The Night Sun Read online

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  The deer was long dead before my husband struck it with our car.

  The fur was mottled with blood and fluids, tendons of the neck naked to the air while threads of muscle clung to mass of the deer’s body. Its head stood on high, all nineteen points of its antlers aimed toward the heavens, its pulse visible in the exposed veins. I could see the forest behind it, the rest of the deserted highway as clear as a cleaned windshield threaded with red, palpitating stratum.

  I have its blood on my hands.

  My husband had been occupied by proving his point with tactile flare. This was supposed to be our second chance, this trip. Our last chance, according to my lawyer. I’d seen the deer a long ways off, but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—find the voice to tell him to just stop.

  Just stop.

  He kept yelling, kept driving, the car swerving over the double-yellow, tires grinding over the caution strip when he overcompensated. A cramp blossomed deep purple in the meat of my palm as I gripped the door handle. Admittedly, I was entranced by the deer, by the sheer horror of what was clearly a dead animal that had the nerve to defy all known laws of nature by standing stock-still in the middle of this backwoods highway, its trademark stupid gaze marred by streaks of gore running from its coal black eyes.

  Once my husband realized I hadn’t been listening to his opinion on my job loss, he tried to make me.

  The slap of a fist against flesh isn’t the stuff of ’80s movies, and the recovery certainly isn’t from any film with a knock-down, drag-out fight. My head struck the window hard enough to dizzy me, the pane left intact. My eyes rolled shut, the muscles of my neck seizing at the point of impact, my head lolling forward.

  His fingers were deep into my afro, nails scraping at my scalp, when the front of the car collapsed against the great beast. The car stopped as if my husband had slammed on the brakes. His grip tightened at impact, wrenching my head toward him, but thankfully, the center console snapped his elbow the wrong way and he released just in time for me to look up and watch the deer calmly clomp away and disappear into the trees.

  * * *

  We were rudely awakened by a state trooper with smelling salts some-odd hours later, late enough that our plans to reach the cabin by sunset for a romantic walk along the shore of the lake were ruined by the freezing black of night. The moon was three-quarters full and halfway through the sky when the EMT showed up.

  I smiled up at the bitten glowing disc and mouthed, “Night sun,” a shiver of a memory rattling me. I hadn’t thought of my mother in months, an improvement considering it had been fourteen years since her death. But here I was, aching and withering within the grip of my abusive husband and thinking of the woman for whose death I was responsible.

  The trooper’s jaw worked at the mud-brown mass tucked against his cheek, watching us suspiciously as the EMT tended to us. The EMT was a random townsperson with a medical kit in the back of his pickup. A rather extensive kit, granted, but not enough equipment to convince me I’d be fine in his care. Still, I allowed him to finger the growing grapefruit on the left side of my neck as the tight coils of my hair showered around us. He dragged the same finger along my temple and I winced, an automatic response to capillaries long burst as a shudder ran through me. My husband cleared his throat and the EMT moved on.

  “And you say it was a deer?” the trooper asked. He spit a thick stream of goop that landed with a meaty slap at the toe of my husband’s Timberland boot.

  My husband looked from the spit to the trooper’s wind-reddened face and back again before saying, “If my wife says it was a deer, it was a deer. Sir.”

  The trooper dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his tan Carhartt and straightened his back. “Look, I mean no disrespect—”

  “Then perhaps you should stop displaying it,” my husband shot back. I pulled the blanket a little tighter around my shoulders with one hand, the other still locked within my husband’s, my gaze volleying between the two white men of differing sizes battling for ground. It was this boldness that had attracted me—resentfully— to my husband in the first place: a boldness he’d wielded when a drunk in our college bar thought I was for sale. It was the same boldness that cracked me upside the head six months into our marriage, a boldness that now owned me.

  The trooper grunted, jaw twisting beneath taught, naked cheeks. “And neither of y’all hit your head?” My husband squeezed my hand until a knuckle popped and we both murmured no “Welp, sounds to me like y’all don’t want a trip to the hospital, so wrap it up, Casi. Where were y’all headed?”

  “The cabin at Wolf Lake,” I said, my voice strained. I breathed deep to reorient myself as the pain from the knot in my neck bloomed. The trooper raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Well, all right,” he said, still watching me. “S’long as y’all are fine, I’ll give you a lift. Ain’t too far from here. We’ll have your car towed to the shop, get you a rental of some kind on Monday morning.”

  “We have to be gone by Monday morning,” my husband snapped.

  “Sure, sir, completely understand that, but it’s a Friday night and this is a small town. Office opens Monday morning at ten ay em. We’ll get y’all together then. Until?” He turned and gestured at his Chevy pickup, which sat running, full high beams illuminating the entire scene.

  Gritting his jaw, my husband stood and shed the blanket a little too quickly, his face falling in on itself as he aggravated the damage to his arm.

  “You wanna be easy with that arm, sir,” Casimiro the EMT said, the hint of a Mexican accent gently squeezing the vowels of each word. He continued with reasons why, reasons I’m sure my husband was set to ignore.

