Which leads me to wonder:
Did he see the barrel? Did he know what I was doing?
He’d dropped his head right as I leveled it and his eyes met mine. In that regard, there’s no way he could have missed it.
But on the other hand, the pheasants came up and the shooting started at that same instant. Everyone everywhere is still firing wild into the trees. In the chaos of it all, did he understand what I intended to do?
I don’t know. I truly don’t. I’ve made it my full-time job for four years to read every little shift in his mood. But now, he’s produced an expression I have no entry for in my catalogue.
A pheasant, hit somewhere down the line, drops out of the sky and lands six feet behind him with a wet, broken-bag thud. Raymond doesn’t even glance at it.
His eyes are onme.
“Cassandra,” he says.
I gulp a mouthful of frigid, smoky air. “Sorry— I—” I lift the shotgun an inch and let it drop again. “It went off. I didn’t mean— It just went off.”
He looks at me for another long beat.
Then he smiles.
“Why don’t you hand that to me before you take somebody’s ear off, hm?”
My fingers are welded to the stock. The barrel droops in my grip but my knuckles won’t unlock. There’s a roaring in my ears that has nothing to do with the gunfire dying down all around us, the lastpop-pop-popsdrifting off into the trees.
Raymond holds out one gloved hand. Palm up. Patient. “Cassandra. Give me the shotgun, sweetheart.”
I don’t do it right away, though. First, I look at his face. The ruddy cheeks. The frost-stiff mustache. The eyes, cold as a shark’s.
He waggles his fingers.Come on, now.
Then I find the strength somewhere deep in me to summon up my fake smile. “Sorry,” I whisper. “It’s heavier than I thought.”
I hand it over.
Raymond takes it by the barrel. “There’s a good girl,” he praises. Then he tucks it under his other arm, alongside his own, and goes sauntering off toward the tent, whistling all the while.
I’m not sure how long I stand rooted in that exact spot before a hunting club staffer comes up to me. He’s polite and brisk in a green Crispin-branded vest.
“First time?” he asks kindly.
“Hm?” My own voice sounds to me like I’m trapped at the bottom of a well.
“First time shooting?” he clarifies.
“Yes,” I manage. “First time.”
“I hope you enjoyed it.” He smiles, professionally reassuring. “The kick surprises you. You’ll feel that one for a few days. Why don’t you head over to the warming tent, ma’am? They have hot cocoa.”
Hot cocoa.My laugh comes out as a single, strangled bark. He looks startled, so I press my mitten to my mouth and pretend I’m coughing.
“Thank you,” I say. “Yes. Hot cocoa. That’s exactly what I need.”
I turn toward the tent on autopilot and stumble along Raymond’s tracks.
Matvei is still out there in the woods somewhere. I don’t know if he saw.
I just know that I almost killed my husband with my own two hands, and that he almost certainly knows what I tried.
