Page 206 of These Tears

A second later, glass crashes inside. Something heavy strikes the wall hard enough to make the windowpane shake.

I startle despite my fury, half-turning towards the door. My fingers cinch around the handle until they ache. It nearly makes me take that step towards him, nearly makes me rush to check the damage. Nearly makes me useful again to the man who caused all this.

Because amidst all the lies and orders, the bastard is trying to give me a birthday. He didn’t have to. He could have just left things as they were – with us doing work around the damn homestead until fucking forever.

No.

I won’t go in.

Dragging my gaze in the exact opposite direction, I anchor it to the smokehouse in the near distance. My teeth clamp around the tremor rising in my throat, and I drive the shovel deeper into the snow.

About half an hour passes before I realise the white cover packed around the smokehouse is heavier than it looks. Like a solid crust that fights every beat of the damn shovel.

I work my way along the wall, boots sinking into the snow that reaches over my ankles, breath puffing out in short white bursts that vanish as quickly as they form.

Each scrape of metal on snow feels as if I’m digging myself deeper into this place instead of out of it.

Elias is probably brooding behind the door again. Firmly locked with my passport still in limbo. I almost fell for a madman, and here I am – clearing the way, tidying his life like house staff.

The silence presses down harder than the grey sky; just the distant hiss of the forest and the soft tick of snowflakes landing on my puffy hood.

As always, when I’m away from him, the thought hits with cold, clean certainty: if I ran now…

The world is frozen; the sun is high and bright above the ridgeline, but within an hour or two it will be sliding down like a traitor.

He was right. There’s nowhere I could go. Not with him being the only one who knows every path through this white, endless nowhere better than I know my own mind.

I drag the shovel along the wall and nearly miss the shallow breaks in the snow near the corner.

My motions slow.

I hadn’t reached that part.

Elias wasn’t here either.

These prints are narrower than our boots, punched deep and angling towards the wall. Some cross each other, some veer away – all converging where fish and smoked meat seep strongest through the boards.

I stare at them for too long.

Then I lift my head.

And notice the fur.

The world narrows around the smokehouse, sounds thinning until all I can hear is my own heartbeat.

The breath I take burns straight down my throat.

A wolf stands at the treeline, grey and white and so still I almost think my brain’s making it up. But when it lifts its nose towards the smokehouse, towards the meat inside, my knees nearly give out.

Another shape steps out behind it. Then another. And another, fur thick against the white winter cover, bodies half-hidden between the trunks.

I’ve never seen a wolf outside of a zoo, but I doubt they’re supposed to be this lean.

Worse yet – none of them retreats when they see me.

My fingers go numb around the handle as the thudding of my pulse drowns out whatever sense I have left.

In a slow, tightening arc, the animals spread with soundless paws over the snow. One keeps glancing at me. The others keep glancing past me, noses working.