  “Fine,” my husband said. He allowed Casimiro to fit him with the classic SAM splint and a gauze sling, seemed to listen as Casimiro gave some basics for doing it himself.

  And with that, I slid from the tailgate and we trailed the trooper to his truck.

  * * *

  My husband said his goodnight with a head nod as he pulled the last of our luggage into the log cabin. I could feel the slight warmth at my back as the trooper kept my attention with two discreet fingers on my hand.

  “May I help you?” I said gently. I was exhausted from holding my head up.

  “I don’t wanna make any assumptions, and y’all won’t be my business come Monday night, but … being out here, real remote? I see some shit. Mostly with drunk husbands and lonely wives. Here.” He dug into the inside pocket of his jacket and I flinched, stepping back. He snorted. “We ain’t like that.” He proved it by pulling out a well-worn leather wallet, more white than green sticking out of it. He produced a flimsy card, straightened it against the breast of his coat, then handed it to me. “Call me. Anytime. I’m the only one manning this place and I’m used to very
little sleep.”

  I studied the card, rolled over the name with a caged tongue. Bruce Hayword. Floodgate Sheriff, Colorado State Trooper. I nodded. “Thank you, Sheriff Hayword.”

  “It’s Bruce, ma’am,” he said. “Have a good night and I do hope your weekend is nice.”

  I gave a tiny nod, tired of talking, tired of this day.

  He dropped off the one-step wooden porch and trudged over the gravel, his gait slightly hitched. He stopped right before entering his pickup and said, “One more thing: Don’t go wandering around after dark. We’ve got some serious beasts out here.”

  No shit. I frowned at him, thinking of the deer, of how impossible its neck had been, how defiant its very existence was.

  I shoved the memory down, settling my tongue firmly in its cage, and waved as Bruce backed out of the drive. I watched the pickup until the taillights were two glowing red eyes warming the trees beyond.

  * * *

  “What took you so long?”

  “Fuck you, Jonas,” I mumbled, heading toward the kitchenette.

  The entire log cabin was barely four hundred square feet, with a ten-foot loft for a pallet bed. The small space took no time for the fire to warm and within fifteen minutes we were able to start shedding layers. Still, an undeniable chill had settled into my bones, so I filled a saucepan with bottled water and set it on the gas stove for some tea.

  “Whatever,” Jonas groaned. “Fuck, man, my arm is killing me.”

  “Yeah? So’s my fucking scalp, you prick,” I said, dragging ass toward the couch that sat in front of the fireplace. I plopped down on the opposite end from him and took a long, slow breath. I touched the left side of my neck with tentative fingers, testing out the lump that extended from my thyroid down to the clavicle. I bit back a sigh as the memory of Casimiro’s touch briefly possessed the path of my own examination.

  “C’mere,” Jonas said, his voice soft, affectionate. Intrusive.

  “No.” I hissed as I pressed a little too hard.

  “Come. Here.” He was flirting with me the way he did after every fight. Most times it took his blood being shed before we got to this point. Maybe the close brush with the law on my side had sobered him.

  I rolled my eyes, kicked off my Timberlands, and tucked my toes under his thigh, my own version of flirting and acquiescence, mostly so he’d shut the fuck up. He took my right foot and laid it in his lap, proceeding with a weak, one-handed massage that I melted into. This would normally lead to a hard fucking, angry make-up sex that would exhaust us to the point of light-headed euphoria, trapping us in something like love. But the massage was too weak and our bodies were beginning to throb from draining adrenaline. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I jolted awake when I felt him poke at the knot in my neck—gently, but catastrophically, nonetheless. Reflexes kicked in and I flailed, catching his nose hard enough to make him stumble back.

  “Fuck, Avery! I just wanted to see if you still wanted tea!”

  I rolled my eyes and snorted a breath. “Don’t wake me like that.”

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “No. I want to shower and go to bed.”

  He chortled. “You see a bathroom around here?”

  I sat up and looked around. He was right; the open floor plan did not include a cubby for a shower or even a toilet. “Godfuckingdamnit.”

  “Yeah, good choice, asshole,” he grumbled. “I’m going to bed. Make your own fucking tea.”

  I watched his retreating back as he awkwardly climbed the ladder to the loft. “I said I didn’t want tea anymore!”

  But the moment was gone and soon enough his soft snores were competing with the crackling fire.

  * * *

  It isn’t sleep because I don’t dream, but I can’t move and I’m naked and cold.

  My neck doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. But I am cold.

  I am standing at the expansive wall opposite the door, Jonas’s soft snores hypnotic, angering.

  Something in the cabin stinks.

  In front of me, against the carefully placed bodies of bark and pulp: a sculpture, stabs and slivers of ivory clustered tight, layer upon layer, expanding in a spiral, pale yellow to hospital white, all gleaming.

  And at the center, in the middle of the tightest cluster with the tiniest of chips of ivory— like fingernails, yet thicker—inside of all this, a tiny speck, off-color, dark. I want to be near it; I want to know what it is.

