunch, crunch, crunch. The shuffling noise of feet in leaves or grass. The snap of a twig.

  Kendra sat up straight in bed, heart pounding, ears straining toward the open window. Instead of being too hot, now she was too cold. The sweat trickling down her back was like ice.

  This room was so small that her bed was within reach of the windows, but she totally didn’t want to get any closer. Not even to see. Kendra put her fingertips on the windowsill and pushed her face under the wooden frame, anyway, not quite close enough to press her nose against the screen. She blinked and could see nothing but darkness. But then...there. No, higher. A flash of light. Two flashes. Not like lightning. More like what it looked like when you shone a flashlight in a cat’s eyes in a dark room, there and gone so fast she thought she might’ve imagined it.

  The shadows moved. The shuffling sound grew louder. Kendra held her breath, listening and staring, but if something detached itself from the trees and moved across the yard toward the house, she couldn’t see what it was. She could hear it, though.

  Across the room from her, the wink of light from her dresser mirror caught her attention. She bit back the urge to say Bloody Mary three times, calling forth the spectral girl from that slumber party game they’d all played in elementary school. There was nothing there, Kendra told herself. Nothing.

  Something screamed.

  Kendra stumbled back from the window, hit her bed with the backs of her knees and fell onto it. She clapped her hands over her mouth to hold back her own scream. She wanted to yell for her mom and dad, but all she could do was listen for more screams. What was out there?

  The noise didn’t come again, not for a long ten minutes or so. Kendra relaxed. There was nothing out there in the night screaming. Whatever she’d heard wasn’t a monster or anything like that. Monsters didn’t exist. If she went and told her parents she was scared of something she’d heard outside, they’d just laugh and tell her she’d been dreaming. Or maybe they’d go out to see what it was and end up getting killed and eaten by some backwoods freakazoid hillbilly monster that had flashing eyes and screamed like a woman.

  Kendra put her head under the pillow, but it took her a really long time to fall asleep.

  FIFTEEN

  IN THE MORNING, there was breakfast. Coffee, brewed just right. Toast and eggs that Ethan was excited to t