His head moves back like I hit him. “What’re you sayin’?”
“They’re dead, you filthy bastard. You left us here—helpless. You sent those horrid men.” My voice catches. I want to stick him with this knife so bad I can’t breathe. “Mamma was so sick. How could you?”
He goes still and stares at me for such a long time I wonder if he’s going to be there like that forever. A statue made of shock and confusion.
I stand and move back to guard my basket. “Now go. Just leave. There’s nothing for you here.”
“They’re dead?”
What the hell did he expect? “Yes. Long past.”
“But not you.” He gives me a look like I’ve sinned in being the one to stay alive.
And then I hear the baby behind me, stirring, starting to fuss. A tiny grunt and an intake of breath, and Pa’s attention locks on the basket as the baby lets out a little cry.
“What’s goin’ on, Girl?” he growls.
He moves closer and I raise the knife, pointing it at him. “You stay back. One step more and I stick you.”
His eyes turn hard. “You won’t kill your Pa.”
“You wouldn’t be the first soul I sent to Hell. You’re nobody to me, now.”
He must see I mean it, cause he doesn’t come closer. He doesn’t move back, though. “When I get my hands on you—”
There’s a sound outside and Pa turns as Luke’s form fills the broken doorway.
The men stare at each other, both equal in size and stature.
Luke glances at the splintered door, nearly off it’s hinges, then at me. He studies my face, my swollen and bloody lip, and darkness clouds his features.
Pa forgets about the basket and focuses his energy on Luke. “Who’s this?”
Luke just eyes Pa like he’s ready to tear into him the second Pa moves.
“You put your hands on my daughter?” Pa asks, like he’s the moral authority in the room. “You make a child with a girl you’re not wed to?”
Luke’s nostril’s flare. “Who says I’m not married to her?” he asks through his teeth.
My eyes snap to his and my heart jumps sideways in my chest.
Pa studies him. “You sayin’, you and her...?” Doubt clouds his features. “What you want with a rat? She wouldn’t satisfy for—”
“That’s my wife, Sir. I suggest you think before saying much else.”
Pa fidgets with something on his waist. “This is my house, Boy. And I’ll say whatever I want.” He pulls out a dagger and holds it at his side, loose and casual, like it’s a stone or a stick.
“You really want to test me?” Luke asks. His eyes are wide and wild, his whole body tense, ready to pounce. “I won’t go easy on man that beats his daughter.”
Pa snickers, obviously enjoying himself. “That’s not all I done to her.”
Luke moves so fast, Pa doesn’t have time to react. He grabs the wrist with the dagger, and twists, making Pa cry out in pain and drop it to the floor. Then Pa’s on the ground, face to the wood, and another knife is in Luke’s hand, pressing into Pa’s neck, his knee digging into Pa’s spine. “Say that again.” Luke grinds out. “Confess your sin to me again, Old Man, and I’ll pass judgment.”
Pa just lets out a muffled cry of pain.
Luke looks at me. “Come here, Rose.” I can only stare at him, his form all power and rage.
His voice softens. “Rose, you need to do this.”
Pa tries to squirm away, but Luke just digs harder with his knee. “Be still or I’ll cut something off,” Luke says. Then he directs his attention back to me. He nods at the knife in my hand. “This is your choice. You want to be rid of him?” When I don’t move, he adds, “If you can’t do it, I can.”
I look at Pa, at his red face, smashed into the wood of the floor. At his hair turned grey along the temples. At his hands, rough and black from work.
His hands. The memory of them...
I step closer and kneel down, hovering the tip of the knife over his face.
“I should cut your eyes out,” I whisper. “I should tear your ears from the sides of your head. How many times did I cry, plead with you to leave me be? And just when I thought I was at last free of you, you bring your darkness back to me. You sent those men to Becca and made us steep ourselves in depravity just to survive. I should drink your blood. I should cut out your heart.” I raise the blade and then stab it into the wood floor, a sliver away from his nose. “May your body crumble slowly in pain and torment before you make your way to Hell, Pa. May you live long enough to feel the full weight of all you’ve done.”
