Chapter 8: Gwen - Hunter or Hunted

Taking a sip of cocoa with one hand, I sunk the ladle into the pot. Once filled to the brim, I lifted it and poured the steaming, fragrant liquid into one of three three-gallon stainless steel carafe. I had already filled the first, one ladleful at a time. I still had two full pots to transfer.

After Simone picked me up from my cabin, I sat in the back seat nursing the two full pots and single carafe while Junie held the cake in the front seat. We came to Main Street, where Rhiannon was already outside, setting up chairs. Chairs we would sit in while we mourned Delilah.

Toting the vessels of hot cocoa, I asked Rhiannon if I should serve it directly from the pot or if she had something better. Thus, the carafes. She ushered me to the back of the cafeteria, showed me to a cart, I loaded up the cocoa, then brought it out here. To the reception area of the rec center.

On a foldout table to my left, half a dozen trays of pastries and finger sandwiches lay out. My carafes and cake took up a table of their own.

Quiet pop music pulsed nearby. Whether from outside the glass doors or inside the cafeteria, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t say much of anything. Every time I’d tried so far—when Simone asked me how I was doing or when Rhiannon thanked me for the food—my throat swelled, and I choked.

But when I sipped the cocoa, my mind quieted. As I spooned ladleful after ladleful into the carafe, my stiff shoulders loosened, and breaths came easier.

As I lifted my tumbler to my lips for another sip, a hand landed on the small of my back. The smell of Simone’s fruity perfume hit me before the sound of her voice. “How many cups have you had so far today, sweetie?”

“Two. The first and the last.” I spooned another ladleful into the carafe and chuckled. Simone didn’t. “My mom used to say that.”

“Not even a ballpark estimate?” she asked.

No matter how kind her expression, how sympathetic her voice, I couldn’t help my eye roll. “I don’t know. A lot.”

“Maybe you should get something to eat then?” She held up a plate of finger sandwiches and cookies. “Just something to soak it all up.”

I didn’t want to soak it all up. I liked how quiet my mind was. That I couldn’t hear my heartbeat. How loose my neck felt over my shoulders. Even the slight sway of my legs beneath me. Couldn’t say the slur at the edges of my words bothered me either.

“I’m good. Thanks.” Hand clenched a little too tightly around the ladle now, the meditative lull of dumping spoonfuls into the carafe dwindled. I still had two full pots to get through.

Grabbing the first by the handles on either side, I lifted it over the carafe. Just as I started to pour, Simone gasped. Both her hands flung to mine. She pulled, trying to bring the pot back to the tabletop.

Liquid splashed, landing on my chest.

I gasped at the heat and blurted, “Son of a bitch, Simone!”

I hadn’t intended to yell, but it came out that way.

She released her hold on my hands. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

More steaming chocolate droplets crashed onto the backs of my hands as I lowered the pot to the table. Jaw tight, I looked down. Chest bright pink, speckled in chocolate, but no boils or blisters stared back at me. Hot, but not scalding.

Doubted I would’ve felt it regardless.

The Pat Benatar T-shirt that hung off my shoulders had survived worse stains. I blew out a deep breath that released my clenched teeth. “I’ll live.”

“I’m sorry,” Simone said. “It just looked like you were gonna spill it.”

“Well, I did.”

Mostly on myself though. Only a few droplets had landed on the table. I patted them up with a paper towel, blinking to see them clearly. Maybe it was the flickering fluorescents overhead. Or maybe Simone was right, and I needed to go a little easier on the cocoa.

“But I was fine,” I said. “I work with hot drinks every day. Please just let me do my job here.”

“You’re usually not shit-faced drunk when you’re working.” She lowered her voice a few octaves. “I’m just worried about you, Gwen.”

I appreciated the sentiment, but… “I’m not shit-faced.” Both hands on the pot again, I lifted it over the carafe. The liquid spilled out in a slow, steady stream. “Just a little tipsy.”

“You can’t even stand straight.” She put a hand on my back again. “I’m not judging, but⁠—”

“Really?” The pot returned to the tabletop with a thump. Shuffling behind the rec center doors quieted. “Because that’s usually what someone says when they’re judging.”

Simone frowned. As she opened her mouth to speak, a rush of cool wind blew in behind me. I didn’t look over my shoulder to see who it was, but Simone offered a small smile and a wave.

I held her gaze as the padding of their feet vanished into the rec center. She refocused on me. “I’m not. I get it. You’re upset. I just think we both know this isn’t the healthiest coping mechanism.”

