Katherine

Katherine's friend Melissa was afraid of small spaces. Claustrophobia, she called it, with an air of superiority, like giving it a fancy name made her irrational fear somehow more valid.

Katherine herself had never minded small spaces. When she was young, playing hide and seek with Gabe, she was the best hider. She'd tuck herself into rotted out tree trunks or into the tiny crevices between two rocks and she'd snicker as he walked within inches of her hiding spot, none the wiser.

That was the story she'd told Isobel while they lay waiting beneath the floorboards. She'd changed his identity, of course, but nothing else. She even let the faraway wisps of nostalgia brush over her cheeks like a gentle breeze as she thought of who she had once been. Who they had once been.

Isobel was frightened, but she was also too brave and too smart. The second Gabe lowered her into their dank, damp hiding spot, she went quiet, her whispered, shaking words barely above a breath.

"Is pa coming?"

"We're going to hide from him," Katherine had said, unable to answer outright. To give voice to the stark fear in her own heart. "He'll go away if we're very quiet."

"Mister Gabe will make him go," Izzy said, and though it wasn't voiced as a question, Katherine nodded, her head throbbing as she pressed her cheek to Isobel's hair.

"Yes, he'll make him go away. But we have to be very quiet, Isobel. Mister Gabe will get in trouble if your pa hears us and finds out we're here. It's better if we're quiet and he never even knows."

"It's a secret," Isobel said in hushed awe. Izzy loved secrets. She declared all kinds of things secrets that really had no need to be.

"The biggest secret," she confirmed, and she told Isobel stories of clever hiding places and innocent secrets until the sound of footsteps sent them plunging into silence as deep as the darkness.

The male voices were muffled, but Katherine recognized Jacob's tight, affected tones. She hated his voice. It was like music. Like the organ music at those big churches in the city. Lyrical but not pretty. Powerful, but somehow lacking in the lovely ebb and flow that, to her at least, made music worthwhile. She would never want to dance to organ music.

She also heard the sheriff, and Gabe. His voice didn't make her want to dance either. It wasn't like any kind of musical instrument she'd ever heard. She must still be feverish, because when she heard his voice all she could think was that she wanted very desperately to curl her soul around it and sleep for a million years.

The voices continued overhead, and the heavy footsteps on the floorboards seemed to resonate in her chest, making her flailing heart stutter and skip. Isobel was trembling in her arms, face tucked into her side and hands clenched into fists in the sheets. Katherine couldn't speak to her, or sing, or even hum to soothe her. All she could do was tighten her grip on her daughter's body, hug her close, and cover her small head with a bruised hand, as if that could somehow protect her. She pressed her lips to the crown of her daughter's head and let her thumb brush a slow rhythm over the little girl's cheek.

It'll be alright, she tried to say with her hands, willing her heart to slow so Isobel wouldn't hear the lie in its frantic thumping. We are safe. You are safe. I'll never let anything bad happen to you, ever again.

She kept an ear tuned to the muffled conversation, and knew when the men stomped out. Her mind told her they were gone, at least for now, but her body was locked tight in leftover dread, and Isobel made no move to pull away. Gabe said he would return when it was safe, so it must not be safe yet. So they remained, twined around each other in the darkness, and the seconds ticked by. The more time passed, the more Katherine began to wonder about claustrophobia. Melissa said it felt as if the walls were closing in. As if she were running out of air.

Absurd.

Or was it?

For Isobel's sake, she didn't voice the scream that was bubbling up inside her. But those slivers of light between the floorboards were surely getting closer, and the dirt walls of their coffin were pressing tighter against her shoulders. She sucked in a breath, and maybe it was pain from her ribs that made the air seem thin, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe he had forgotten to leave that crack he had talked about. No. She knew that wasn't true. She could see it, a sliver of light there in the corner by her left foot. But what if it wasn't big enough?

Her whole body began to buzz as fear crept in. Isobel was going to die in this coffin. Sweet, innocent Isobel who had never had a chance at a normal, happy life. She was going to smother to death with clean air six inches away. She was going to perish without ever living!

She ought to hold her breath and give Isobel as much of their remaining air as she could. But when she sucked in a breath pain shot through her bruised chest, and the air exploded out of her. A whole lungful wasted! Even in this small way, she was failing.

She heard her heartbeat in her ears, and the tingling rush of blood as it screamed through her body. She squeezed her eyes shut against the panic. She was trapped between two terrible evils-- die here in this hole or escape and risk discovery. And now that she thought of it, did she even have the strength to lift the floorboards? What if Gabe had placed something over the top to hide them even further?

Light exploded overhead, and she clenched her teeth on a scream.

"Katherine."

That voice. Every muscle in her body relaxed. Like warm risen dough with the air punched out, she collapsed into a useless lump against the hard ground.

"Mister Gabe?"

Katherine didn't open her eyes. Didn't need to. She knew without looking that her daughter had reached up with absolute trust, pulled with unerring strength from what Katherine had believed to be their grave. Of course he wouldn't bury them alive. She ought to have known better.

"Katherine, are you alright?" A work-roughened thumb brushed over her cheek and she let her eyes crack open. Flickering light danced over the two faces that hovered above her. Both wore grim, worried expressions, brows pulled together and mouths turned down into identical stern frowns. She shut her eyes against the image.

"Go turn the blankets down, Iz," Gabe said, and then his hands were slipping beneath her. His touch hurt her so badly, but she didn't let herself make a sound. It hurt him to hurt her, and the last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt him.

Again.

