Good point. He was disappointed in himself; that was an obvious problem, and he had missed it. He picked up the boots and looked around the room and saw no great option. Looked again, taking slower inventory, and then crossed to the woodstove and opened the door. Cold ashes inside. He put the boots down in them and closed the door.
“Very good,” Hannah said. “Very smart.”
They left the tower for real then, making sure the light was still on to greet the darkness when it came, and at the bottom of the tower, they turned west and crossed the plateau, and Jace’s feet left no trace of the boy who had come this way in the morning.
25
Allison woke in the afternoon to a sea of muddled regrets. Should have brought the shotgun onto the porch, should have been firmer with her concerns over Jamie Bennett, should have allowed Ethan to go after the boy, should have gone with him into the mountains, should have…
And then awake, fully awake.
And alone.
The hospital room was dim but not dark. Ethan’s chair empty. That was fine. He’d left for some reason, and he would return. She had been asleep for a long time.
The minutes passed and he did not return and at length she grew uneasy alone there in the room and pressed the call button above the bed. A nurse arrived within seconds, asking if she was in pain.
“A little, sure, but I’m…I’m fine. I was wondering where my husband is?”
“No idea, Mrs. Serbin. He left some time ago.”
“What do you mean, left?”
“I’m not sure. How’s the pain? On a one-to-ten scale, if you could estimate what the-”
“He’s not been here?”
The nurse gave her an uncomfortable look. “I really couldn’t say. He didn’t consult with me when he left. But I haven’t seen him. Would you like to call him?”
“Yes. But I won’t get him. Could you get me the phone? I want to call the police.”
Allison looked at Ethan’s chair. You promised. You held my hand and looked me in the eye and you promised. Then the nurse was back, a phone in hand. She dialed for Allison, then handed the phone over and left the room. Very polite lady, this nurse.
Allison asked for Roy Futvoye. The person who answered the phone was disinclined to connect her, so she said, “You tell him this is Allison Serbin calling from the hospital and that I’d like to talk to him about the fire and the men who attacked me.”
Funny how effective a few buzzwords could be. It didn’t take them long to patch her through to Futvoye after that.
“Allison, how are you?”
“Been better.” Wrong thing to say-the b’s pulled at her wounded lips in a painful way. She hated the sound of her voice. So damaged.
“I know. Listen, we’ll get them. I promise you we will.”
If she heard the word promise again, she was going to scream. She said, “Roy, where is my husband?”
Pause. “He didn’t tell you?”
“What didn’t he tell me?”
“Um…well, I’m not sure what all has been going on with him, you know, but my last understanding-”
“Where is he?” These words came firmer, crisper.
“In the mountains. I just spoke with him. He’s gone to find the boy who ran away.”
“You just spoke with him?”
“Within the past hour. Is there a message you want me to get to him?”
“No,” she said. “No, that’s fine.”
“Are you feeling up to a little more talk, Allison? I’d sure love to ask a few questions about what happened last night. About those two. You know that your memory is going to be a big help to us. Really critical.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m a little off right now. Let me think about that.”
She hung up without giving him time to respond. Sat and looked at Ethan’s chair.
You gave your word, Ethan. Why did you pick the boy again?
She closed her eyes and breathed and after a few minutes she realized she’d begun to cry. She opened her eyes and wiped at them with her good hand and when they were dry and she was steady, she pressed the call button again. Same nurse, same swift appearance.
“Yes? Everything all right?”
“I’d like to see a mirror.”
The hesitation on the nurse’s face told her as much as the mirror would, but Allison held her eyes and eventually the woman nodded and left and came back with a round makeup mirror.
“They’ll get it fixed so well, so fast,” she said. “You have no idea what they can do these days with burns.”
Allison took the mirror and looked into it and closed her eyes almost immediately. After a few seconds she looked again and this time she didn’t look away.
Most of the worst was hidden, anyhow. Bandages covered that. Her hair was the real shock-not much left of it, and what was there had been hacked away, probably by the paramedics. Her lips were lined with stitches and there was some sort of film over a split in her chin, like dried superglue. Her eyebrows were gone but a line of blisters showed where each one had been. She studied herself for a long time, and then she said, “You know I was almost Miss Montana?”
“You’ll look better than that when they’re done,” the nurse said.
Allison nodded. “Sure. My husband used to joke about that, though. Call me that, sometimes.” She tilted the mirror, saw the nearly bald area on the left side of her head. “He probably won’t make that joke again. And now I’ll miss him saying it, isn’t that funny?”
The nurse looked at her and said, “Are you feeling okay, Mrs. Serbin? Maybe less painkiller? Or maybe more? On a scale of one to ten, could you tell me-”
“Nine,” she said. “I was a nine.”
The nurse nodded, pleased to be back on track. “You were. And now?”
“Well, there are steps,” Allison said. “At twenty, I was a nine. And then at thirty, probably still an eight. I mean, time ain’t your friend. Then I hit forty, and then I hit last night, or rather last night hit me, and now…well, we are going to have to wait for those bandages to come off. But for the moment, let’s call it a two.”
The nurse said, “Mrs. Serbin, you need to stop worrying about this. Surgeons you haven’t even met yet are going to do amazing things.”
She looked in the mirror and smiled and watched the glue tighten and the stitches tug. The bandages that hid the rest of her were white as glaciers under a winter sun. She thought they could be called beautiful; at least, they could if you’d ever appreciated a glacier under a winter sun.
“You pretend it’s not there when you’ve got it,” she said, “but I wonder if you’re allowed to miss it when it’s gone. I was beautiful once.”
The nurse was silent. Just looked at Allison and waited. Allison handed over the mirror and the nurse took it and left, but the images it had offered remained. Allison tried to push them away and then she looked at Ethan’s empty chair and she knew why Ethan had gone. Maybe it wasn’t about the boy at all. Maybe it was about her.
He thought he could get them.
He didn’t understand who they were, though. What they were. She could see them again and, worse, hear them, those calm voices in a beautiful, still night. Could smell the old smoke and the old blood. Then the fresh versions that had followed.
She prayed for her husband then, prayed that he would not meet them, would not hear them, would not smell them. It felt too late, though. She’d slept too long, and he’d made his choice too early.
26
As he pulled the truck up to the Pilot Creek trailhead, Ethan felt relief. They were coming home. Out of the burned man’s terrible truck and into Ethan’s lovely mountains, which could also be very terrible, especially to those who failed to respect them.