“I’m sorry, are you really going there right now?” Brows furrowed, I scoffed. “The day I got here, the day you brought me here, we got plastered in my cabin, and you colored my hair. You said it was good. A cathartic release. A way for me to let loose and process what the hell my life had become.”

“I did, yeah. I’m really not judging or anything. I just think you should take it easy and be careful.”

“Be careful about what?” I blinked hard. “My friend’s dead, and I’m sad, so yeah, I’m getting a little drunk. I haven’t judged you for all of the times you had a bad day and got shit-faced at the end of it, so what’s the problem, Simone?”

Voice earnest, eyes soft, they flicked around behind me. Evidently realizing no one else was around, she continued. “When we drink, our inhibitions are lowered. Words just come out. We say things we shouldn’t. Things we regret later. And I’m just thinking about the things you’ve done. Things no one can know about.”

Face screwing up, a joyless smile ached the corners of my lips. “You think I’m that stupid? That I’ll have a few drinks, a rough day, and it’ll all come tumbling out. I’ll ruin my life, yours, and—” I almost mentioned Sebastian, but only because his involvement was so fresh in my mind. Not because she was right. “I handled it. I’ve handled all of it. I didn’t ask for your help, I didn’t need your help, and I don’t need it now.”

Her frown only deepened. “I don’t think you’re stupid. I’m sorry if it came out that way. I just don’t want you to say or do something you’ll regret.”

No, she didn’t want me to say or do something she would regret.

Shaking my head, I went back to my cocoa. A ladleful into the carafe, followed by another. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You’re upset, and⁠—”

“No shit, I’m upset.” I dropped the ladle back into the pot. Didn’t faze me when it splashed my hands this time. “Delilah’s dead. My friend is dead.” My voice broke as the tears burned across my eyes. “I’m never going to see her again, and she’s never even going to get justice. It took a barely there cover-up for them to believe she killed herself. So yeah, Simone, I’m upset.”

Nostrils flared, lips quivering, I thrust my hands down at my sides. “I don’t get why that’s so hard for you to wrap your head around. Every damn day, you’re telling me that I need to open up more, that I need to talk about how I feel, and this is how I feel. I’m sad. I’m angry. And I just want to be sad and angry and drunk today. I don’t want to be strong. I’m always strong, and for one day, I don’t want to be. I want to cry. I want to cry with people who miss her too.”

“Then cry, Gwen.”

Rhiannon’s voice came from behind me. As I spun to face her, it felt a lot like looking in a mirror. The whites of her eyes burned bright red. She wore no makeup. The edges of her nostrils chafed, as did the corners of her eyes.

Closer now, she grabbed my tumbler, held it out before me, and lifted another off the stack next to the cocoa. “You don’t have to be strong. You can be sad and angry, and you can cry. Of all the places in the world to fall apart, do it here. We’ll help you put yourself back together.”

Eyes watering, lips quivering, I took the cup. Rhiannon bumped her Styrofoam filled with chocolate against mine. Together, we held our drinks to our lips, and we tossed them back.

* * *

A fire burned in the middle of the street.

About two dozen of us sat or stood around it. Faces I recognized, some I’d met in passing, all with tears in their eyes.

Music sounded in the distance. Loud enough that I could make out the words if I listened closely, but too quiet to hold my attention. Snowflakes fluttered from the gray sky, accumulating on my black sweatpants. Much like the snow that’d rested on Delilah’s puffer coat when she showed at my door that day. No different than the snow piling on her picture beside Rhiannon. A quarter inch already lay on the golden frame.

Simone had started to sit beside me, but Junie pulled her to the other side of the fire. There, they sat beside Lori who managed the daycare.

No sign of Lizzie yet, which I was grateful for. Simone had been right earlier, no matter my instinctive, defensive reaction. Lizzie didn’t need to see me like this.

The already hushed crowd quieted when Rhiannon stood. Hands in her hoodie pockets, she gazed into the fire. “Thank you, everybody, for coming. It’s really not much. Not as much as Delilah deserved. But I think all of us who knew her are feeling the ache right now. She was one of those people, you know?”

Rhiannon looked up, eyes shifting over the crowd. “Delilah had a contagious energy about her. After those first few days here, she was always grinning about something. Giggling or shimmying or dancing. Or giving. She liked to give.” Blinking fast, Rhiannon swept a tear away. “At Thanksgiving, she made a pecan pie. We shared it at our table, and my God, it was the best damn pecan pie I’ve had in thirty years.”