Colorful sparks of pain were exploding behind her eyes by the time he lowered her gently on the bed. "I'm sorry it took so long," he said, carefully unwrapping the dirt-stained sheet from her body before tucking her in. She ought to have felt terrible shame that his hands were brushing over her naked flesh, but she felt none. She felt only the sensation, and the sweetness of his reserve. He touched her as little as possible, as if to protect the dignity of a woman who had none left, the last of her pride erased by the days she had just spent unconscious and wracked by fever and helpless in his care. His knuckles barely brushed her as he tugged the sheet loose, his fingers the barest breeze against her skin as he inspected her bandages. When he raised the blanket and tucked it around her, it was as if the air itself had picked the material up and molded it to her body.

She pried open her eyes when she heard him retreat, peering through a blurry haze at the corner of the room, where he crouched by the discarded floorboards. Isobel crouched beside him, again a perfect mirror image, reaching out with clumsy hands to "help" him fit the slats back into place.

"Ma was scared," she heard the little girl whisper, and there was the shame that had eluded her when her naked body was on display to a man that was not her husband. For her child, she ought to be fearless.

"Doubt it," Gabe answered, accepting the board she was trying to hand him. "Your mama is pretty brave."

Isobel nodded thoughtfully. "She's scared of pa, though."

Gabe didn't answer, fitting the last board into place and pushing to his feet, Isobel hovering beside him like an over-eager puppy. He pushed the chest of drawers back so that it covered half the secret opening. "Are you scared of your pa?" he asked as she trailed behind him to the hearth. He bent and stoked the flame, and she hunkered down at his side.

"Nah," she said, picking up a small stick and mimicking his motions. Then, so quiet the words barely rose above the crackle of the embers. "I hate him."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said gravely, propping her chin in her hand as she continued to poke at the embers. "Ma said it's wrong to hate, but I hate him. I wish he would die." Katherine choked on a sob at the quiet declaration. She had raised a child so buried in fear and pain she already carried hatred in her tiny heart. Hatred enough to wish death upon a man. Not that Katherine didn't understand, but malice was not meant to be the purview of children. Least of all her child.

"Why's that?"

"He's mean."

"All mean fellas gotta die, huh?"

"No, only the especial mean ones," she said, before circling back. "Ma says it's bad to hate people. Do you think I'm bad?"

No! No, baby, no!

But before she draw the air in to scream the words, Gabe spoke. "You don't seem bad to me."

"But I got bad thoughts. It's bad I want my pa to die."

"Well, why do you want him to be dead?"

A long, thoughtful pause, Isobel shifting back as Gabe set a log on the fire, a gentle plume of sparks giving the appearance of fireflies, dancing against the darkness.

"He's mean and he hurts ma. He makes her cry."

"So you want him to be dead because you want your ma to be safe? That's not bad, Isobel."

"You swear?"

"Swear on my life. You're not bad... Anyway, aren't you tired?"

"No."

"Yes you are. Go get in bed."

Isobel sighed a grudging, annoyed breath that almost made Katherine smile. She closed her eyes and feigned sleep as her daughter clambered up onto the mattress. She slipped beneath the quilt, the sheet still separating them. Isobel may talk a big game to their savior, but the maternal core of Katherine's heart felt her daughter's fear and need in the way she cuddled close beneath the covers.

"You're not bad, sweetheart," she whispered as she pulled the girl close, pressing a kiss to her temple. "You're the best thing in the world."

The duplicity of her eavesdropping didn't seem to phase her daughter, who sniffed and nuzzled closer. Within seconds she'd be asleep, whatever the trauma they'd endured while they were buried beneath the floorboards. Katherine opened her eyes as Gabe strode over and crouched by the bed.

"I have to go back to work," he said, meeting her gaze in the semi darkness. "I'm sorry I have to leave. He won't be back tonight. You'll be safe."

"I know," she whispered, snaking a hand out from beneath the covers and letting it hang in the air until he took it. "Thank you." She squeezed his fingers and hoped he knew the depth of her gratitude. She'd always envied him the way he communicated without the need for words, how every action from the minute gesture to the grand sacrifice spoke so clearly of the truth in his heart. Next to him, she had always felt pale and shallow, never able to offer more than platitudes and empty promises.

Even now, with all the pain and tension between them, she could feel the message he sent as he brushed his thumb over her knuckles, tightened his grip on hers, and then carefully tucked her hand back beneath the blankets. "I'll be back in a few hours," he promised, pushing to his feet.

He was almost to the door when Isobel's voice cut through the still air. "Mister Gabe?"

He turned and came back to the bed. "What is it, Isobel?"

"Will you kill my pa?"

"Isobel," Katherine gasped, appalled, but her headstrong daughter plowed on.

"You said it's not bad," she reasoned as Gabe sighed and crouched down beside the bed once more. "Please, mister?"

Again, he didn't need to speak. Maybe Isobel couldn't see it, but Katherine saw the answer all over him. In the calm, golden gleam of his eyes and the set of his jaw. In the pulse that ticked in his temple and the way his shoulders drew back just ever so slightly. She saw it in his hand, resting on the edge of the mattress, the fingers digging into the soft surface.

"Go to sleep, Isobel," he said, and she saw his answer so terribly clearly in the way he rested an awkward hand on the girl's shoulder before he stood to go.

Yes.

HELLO!!! PLEASE READ THIS!!!

In case you didn't see one of my other 10,000 announcements, I've decided to take the first step toward GEN-U-INE publishing and made myself a website!!!

 https://www.lptvorik.com

If you like the crap I write, please go there and maybe if you feel like it subscribe to my mailing list. No pressure, but this is a huge leap for me. Promoting myself makes me physically and spiritually ill, and if I compound that discomfort with the humiliation of failure I may slink into the woods and write exclusively on strips of bark that will disintegrate in the next rainfall. So, y'know... the choice is yours.