time, my voice is smaller. It knows I’m not cut out for this. I can make calls at school, fill out paperwork, counsel a young student. But I’m not the person who confronts the danger. I assess it. I study it. And if things get really dicey, I call someone with more strength and authority than me.
The drifter puts his hand on my sideview mirror, and now I’m the one who’s frozen. His chin moves as he speaks, but I hear the words on a delay.
“I’m nobody, ma’am,” he says. “Just a guy.”
Then he turns around, heads into the woods, and in all that dark clothing, he stalks away.
* * *
I make it back to Ted’s somehow.
For a while, I sat on the road, breathing deeply, flexing my fingers and toes. A car came by and honked at me, but that didn’t make me move. Only the thought that the drifter might return, might see me as someone who’s asking to be hurt, made me turn the wheel and ease my foot onto the gas.
Now I’m back on the dirt driveway, coughing at the dust that swirls in the air. But I swallow my cough as soon as I hear a sound. It’s a rustle of trees. A rummaging through the woods. Anyone else would think it’s an animal, but I know it’s not. It’s too methodical. Too human. Could the drifter have sprinted through those branches, followed the track of my car somehow—or did he know all along that this was where I’d go?
It’s almost dusk. The light isn’t good. But when a figure steps out of the tree line and stumbles a little, his unsteady feet shooting him toward Mara’s Break Room, I know him immediately.
“Cooper. What are you doing here?”
He straightens up, startled. “Brierley?”
“What are you doing?” I repeat.
“Exploring,” he says. As he walks toward me, his fingers skim the side of Mara’s studio. “I’m getting the lay of the land. Checking out the woods around my new property.”
My brows knit together, but then I think of the boxes inside the studio. The packing I’m supposed to be doing. “You’re buying Ted’s house?” I ask.
He cocks his head. “You think I’d buy this place? No way. No potential. I’m talking about the cabin. Remember? I told you the other day I’m buying it.”
That sagging porch. That shingleless roof. Those mold spores that looked like an infection.
“Right,” I say.
“Technically it’s not mine yet,” Cooper says. “It’ll take a while for all the nuts and bolts of the sale to go through, but I’ve been tooling around in it already. Cleaning it up so I can hit the ground running. I’m so fucking inspired. I might’ve gotten carried away with my exploring, though.”
His words sound giddy, but his eyes seem wary. He’s staring at the studio, his gaze so hard it’s as if he sees right through the siding. “I must’ve taken a wrong turn,” he says. “I didn’t mean to end up here.”
He pauses, flicks his eyes back toward me. Looks me up and down.
“You should be careful, actually,” he adds. “It’s easy to get lost in those woods.”
My stomach whirls. I stiffen up. Remember running through those trees, gasping for breath as I burst into Mara’s studio. The image is still so incomplete, but if I could stretch out its edges, widen the frame a bit, maybe I could glimpse enough to know the truth: what I saw when the man dragged me through the red door, how many miles he drove to return me to those woods. I clamp my eyes shut, as if complete darkness will coax the memories into the light.
“You okay?” Cooper asks.
I look at him, see him reach into his pocket, pull out a pack of cigarettes and lighter with one hand. He flips open the top of the pack, plucks one out with his teeth. Then he sets the flame against it and sucks.
“Eh, never mind,” he says, “I already know you’ve got stuff going on.” The cigarette bounces on his lip. “Ted hinted at it yesterday, when I saw him at Rusty’s.”
I stand up straighter. Rusty’s? He told Eric he was at Wicker. Picking up a file. Dredging up notes that will keep him clacking away.
“What was he doing at Rusty’s?” I ask.
“Ballet class,” Cooper says. When I blink at him, he rolls his eyes. “Buying something, Brierley. Wow, Ted’s right. You do need to lighten up.”