What She Found in the Woods

This, too, has happened to me before. Right before I lost everything.

30 JULY. MORNING

I haven’t forgotten about the animal I shot. Quite the opposite. I think about it all the time.

I’ve decided it had to have been a fawn hiding in the ferns. Too young and weak to follow its mother, the baby deer hid, waiting for its mother to return. I picture her coming back to the carnage I left behind.

Bo asked if I wanted to go back to his camp and visit with his mother while he hunted, but I said I’d rather spend time with him today.

So he’s taking me with him. This would be the perfect time to tell him about the fawn. I could describe it in such a way that he got the whole picture. He would understand. Accidents happen, and I really looked for the poor thing, but . . .

‘If you’re not up to this, you don’t have to come with me,’ he says, eyes searching mine. ‘But I have to hunt today. We need meat.’

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I can go with you. I want to go with you.’

He gives me an uncertain look. ‘OK. We probably won’t find anything anyway,’ he says as we leave our spot and head out into the rich undergrowth.

‘We’re going to find something,’ I say quietly. I know because that’s how things are with me. We’re going to find something, and I’m going to help kill yet another unsuspecting creature.

‘I don’t know. We’ve pretty much exhausted this area of bucks.’

‘They have to be bucks?’ I ask.

‘Of course,’ Bo says, nodding. ‘The bigger the buck, the better for the environment. They take the most resources over the winter, and it’s better for the species to leave the foraging for the does and fawns.’

Here’s the moment. This is when I should tell him. I take a breath to speak.

‘My parents say we’ll have to move soon,’ he says, before I get the chance.

‘To where?’ I ask, suddenly thrown.

‘Not too far. Just enough to hunt different game trails.’ He smiles at me shyly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll still be able to see

each other.’

We walk in silence for a while. ‘Would you rather just come back to my camp with me?’ he asks tentatively. ‘I can tell my parents we’ll fish instead.’

‘No,’ I say, a little too abruptly. The thought of possibly running into his father is just too jarring right now.

Dr Goodnight does not exist, and Bo’s family does not cook meth. I just have to keep telling myself that, and I’ll be fine. Even though Bo just reminded me that they had more than one camp, and if one were going to have a family and cook meth in the middle of the woods, it would make sense to keep the two apart.

Christ, what’s wrong with me? Ray is not Dr Goodnight.

‘I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you,’ Bo says. He huffs out a frustrated breath. ‘It’s very quiet out here. I can practically hear you screaming in your head, you know.’

He pauses, and I know I should laugh at his joke, but nothing’s funny right now.

‘Just talk to me, OK?’ he pleads. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘It’s not you,’ I say, but he doesn’t believe me.

Given the choice between telling Bo about the fawn or telling him what I suspect about his father, I don’t really have a choice. I tell him about the fawn.

I make such a hash of it. I start blubbering in the middle and begging him not to hate me. I’m like a raw wound, now that I’m not drugged out of my mind. Once I start in on the fawn, I tell Bo about how I’m haunted. How I’m seeing Rachel everywhere. And how I deserve to be haunted because all I ever do is murder innocent things.

I’m wiping my nose on his shoulder when I realize that he’s holding me. ‘It’s OK,’ he murmurs against my cheek. ‘None of it’s your fault.’

I pull back, still sobbing. ‘How can you say that? It’s all my fault!’