Page 18 of The Devil Knows Her Name

“Nope, no problems at all. Very healthy, eating well.”

“Ah, okay. Because I heard through the grapevine she wasn’t fitting in so well with the other deer at the sanctuary.”

I cursed Georgie’s love of gossip, the long, lonely hours at the store that left her with nothing better to do than pass along every seemingly harmless bit of news to whomever stopped by. It worked for me as often as it worked against me.

“That’s not how I would characterize it,” I said. “I tried to graft her onto another doe, but you know, it’s the wrong time of year. She wasn’t too keen on me saddling her with a baby with winter coming.”

“I see. Well, glad that worked out.” He hitched up his belt and looked away, dismissing me, but I wasn’t fooled. Broder was, by every description and definition, a slouch, but every once in a while he’d get something between his teeth and refuse to let go of it. I’d have to be careful not to let the fawn pique his interest again.

As I got in the truck, I saw the pastor’s wife standing in the window. My friends were arrayed behind her, examining a scrap of quilt, but she was watching me. One hand was clenched around the edge of the faded curtain, and the other was pointing at me, a single yellowed nail pressed against the glass. Her eyes bulged like flayed grapes in her sunken face, and her lips pulled back in a strange grimace, caught somewhere between laughter and rage. The tendons in her thin neck strained, muscles working as if she were a snake choking down a rat. Something inside me coiled in revulsion.

I paused at the door of my truck with half a mind to go back inside, drag my friends out of that place, and never return.

The pastor’s wife started, as if she had just realized I could see her. Her lips closed over her teeth, and her head sank back to huddle between her shoulders. With a quick twitch of her wrist, she closed the curtain.

Chapter

6

I found myself unable to sleep well for days after the visit, and in the depths of the night I would creep downstairs and curl into the armchair by the fawn’s pen, some nameless apprehension buzzing beneath my skin. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Norman, or Zeke, or David, but to me, they were all Norman. His face, so perfectly replicated in his grandson and great-grandson, sent long-buried memories skittering through my mind like spiders startled from their corners.

I didn’t know how long it really took to seal the devil’s bargain all those years ago, but it was long enough that Norman believed he had killed me, and he fled. He disappeared so quickly and quietly that Burrsville feared the worst on his behalf, and men went tramping through the woods to look for him. A logger’s life was a dangerous one, and often ended crushed between rolling trunks or felled by dropping limbs or bled out on a saw.

Then the postman, who was from the next town over, said he’d seen Norman headed south with nothing but a rucksack. When he’d pulled over to offer help, the young man dove into the woods and was lost to his sight.

All eyes immediately turned to Laura Macoun. He’s left her in the family way, people whispered, but there was no sign of that being true. Mr. Macoun was enraged, demanding that “something be done,” and for a short time a small group of men took to walking around town with crowbars and hammers, claiming loudly that they were going to find him but never making it beyond the village limits. There were a few scuffles with the other loggers, but nothing ever came of it beyond a few black eyes and bruised egos.

The turbulence died down after a month or two. As far as anyone knew, the only wrong Norman committed was abandoning his fiancée without a word of explanation. When it became clear he didn’t leave her with child or abscond with money, the heat in the furor dissipated.

But I still had the memory of his hands around my neck, and the devil’s stamp on the inside of my mouth.

My mother watched me closely, always with a look like she was about to ask a question, but she never did. She took fewer shifts at the laundry and stayed home, and where once I had been lonely I now longed for solitude again. When I stood up from weeding the garden, arching my back to relieve the ache in it, I’d glimpse her watching me through the kitchen window. When I returned from gathering berries in the woods, I’d find her hovering on the porch. I waited for her to accuse me; the possibility hung like an anvil around my neck. Surely, after warning me my entire life about taking the devil’s bargain, she would have some way to recognize that I had.

“You look well,” she told me, suspicion glinting in her eyes.

“I feel well,” I lied. I did not feel well; I felt sick every waking moment, terrified that my secret would be discovered, and yet I had never looked more beautiful. My skin was radiant, my eyes dark and shining as blackberries, my hair so pale a gold it was nearly silver.

My most potent fear was that Norman would feel Laura deserved an explanation, that he’d write to her and confess what he’d done and why he’d done it. He would tell her I had driven him to his infidelity and he had murdered me to avenge his own honor, and she would look at me, not drowned and without even the barest bruise on my white neck, and begin to wonder. The time of witch burnings and strip searches for odd moles was long gone, but in little towns like ours, where the ancient woods crept up to the doorstep and the wild things were not so far removed, the old ways died hard.

For two weeks straight, I crept down the hill in the dead of night to hang a charm of ginseng, mint, and vervain over Laura’s bedroom window, only to go back and retrieve it at dawn before anyone could find it. When I finally sidled up to her at the midsummer picnic, I could smell the mint she had braided into her own flower crown. She smiled at me uncertainly, the effect of the friendship spell warring with her knowledge that we were not and never had been friends.

For all my sleepless nights, it was not a strong spell, but she tolerated me longer than she might have otherwise. When I asked if Norman ever wrote to her, she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, as if he’d been taken by the pox.

“No, I haven’t had a single letter. I can’t help but think he must’ve gotten mixed up in something terrible.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The loggers are a rough crowd; perhaps it was a gambling debt, or some kind of labor scheme. You hear about such things, bosses charging them for their saws and boots, taking it out of their pay at such exorbitant prices that they can’t afford to live. I just wish he would’ve told me. My father could’ve helped him.”

“Men are proud,” I said, injecting a note of sympathy in my voice. “Perhaps it’s not as bad as all that, though. He could’ve just gone back to Kansas to help his family.”

She squinted at me suspiciously. “How did you know his family was from Kansas?”

“His accent, of course. It’s very distinct.”

“Oh, of course. Right. I thought so too.”

I patted her hand awkwardly. “Well, I hope he writes you. You’ll have to let me know if he does.”