I stand on trembling legs. I back away, and go to the basket, pulling the baby, my miracle, from the folds of cloth. I breathe in the smell of her, new and innocent, then walk out of the shack into the trees, leaving Luke to do whatever he wants.
*
Luke finds me and the baby near the spot where I caught him in my trap.
“He’s gone,” he says, coming closer, slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me.
“For how long?”
He brushes snow off a fallen tree and leans on it. “He won’t be back.” He studies me, a furrow in his brow. “You all right?”
“Did you kill him?”
He hesitates and then says, “No.”
I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved. I hug the baby closer to my chest.
“Are you all right, Rose?”
I try to push down the emotion roiling through me, the sorrow, the agony of memory, the terror rocking my bones, but it presses at my skin, desperate to be free. I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
We sit there in silence for a few minutes as I try to fight back the darkness. The snow settles, crackling under the warm beams of sunlight that cut through the branches. A woodpecker is working on a tree somewhere not too far off. The sound of its pecking hammers at the mountain air. And in my arms the baby twists its head, opening its mouth, looking for milk.
Luke moves to stand in front of me. He puts a hand under my arm that’s holding the baby, supporting it. “You want me to take her?”
I shake my head.
He reaches up, brushing a snowflake from my hair, then lets his finger run down the length of a damp strand. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, so soft I wonder if the words were really said aloud. His hand moves to my cheek, hesitating a breath before he cups my face in his palm. “I’m here, Rose. You’re safe.”
The warmth of him bleeds through me. His smell fills my head, pine and earth, and something strange and beautiful that’s all his own. I breathe it in, I lean into it, finding myself in his arms. They wrap around me, pulling me closer, surrounding me. My cheek presses against his chest, the wool of his coat scratching at my skin, and I wonder...
I wonder, what I would’ve become if Luke had never come to us.
I close my eyes and let myself feel him, his heartbeat, his breath, his strength. And I know. In my core. In everything I am, I know. He’s become a part of me.
“I love you,” I say. He needs to know that he fills my heart, whether I’m enough for him or not.
He goes still, then pulls away a little, to see my face.
I look up at him. “I love you,” I say again. And my insides swell with it, the connection, a drawing of my soul, up and up until it rests in my throat, urgent to show itself.
His eyes glisten with tears as they search mine. He bends low, his face closer to mine, his breath hot on my skin, and he waits, he lets me rise to meet him, my lips touching his. Delicate, soft, and my soul flies away, into the treetops. We kiss and hold the baby between us like a protection against the urgency that blossoms in the air. It warms the blood, the skin, the earth at our feet. Like a leaf uncurling from the cold ground, the connection awakens something in me I never knew was there, buried deep in the ice of my heart.
The baby cries out again, breaking the spell. We move apart, but only a little. Luke smiles down on the bundle between us and shakes his head. “Naughty girl. Your mommy and I are busy.”
I release a nervous laugh and try to hide my shivering. There’s so much...so much inside me, spilling out.
Luke doesn’t seem to notice. He’s grinning so big his face looks like it might crack.
He takes the baby from my arms and she stills a little. He kisses my forehead then hers and says, “I have something to show you.” He puts his hand in mine and leads me down a path in the trees. “I found them while I was hunting today. I was going to bring you out here tomorrow, but since we’re out now...”
He stops near a ledge, lit with a spot of sun. A cluster of rocks and roots clutch at the edge.
And there, breaking through the snow, is color.
“Iris,” I say, amazed at the violet faces staring up at me.
“I thought we could name her after them. Aren’t they pretty? Just like her.” He brushes the baby’s tiny nose with his finger.
I look up at him and smile, feeling the sun warm my cheeks like it warmed the rock, allowing the flowers to grow.
Luke’s my sun.
“I think it’s perfect,” I say. I reach out and pluck one of the buds from the cluster in the snow and then lean my head on his arm.
We look out, over the ledge, across the peaks that are dwarfed by our own. Topped with snow and the dark shadows of the forest, they stretch out, like a sea of white. As far as the eye can see.
But there, just at the edge. I think, I see green. An emerald ribbon of life at the fringe of it all.
“Iris,” Luke says again, testing the name on his tongue. “Isn’t it lovely?”
And it is. All of it.