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“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my eyes on the scarred wood tabletop.
“Doin’ what, sugar?”
“This.” I gestured at the room. “All of this. What the heck is going on? Why—why would you say that my dad was trying to kill me? How does that help you? I don’t understand.”
I turned my head just in time to see Otto’s mouth drop open in surprise.
“I would’ve told you about the baby,” I continued. “Eventually. And I’m sorry that people stole from you but why are you dragging my family into it? I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“You think we’re lyin’ to you?”
“You said that the phone my dad left for emergencies was actually the detonator to a bomb under the floorboard of my cabin,” I replied tonelessly. “In what reality do you think that would actually happen?”
Otto let out a huff of humorless laughter and reached up to scrub his hands over his face in frustration.
“My dad doesn’t know how to build abomb,” I said incredulously. “I don’t know what kind of life you guys live—” I glanced around the room. “But we’re not like that. We go to church and go to work and watch television and our family vacations are in Seattle where the regional meetings are. My dad has two guns, an old vintage revolver and a rifle that he uses for hunting. He never even served in the military. Where theheckwould he learn how to build abomband why would you ever think that he’d put one anywhere nearme?”
I just flat-out couldn’t understand what their goal was. They said that the guns in my cabin were theirs and I’d believed them and given them back—so why was I in their little clubhouse being interrogated? I obviously hadn’t stolen anything from them. Rationally, I knew they were telling the truth, but I still couldn’t make myself believe it.
Maybe the guns hadn’t been theirs at all. Maybe they had belonged to someone in the church and Otto’s club was stealing them now. Could that be why they were trying to convince me that my dad had tried to hurt me? So I wouldn’t tell him who’d stolen the rifles? Eventually, I’d have to go home, though, and explain where exactly they’d gone. It’s not like crates of weapons would just disappear.
Though, I could play completely clueless if my dad asked about them. I wasn’t even supposed to know that they were under the floorboards and it was only bad luck that I did.
Because of the absolute unreality of the morning, I hadn’t really had time to take in that it wasOttowho had shown up at the cabin. The man I’d been thinking about for months. I hadn’t fully processed that he was finally in my orbit, that he knew we were having a baby after that insane encounter in the front seat of his car, that he was still as handsome and magnetic as that night at the bonfire and he still made my skin tingle wheneverhe brushed against me. But more important than all the rest, I hadn’t quite realized how absolutelysafehe made me feel.
All of it hit me, though, when he leaned forward and cupped my face in his hands. From the moment he’d turned around in the driveway of the cabin and I’d seen his face, deep in my gut, I’d known that everything was going to be alright.
“Calm down, baby,” he said soothingly. I hadn’t even realized that I was breathing like I’d just run a marathon. “It’s alright. Look at me. It’s all gonna be fine.”
“I prayed you’d come get me,” I blurted, my eyes on his. He was so close I could smell the mint gum on his breath. “When I first got to the cabin.”
“I looked for you,” he replied. “If I’d known, I woulda come.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know you don’t,” he replied grimly.
“Are you going to call my dad?”
“Why would we do that?” he asked, his thumbs brushing along my cheekbones.
“To find out why those guns were in the cabin.”
“Don’t think he’s gonna give us any straight answers, sugar.”
“You’re just not going to say anything?” I asked dubiously. “Don’t you think he’ll notice? He’ll have to come back eventually. It’s not like he won’t notice that they’re missing. Or that I’m missing. At some point they’ll come out to check on me again.” At least I hoped that was their intention.
“We got time to figure all that out,” Otto murmured.
“If you’ve got all your stuff back,” I said softly, grasping at straws. “Can’t you just bring me back home? I won’t use the phone.”
I was tired and uncomfortable and I needed some familiarity around me to try and work things out in my head. The cabin wasn’t my first choice in a home, but itwasmy home and I felt a little desperate to get back there to my fireplace and my plaidcouch and the wood I still needed to split and the wonderfully consistent meal schedule. Once I was there, I could hopefully make sense of what was happening.
Otto’s eyes darkened as he scowled. “You’re not goin’ back there.”
“But you guys said that everything was taken care of—”
“You’re not steppin’ foot back in that place, Esther,” he snapped, his hands dropping away from my face. “It was fuckin’wired to blow.”
