Page 23 of Her Wicker Guardian

The man in front of me is made of plants.

“What the fuck was I thinking?”

His head tilts.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

I set Janet’s bug spray on the little table beside the water. Spraying DEET on the newly alive wicker man can wait until I know whether it’s useful, harmful, or spectacularly stupid. The absurdity settles.

Then I look at his chest. He has a pulse. He breathes. He drinks water. He learns by watching. My wedding ring disappeared into the fire, and the first beat inside him happened under the palm of the hand that used to wear it.

I have absolutely no idea what he is.

“Sleep,” I say again, pointing toward the chaise. “Rest. Whatever you do.”

He looks at the chaise and then at me.

Five strangers. Fire. Darkness. A body that formed around him while we watched. Words he may not understand. We stared, argued over him, moved him from one place to another, and discussed calling people with guns while he had no way to tell us what he wanted.

My attention shifts past him through the screen to the yard. “You’re safe here.” I’ve spent so long being the person who checks locks and measures exits that the next words catch for a second. “At least I’m going to try to make sure you are.” He can’t possibly understand all of that yet, but I mean it.

I touch my chest. “Rachel.”

He looks down at my hand and then back at my face.

“Rachel.”

Nothing tells me he understands.

That’s okay.

“I’ll be in there.” I point toward the cottage, then toward myself again. “Good night.”

At the kitchen door, my hand closes around the knob.

Every instinct I’ve trained into myself understands what comes next. Close. Secure. Check.

I look back once toward the porch, but I can’t see him from here. I haven’t latched the screen door. If he wants to leave the porch, the yard, or the property altogether, nothing stops him.

I step inside and turn all four locks. The clicks come one after another, familiar enough that my hand doesn’t have to think about them. For a moment, I leave it resting on the top lock. Then I remember the vibration against my thigh in the yard.

I take out my phone. One missed call. Two messages. DO NOT ANSWER fills the top of the screen. My thumb hovers over the first message.

For half a second, I’m standing exactly where I am and somewhere thirteen years earlier at the same time. My knees soften. The phone seems heavier against my palm, and the room around it narrows until I’m aware of the kitchen door without looking at it.

I open the messages: You don’t get to decide we’re done talking just because the judge did.

Then: Rachel.

That one word is enough.

I hear the low version of my name, the one that never needed volume. The one that meant I’d already crossed some line and would be smarter to stop talking before I made things worse.

My fingers tighten around the phone until the case bites into the side of my hand.

I double check that all the locks are engaged. The locks are secure, the motion light is dark, and no headlights touch the gravel. Nothing has happened, though it takes my breathing a few more seconds to believe it.

There’s a man on my back porch who didn’t exist yesterday, wearing my sweatshirt and drinking water from a plastic bottle because I showed him how.