Once Upon a River Page 0,47
to be playful, but she feared answering his questions could get her into trouble somehow.
“You don’t talk much. Now, Danielle, she could talk.” He pointed a fork at Margo. “And yet she never thought to mention she was sleeping with a very good friend of mine. Funny. Of course, he didn’t mention it, either. But they’re in love now, so everything’s swell.”
Margo clung to her silence. She looked into his face, into his clear eyes, for as long as she dared. He was lonely, she saw, maybe as lonely as she was. She pulled her feet out from under the fishing dog and put on her damp socks and then her boots. She tucked Michael’s jeans into the boots before tying them, in case she had to sit outside and fend off mosquitoes. She glanced around for her gun again, though of course it was back at the cabin.
“I moved up here from Indiana three years ago for my job,” he said. “With Danielle. That was before I realized how materialistic she was. Where are you from?”
She saw he was going to wait for an answer. “Murrayville,” she said.
“That’s thirty-some miles down the river, halfway to the dam.”
She nodded and watched out the window. Paul was messing around on the dock.
“When Danielle was here, I hardly noticed the river as a backdrop. Now it’s all I think about. I watch it going by for hours.”
By the time Margo finished her omelet, Paul had gotten into his boat and pulled away, heading upstream. When he was out of sight, she let her fork drop onto her plate, and the sound startled her. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Can’t you stay a few minutes longer? I promise to stop complaining about women. Here, I’ll make you another piece of toast.”
She sat back down, but kept her weight on the balls of her feet.
“You seem like a girl who was raised by wolves or something.” He dropped two slices of bread into the shiny toaster.
She squinted at him.
“I guess I didn’t say that right. I don’t mean you seem like an animal.” He pushed down the knob, and right away she smelled toast. It made her miss the way Joanna’s kitchen smelled in the mornings, like fried ham slices and toasted cinnamon bread. Michael went on, “There’ve been lost kids who were taken in by wolves. Even after the kids were rescued, they never could stand being in enclosed spaces. They wanted to spend all their time outdoors. That’s what I meant.”
Margo didn’t have to pay attention. She’d only come here to be safe from Paul.
“Thank you for the food.” She stood and hurried out the kitchen door, leaving the toast to pop up behind her. She picked up her things and made her way downstream to her boat. Out in the middle of the river she felt a momentary sense of freedom, but upon reaching her dock the first thing she noticed were the rotting catfish heads still nailed to the big oak. She unlocked the padlock with her key, squatted beside the bed, and retrieved her rifle and pack. Both were undisturbed. Then she realized she had forgotten to buy matches—she had only two left in the box.
She balled up the last few letters she had written to her mother on the backs of used targets and put them in the woodstove. On top of those she assembled a pile of chipped kindling. She started a fire in order to drive the dampness from the cabin and dozed off. When she woke up, the fire was out, and she didn’t want to use her last match to try again. The sky was fully lit, so she moved to the dock for the sun’s warmth. She looked down and was surprised to be wearing Michael’s clothes. After his Jeep rolled away across the river, she pressed her face into the clean sweatshirt.
• Chapter Ten •
When night muscled in, Margo used her last match to light the lamp. There wasn’t much kerosene left, and the flicker of light only seemed to intensify the darkness. She heard rain on the roof, and it occurred to her, as if for the first time, that Brian really would not be coming back and that Paul surely would. She thought of the Murray farm, of the shoulder-high stacks of wood Uncle Cal and the boys must have already cut, split, and stacked for the winter. Her own supply was a sled full of split oak and two