The girl stared up at her through wary blue-green eyes. A purplish bruise was already forming on her forehead and the scratches on her cheeks were bleeding. At this proximity the smell of urine was almost overwhelming.
“No hurt,” Julia said again, expecting the girl to pull free and run.
But she stood there, breathing like a deer caught between two headlights, too fast, her whole body trembling. She was weighing the situation, cataloguing her options.
“You’re trying to read me,” Julia said, surprised. “Just like I’m trying to read you. I’m Julia.” She patted her chest. “Julia.”
The girl glanced away, disinterested. The trembling in her body eased, her breathing regulated.
“No hurt,” Julia said. “Food. Hungry?”
The girl looked at the table, and Julia thought: Bingo! You know what I said. What I meant, anyway.
“Eat,” she said, finally letting go and stepping aside.
The girl sidled past her, moving cautiously, never taking her gaze off Julia’s face. When there was a safe distance between them, the girl pounced on the food. She washed it all down with the apple juice.
After that, Julia waited.
THEIR EARLY MORNING JOURNEY FROM TOWN TO THE EDGE OF THE DEEP woods had the hazy feel of a dream.
In the miles from the hospital to the old highway, no one spoke. For Max, there was something about this clandestine rescue that precluded the luxury of talk. He assumed it was the same for his co-conspirators, for although they told themselves this move was in the girl’s best interest—and indeed believed it—there was still a nagging worry, an unbound thread. At least at the hospital she was safe. The door locked; the glass was too thick to break. Here, in the last stretch of valley before the big trees, the world outside was too close; none of them doubted that those woods would beckon her.
He was in the backseat of the police cruiser, with Julia seated to his right. The girl lay between them with her head in Julia’s lap, her bare feet in his. In the front seat, Ellie and Peanut sat in silence. Except for the sound of their breathing and the crunching of the tires on thick gravel, the only sound came from the radio. It was turned down so quietly it could hardly be heard at all, but every now and then Max caught a stanza or two and recognized a song. Right now it was “Superman” by Crash Test Dummies.
He looked down at the girl in his lap. She was so incredibly thin and frail. Today’s scratches marred her cheeks, but even in this half-light he could see the silvery scars of older scratches. Evidence that she’d often attacked herself or been attacked. The bruise on her forehead was purple now, angry-looking. But it was the scarring on her left ankle that made his stomach tighten. The ligature marks.
“We’re here,” Ellie said from the front seat as she parked beneath an old shake lean-to. Moss turned the slanted roof into a patch of green fur.
Max scooped the sleeping child into his arms. Her arms curled around his neck; she pressed her wrecked cheek against his chest. Her black hair fell sideways, over his arm, almost to his thighs.
He knew exactly how to hold her. How was it that even after all these years, it still felt as natural as breathing?
Ellie hurried on ahead and turned on the exterior lights.
Max carried the girl toward the house. Julia fell into step beside him.
“You’re still safe,” she said to the girl. “We’re outside now. At my parents’ house. Safe here. I promise.”
From somewhere, deep in the woods, a wolf howled.
Max stopped; Julia did the same.
Peanut made the sign of the cross. “I am not feeling good about this.”
“I’ve never heard a wolf out here,” Ellie said. “It can’t be her wolf. He’s over in Sequim.”
The girl moaned.
The wolf howled again; an undulating, elegiac sound.
Julia touched his shoulder. “Come on, Max. Let’s get her inside.”
No one spoke as they walked through the house, up the stairs, and into the bedroom. Max put the child on the bed and covered her with blankets.
Peanut glanced nervously at the window, as if the wolf were out there, pacing the yard, looking for a way in. “She’s gonna try to escape. Those are her woods.”
So they were all thinking the same thing. Somehow, as impossible as it sounded, the child belonged out there more than she did in here.