her heels where they’d slid, sweaty, up and down against the backs of her shoes with every step. Every now and then one of those blisters would rupture and send liquid dripping down her ankle and into her shoe. Flies buzzed around her legs, seeking the blood and the blister fluid, and she let them have it.
She paused by a tree and caught her breath. Last night she’d slept on the beach. She knew that much. She knew a full night had passed since Levi told her he didn’t care, not one bit. When was the last time she’d drunk any water? Yesterday evening? Yes, in the house. The man from Athens Timber had come calling, and she’d served him tea while he’d gone over the numbers—when they’d start clear-cutting, how long it would take, how many acres they could clear in a week, how much money they’d offer her for the timber. It was more than she’d imagined. Then again, she hadn’t imagined any numbers because she wasn’t cutting the trees down for the money. The money meant nothing. The money was irrelevant.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” the lumber man had asked. He’d looked at her like a father looks at a daughter about to marry the wrong man. “I mean, you’ll never have to worry about money again if you do this, but we can take half the trees and replant if you like. You could still get rich and have a nice green island.”
“Take them,” she’d said. “Take them all.”
He’d said if that was what she wanted, they’d be more than happy to take them off her hands. He promised to send some paperwork to her post office box soon enough. The only sticking point was ownership of the island. No matter how much she’d told him the island was all hers, only hers, the lumber man wanted Levi to sign off on it, too. No court battles for him, he’d said. No, thank you. They’d had enough of those in their day. Tamara had said, “My husband will sign the contracts, I promise.” She’d been drinking tea at the time, the last drink of anything she’d had before walking away from Levi. The sun was about the same place in the sky as it was yesterday when the Athens lumber man had driven away. She was thirsty and she was tired. And she had an awful feeling the trees were working for her mother, too.
Tamara wanted to sit down, but the tiny voice in the back of her head warned that if she sat down, she’d stop moving. She’d stop moving forever. And that wasn’t good. She still had things to do. She couldn’t stop moving yet. After she finished what she’d started, she’d come back here and lie down in the forest and never move again. After.
But not yet.
She pressed her forehead against the trunk of the tree. The bark scratched at her skin. She rubbed her forehead and brushed an ant off her face.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go home.”
Home. Did she even have a home? She couldn’t go back to the house she’d shared with Levi for almost two months. He knew Granddaddy had tried to rape her to get her pregnant and he didn’t care. How could he not care?
Arden wasn’t her home, either. Even if she inherited it, she couldn’t live there. Every night she spent in that house she dreamed of the flood, of Granddaddy, of what the flood saved her from, of what would have happened if it hadn’t. A house of horrors, that’s what Arden was. That place had been bought with blood money and she would not sleep there another night.
What she needed was a new house.
A new house all her own.
And somewhere out here, there was another house. Bowen had told her about it.
Tamara pushed off from the tree and started walking again. Her heart pounded in her ears. The blisters on her feet left her wincing with every step she took. She stepped over a tree root, but her foot couldn’t quite clear it, and she stumbled, landing hard on her right side.
She heard a horrible sound, a sort of low animal moaning, and realized it was coming from her.
Her arms shook as she dragged herself onto her hands and knees. Her weak ankle, which had never fully healed from the first time she’d sprained it, had twisted again. She’d torn something. She could feel the tear inside her leg.