Quiet laughs echoed from the crowd.

I remembered that pecan pie. The sweetness of it, the crunch, the hint of vanilla.

“She gave me the recipe.” Rhiannon squatted and grabbed something from beneath the fold-up chair behind her. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I tried making it. Figured it’d be nice to bring here and share with you guys.” She tilted the aluminum tin toward us for a better view. Even if I weren’t drunk, I doubted I could make out the details of it from the distance. “Tastes like shit. I don’t know if I did too much salt, or butter, or hell, I may have forgotten the sugar. But it’s bad. It’s real bad.”

A few more laughs sounded. Even Rhiannon’s as she wiped the corner of her eye again. “I can’t let anybody eat this thing. I was gonna toss it, but then I remembered something. Back when the ranch was a campground, we had this little ritual at the end of each season. All the kids would bring something. Maybe a craft they’d made, maybe a cool stick they found, even a marshmallow for a s’more. Something that reminded them of this place, something they had found here. And on the last night, we’d have a big bonfire. One by one, we’d go around the group, and everyone would tell us a little bit about the item they brought. Why it mattered to them, how it reminded them of the camp, and then they’d toss it in the fire.

“The idea was twofold.” Rhiannon wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “The fire brings us together. We sit around it, and we tell stories. We listen to one another, and we connect. And it burns, but it doesn’t destroy. It transforms. Through the time we spend around it. The people who sit beside us. The stories we all tell. It turns an object, like a hunk of wood, or craft, or stick, or marshmallow, into smoke. We all breathe it in. We all let it out, and it floats up into the sky.”

She glanced up. “Into the stars. The same atoms inside of us are inside of them. Those same stars look down at us, and we look up at them, and the stories we tell, the memories we make, we burn them here. All our smoke travels up there, and it tells our stories to the stars.

“Until we join them.” She tossed the pie into the fire. The flames pulsed higher, brighter, warmer. The heat that blasted against my cheeks and knees did nothing to ease the chill that crept up my spine. “If anyone else wants to share a story with the stars, or burn something to send to them, you’re welcome to.”

Junie, who’d cuddled up in her mom’s lap, hopped down. She took a few steps toward the fire. Holding something in her hand, she looked up at Rhiannon. “I can too?”

“You can too, kiddo.” Rhiannon stretched down to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “Tell the stars whatever story you want.”

Junie stepped a little closer to the fire. She kept looking down at that thing in her hand. “Me and Delilah made friendship bracelets once. We both put a butterfly wing on it. So I made her this.” She lifted the cookie she showed me yesterday—now decorated—but didn’t aim it at anyone in particular. Her gaze fell back to it. “I wanted to give it to her for Christmas. But maybe the smoke can give it to her, instead.”

She dropped the cookie into the fire.

As it went up in flames, the knot in the back of my throat thickened.

Junie’s little lips quivered. Pawing at tears, she spun around and ran back to Simone.

This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

No one else stood. No one else stepped up.

Everyone had tears in their eyes, but no one stepped closer. No one reached out to the flames.

Just like on her first day here, when Delilah had walked into the therapy room of the rec center, and everyone kept talking. A few glanced over, but I’d been the only one who waved. The only one who offered her a seat.

I grabbed my tumbler from the ground, stood, and I stepped forward. Each move I made was like treading through water. Every lift of my foot, a chore of its own.

But before I knew it, the flames burned only inches from my calves. That knot in the back of my throat grew so big, I could hardly pull a breath past it. The only sound came from snowflakes sizzling as they hit the fire.

“I keep thinking about the first time Delilah came to my cabin,” I said. Slurred, maybe. But that knot in my throat softened as I spoke. “After I gave her a tour of the ranch, I told her that she could come up to my house anytime. And she did. She showed up at my door, and she came in, and I started to offer her a drink, but then I realized I had never asked how old she was. She told me she was eighteen. So I gave her some regular hot chocolate and told her that I would make my spiked hot chocolate for her when she was old enough.

“But she’s never going to be old enough.” Hot, salty water stung violent paths down my cheeks. “I can’t believe that she’s never going to be old enough. We’re never gonna drink spiked hot chocolate together or raise our daughters together like we said we would. Like we wanted to. And I think that’s what’s so hard, because I’m not just mourning my friend. I’m mourning the friendship we didn’t get to have.

