Chapter Eight

Peter said I had been so distant from him over the course of our marriage. I had been too busy with finishing my degree and getting a job to support us while he wrote his novel, which he'd been working on for as long as I could remember. Me, trying to find a means of supporting my family while he made empty promises for years of “just wait till I'm published.” Meanwhile, we had to eat. We had to have a roof over our heads. Granted he'd worked briefly, at a grocery store, when I first discovered I was pregnant. Looking back, I now believe he only did that so he could get out of the house and away from me while I was on bed rest. It wasn’t like I ever saw any of his wages. He always spent it on gas, his car, or groceries, which never seemed to be there. There was always something.

I had always worked. I had worked so he could stay at home and pursue his dream. When I found out I was pregnant with Evie, I knew that my salary as a medical clerk would not be enough to sustain Peter and me plus one. So, I decided to go back to college and finish my teaching degree. I wanted a job that would pay fairly well and would allow me to be able to spend time with my family. So, once Evie was born, I started night school. It had been tough, working during the day and attending school a couple of nights a week, but Peter was there.

Once my maternity leave ended, he quit the grocery store and stayed home with her. And he wrote. Yes, wanting to make a better life for my family...that made me the bad guy. Peter had no choice but to look for solace and love in the arms of another because “I” was a cold-hearted bitch who was emotionally unavailable. Poor, poor Peter. Living with Yoko or whatever the hell her name was and trying to keep my daughter from me, sponging off of his parents' inheritance instead of me. Living in his parents’ old home, driving their old car. He had it so hard. I'm sure his life was so much better now that he had his little whore by his side. 

She was the regional manager of the grocery store where he had worked so long ago. She made a six-digit income a year. I suppose my puny teacher's salary didn't compete with that. Yes, bless his little heart, I thought as I jerked the bottle up off the table and started chugging it instead of sipping it from the glass. I had busted my ass for years to support my family while he sat there on all that money and never mentioned - never offered to take any of the burden off of me. Just let me work myself to death while he hoarded and mooched off me. Who was I mad at? Peter? Me? Stupid, stupid me. 

God, how I loathed myself. What was I going to do? How I missed my parents. They’d know what to do, what to say, how to comfort me. What would I do if he won Evie? I felt so incredibly empty inside. And terrified. I wanted to see my parents alive just one more time, so I could apologize for being such a shitty daughter. I wanted to be able to wrap my arms around my dad’s massive chest and bury my face there, tell him how much I loved him…and mom. I wanted to braid my mom’s long gray hair and place one of those wonderfully goofy hats on her head that she loved so much.

I longed to cuddle up with Evie in her bed, like we so often did, reading until we both fell asleep. I wanted to lie beside her, breathing in her smell, feeling the baby softness of her cheeks beneath my fingertips. Oh, how would I ever learn to live with this pain in my heart? Yeah, maybe I would just die here, and Peter wouldn’t have to have any guilt about ousting me from my home, my life. Right, as if he’d even given me a second thought. I stared blankly at the almost empty bottle. Yeah, I deserved all of this. I had ignored all the bad and taken all the good for granted, and now it was all being taken from me.

Chug another. 

The alcohol was definitely taking effect. My mind was spinning from everything I had been mulling over and beating myself up about. I felt the urge to vomit but not from the alcohol but from the feeling that all this loss, this misery, was causing in the pit of my stomach. I started to take another swallow but the bottle was almost empty which meant I’d have to pick my lazy butt up, get out of the hot tub, and step into the cold night to go inside for another. 

Note to self...bring all the bottles out. As I slipped out of the tub and wrapped one of the towels around me, clumsily grabbing the bottle and the glass, I was startled as an eerie sound pierced the quiet of the wood. It alarmed me, and I felt the glass slip in my hand. I tightened my grip as I focused my eyes trying to see out into the dark woods that surrounded me. It had been the slightest sound that would've probably gone unnoticed by the average person, but I was not the average person.

Unfortunately, my eyesight was not as keen as my hearing because, though I strained to see into the dense forest around me, the thick black of the night was too dark to penetrate. The sound had been particularly discernible; the cracking of twigs and brush beneath what sounded like heavy shoes. Who would be out here in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere? I was frightened momentarily but almost as quickly, realized that, hey, I was in the woods. Wild animals abound in the forest and many critters lived out here – small and large. Many large enough to make the sound I’d just heard. But these footsteps were just more…I don’t know…distinct. Not at all like what I thought the footsteps of a grizzly bear would sound like, but then again when had I ever heard a grizzly bear walk?

On the deck, which stood a good ten to fifteen feet from the ground and was only accessible by the treacherous stairways or the front door of the cabin, I felt I was fairly safe. I gave a brief thought to my cell phone, which as luck would have it, had no signal this far up in the mountains except “emergency calls only.”

The light from the cabin gave no assistance as once again, I stared hard into the dark of the woods in the direction from which the sound had emanated and still could see nothing. Besides, what would I do if I did see something? I visualized myself karate chopping a bear, Matrix-style. I chuckled to my drunken self. 

Oh well. So many pleasant ways to die here in these woods. 

I was giving in to my insanity because that was so much easier to cope with than the despair. More like I was giving in to the inebriation. I was thoroughly drunk. I laughed aloud, and my laughter echoed. I stood a moment longer and labored to hear the sound again. When nothing happened except a chill crept up my naked arms and back, covering me with tiny goose bumps, I was reminded that it was cold. I just shrugged off the sound and scurried into the heat of the cabin. 

Although the fire was almost nothing now but a few struggling embers, the inside was quite toasty. The fact that the cabin was so small probably lent to the ease of heating it. It had a high ceiling, but basically consisted only of this living area with a fireplace, the small kitchen (with a bar...essential to this weekend), and the one bedroom and bath. All I needed. I picked up a handful of kindling which appeared to only be small twigs, pine cones, and pine needles and tossed them on the coals. The fire hungrily consumed them. 

For a brief and fleeting moment, I thought I could hear breathing across the room. I quickly turned in the direction of the sound only to be faced with nothing but an empty sofa and a blank wall. I dismissed it as I poked at the vanishing fire with the poker until it burst into flames again. I threw a couple of logs on it and headed to the kitchen to grab the remaining vodka. I’d just have to make a liquor store run tomorrow, I sighed to myself. I quickly snatched up the bottles from the bar and started for the sliding glass door when I noticed a shadow of movement at the edge of the deck. I stopped in my tracks and stared out into the night at the mysterious thing perched there near the bistro table, peering back at me with its small red eyes.

I screamed.