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But Ray was pushy, and crude, thinking he could sweet talk or bully his way into Mama’s good graces. He couldn’t. Not anymore than Tina’s other three husbands had been able to when Tina had decided to divorce each of them.
Ray swirled his drink, ice cubes clinking. With the other hand, he reached for Mama’s head, snapped off her mask, and tangled his fingers in her thick red curls, drawing her face closer to him, to his waist, where his T-shirt pulled from the waistband of his Levi’s.
“Don’t,” she warned.
Lucy’s fingers tightened over the shears.
“Come on, baby. Relax.” He started rubbing his hand over the back of Mama’s neck, drawing her closer. “You know you want it—”
Mama spat through clenched teeth, “I said, ‘Get out, Ray,’ and I meant it.” She pushed him backward. Hard. Then opened the drawer to her nightstand and riffled through it frantically.
“Wha–?” He stumbled, slipping on the thick, faux fur of the white carpet. His shoulder hit the wall with a loud crash and the house shuddered. Someone down the hallway yelled. Ray tried to stand, got tangled in the cord for the fairy lights. The room was suddenly pitch black.
“Mom?” Marilyn yelled over the sound of running feet.
“Are you okay?” Clark yelled from the corridor.
“Get the hell out! Now!” Mama said into the darkened room.
“You fucking bitch,” Ray growled, and Lucy, her eyes trying to adjust to the darkness, sensed him climbing to his feet, heading toward the bed.
She opened the door and slipped through, her fingers holding the shears, point side down in a death grip.
“Stay away from me!” Mama warned. “Ray, I’ve got a gun and I’ll use it. You know I will!”
“I thought you were going to call the police,” he taunted, his voice a snarl.
Mama ordered, “Don’t!”
Lucy rushed forward.
Mama screamed as the door to the bedroom flew open, allowing in a sliver of weak illumination from the night-light in the hallway.
“Oh, Jesus!” Marilyn gasped, running inside. “Stop. Oh God, stop!”
Clark was a step behind. “What the fuck?”
Lucy saw Mama pinned to the mattress in a tangle of bedclothes, Ray atop her. Mama was struggling. He had his hands on her throat. Lucy cried out and, raising the scissors high, flung herself at the bed. Airborne, she steeled herself, then, as she landed, plunged the scissors deep.
Cascade Mountains, Oregon
Now
“Let’s go! Come on! Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Breathing hard, Lucy glanced over her shoulder. Her seven-year-old daughter was lagging again, caught in the wonder of the forest in the snow, oblivious to the fact that a blizzard was on its way and, worse than that, he was coming. “Come on, honey,” she said, trying to hide the urgency in her voice as she pulled on the rope attached to the sled carrying what was left of her life. “It’s not that much farther.”
That was a bit of a lie. They still had half a mile or so to trudge uphill on this steep trail to the cabin, hidden deep in the woods. Even so, it wasn’t far enough. No place on this earth could ever be far enough. But it would have to do. For now. Until she could figure out something else.
The cold fear that had propelled her here kept her going, forced her to keep trudging ever upward, through the thickets of pine and fir trees, their branches laden with a blanket of white, the vine maples skeletal, their leaves long gone, the vibrant colors of autumn exhausted.
Had the circumstances been different, had she and Renee come up here for a Christmas holiday, to enjoy the peace and solitude of the Cascade Mountains in winter, she would have felt differently about the quaint, isolated cabin. Lucy, like her daughter, would have stopped for a minute and taken in the breathtaking scenery, the soft touch of snowflakes on her cheeks, the icy breath of wind tugging the hair from her cap.
But she couldn’t.
Not now.
Maybe not ever.
“Come on!” she urged again, more sharply, as her daughter dawdled in the snowfall. “Grace, get a move on.”