“We only knew each other a couple months, and I really grew to love her in that time. Rhiannon might say it’s because I saw myself in her. A version of me that I wished I’d been. I mean, she was barely more than a kid.”

The tears streamed out my nose, and no sniffling could keep them inside. Wiping them away, I shook my head in disbelief. “Who could I have been if, at eighteen, I made the choice she did? If I left? What would my life look like? What would all of our lives look like?”

I finally looked up from the flames, but at no one in particular. All the faces blurred as I scanned the crowd. Maybe that was the stress. Maybe it was the cocoa.

“What would her life look like if she got to keep living it?” My voice broke. It took a few hard swallows before I could continue. “And you know, I keep thinking about something else, too. Delilah in general, she made me think about the act of leaving. The pain of it, the embarrassment, the shame. That got me thinking about those early days, too. Even before I left, when I was scrolling one day, and I happened upon some random article. It was about domestic violence.

“At the time, I hadn’t even admitted that I’d experienced it. That I was experiencing it every day. For the same reasons. The pain, the embarrassment. The shame. The weakness.” Lips dry, I licked them. When that didn’t do enough, I rubbed a hand over them. “It looked clickbaity. That’s probably why I clicked it. It said, a woman is eight hundred times more likely to be killed by her partner if he has strangled her. Eight hundred times.” Mouth still dry, probably dehydrated from all the alcohol, I swallowed a few more times before I could keep going. “You know what else they said in that article?”

I scanned the crowd, but all I saw were a lot of teary eyes and tissue dabs beneath noses. No one said anything, but a girl in the back, Eve, if memory served, shook her head. Answering my question, maybe. I didn’t know, but it felt like permission to continue.

“It said that three women a day are murdered by their partners in America.” Bottom jaw trembling, the tears came down harder. Faster. “Midnight, eight A.M., four P.M. One, two, three. Pop, pop, pop. Every single god damn day, three of us are murdered by the person we love most. And I don’t know how to sit with that fact. I don’t know how I’m supposed to just accept it. I’m okay now, I’m happy now, but three women a day. Over a thousand a year. It could’ve been me, it could’ve been you.” I waved at Simone, teary-eyed as she held Junie in her arms. I wasn’t sure Junie understood, and I hoped she didn’t, but I couldn’t stop.

“It could’ve been you.” My voice shook as I looked at Rhiannon. There were tears in her eyes too. Tears, and that same look she had given me the morning after Delilah died. Just before we fell to the ground, sobbing in one another’s arms. “It could’ve been any of us. But it was her. It was Delilah. It was a sweet young girl, who never did anything to anyone.” Hands trembling at my sides, I clenched them into fists. “Not me. Not someone who’s lived a bit. Not someone who maybe deserved it. I mean, the things my ex did, the things I dealt with, the things I didn’t turn him in for, I have to live with that.

“I have to live knowing that another Delilah will walk in behind me. That somebody else is gonna hurt the way that I hurt, and maybe her story will end like Delilah’s did. Maybe it’ll end like mine. Maybe she’ll get out like I did. But maybe she won’t, and she’ll be one, two, or three. Today, or tomorrow. And it’s not our fault. It’s none of our faults that they were who they were, and we allowed what we allowed, because we didn’t make those choices, but, but⁠—”

A gasping sob cut me off. It came on so suddenly, so forcefully, and all I could do was let it flow. My head pounded with each weep that escaped, but I hadn’t finished. “I don’t know. I’m just—I don’t know how I’m supposed to accept this. My friend’s dead, and I kind of blame myself for it, because she was so sweet. And she was so kind. And she said to me that all she ever wanted was to be what her dad wanted. What society wanted. Just a good girl. Marry her high school sweetheart, have a couple of kids, settle down in the suburbs. Be a sweet, innocent little flower. And I told her not to be. I told her to be a storm. I told her to be angry, to fight back, and I think she did, and I think⁠—”

Another gasping sob. I doubted anyone could make out what I was saying, but I kept going. Even as my numb knees gave way, and I backpedaled. To get to my chair, to get to something that would hold me upright. I crashed into something, someone. Their arms came around my waist, steadying me before I fell.

“I think she fought, and I think she lost. I think she lost.”

Just as his quiet voice touched my ear, the musky, citrusy scent of his cologne hit my nose. Sebastian’s arms were like ropes hanging off the edge of a cliff, refusing to let me drop. He whispered, “I’ve got you.”