  But then there is a whisper and I return to the couch where I tuck myself in tight and let darkness take over.

  I woke up to his lips on mine and the cabin aglow with a fresh fire. “Shit,” I hissed. He stepped back and I attempted to sit up. Failing that, I said, “What time is it?”

  “Six fifteen, Saturday night.”

  “Jesus, I slept twenty hours?”

  “Just about. You scared me a little.” By the look on his face, it was more than a little. Fear was etched in his features, stiffening his back and bringing a sheen to his hazel eyes.

  This fucker had the nerve to be crying.

  “You were—ah, kinda moaning in your sleep.” He chortled, the sound choked and phlegmy.

  I frowned at him, not for his words, but … his fucking face. In that moment, I hated his face so ferociously, I itched to sink my teeth deep to the cheekbone and tear away.

  Disfigure the pretty face so opposite to mine.

  “You know I don’t dream.”

  “Yeah. Y-yeah, I know.” He dropped his gaze. Tried again. “You okay for some dinner?”

  I nodded and immediately regretted it. I pulled at my turtleneck and touched the tender spot to find a pebble-sized lump squarely in the middle of the crook of my neck. “I need pain meds.”

  Jonas nodded and left my sight. I slowly sat up, then placed my socked feet on the rug. I gave the world a chance to right itself before standing.

  “Baby, sit, I got it.” He walked around the couch with a mug and three white pills in his hand. I took the pills first, then gulped the cool water. “More?” I gave a short nod. “Your lawyer called several times. She won’t talk to me, though, so before she calls in a missing person report, call her, yeah?” Again, a short nod, though he couldn’t see me from the sink. He came back a moment later with more water and my cell phone, the screen already unlocked.

  “Find anything of interest?” I asked.

  “Don’t start,” he warned. “And don’t think of changing it again. I’ll always figure you out, Avery.” The tightening of his features was no longer from fear, and I took the warning by grabbing the phone and shuffling toward the door, my stomach swimming thick with rotten memory. “Where are you going? It’s freezing outside.”

  “It’s better than in here,” I grumbled back, then slammed the door behind me.

  * * *

  The outhouse wasn’t as bad as I’d pictured. It was heated and about half the size of the cabin, with a full bathtub, a sink with a short counter, and an energy-efficient toilet. Something about that seemed ironic to me, but my head was too foggy to figure out what. After taking the longest piss of my life, I stepped back outside in time to appreciate the bright magenta filtering through the trees. I pulled out my phone.

  “So how is it?”

  It broke my heart to disappoint her, but I couldn’t lie to my sister. She’d been sniffing out my fibs since I wore her favorite dress to one of my tea parties and stained it to hell. “Shitty. We fought on the way here and hit a deer.” I stopped myself from going into further detail, my imagination running wild with the thrum of the exposed veins’ pulse.

  “Goddamn it, Avery,” she breathed.

  “I’m pretty sure this weekend is it. Get a couple orgasms, sign those papers, look for my bachelor pad in the city, and start trolling for dudes who own sneaker stores in the heart of Denver.”

  “Ooo, movin’ on up!”

  “To the mountain side!”

  Our shared laugh petered out into a rigid silence. She cleared her throat. “I’m wor
ried about you, sis.”

  “Don’t, Kaya,” I warned.

  “I feel like you’re not going to make it home.”

  “Stop.”

  “He’s going to kill you, Avery!”

  I rolled my eyes. “More likely we’ll kill each other.”

  “That’s not funny. This isn’t funny, Av—”

  “Since when did you start giving a fuck, Kaya?”

  “Since when did you stop?!”

  “When everyone disappeared! When the bruises were louder than the fucking lies and I just—” My breath caught and I squeezed my eyes shut, willing this moment not to consume me. But it was like puking because the spins won’t end; once I stuck my fingers in my throat, there was no holding back the deluge of years in silence. “Because I was fucking drowning and I didn’t know how to say it. Because no one saw me from behind your shadow, Kaya. Because Jonas was there to clean the fucking wounds when y’all slammed the door in my fucking face.”

  I gulped at the cold air, my mouth thick with tears. “Because I’ve never felt more alone than I have without you and Mom.”

  “Fuck, Avery,” Kaya breathed after a moment. More silence, tiny sniffles my only indicator that she hadn’t hung up on me. “Is that why you think you killed her? Oh, God, I’m so … sorry. I’m so sorry. We had—we just didn’t know what to do. We thought you knew better, that this is what you wanted, that whole fight-fuck, hoodrat shit.”

  I couldn’t help it, I guffawed. “Yeah, cuz Jonas is exemplary of hoodrat shit.” With wavy, nearly white-blonde hair, thick-for-a-white-dude lips, and a lithe swimmer’s body on a six-four frame, Jonas was the picture-perfect American boy, the kind to eternally get away with shit because he’s just a kid, no matter how many years may prematurely age his Nordic face. He was a catch while I was lucky and for years, I was grateful to be noticed by him, kissed by him, claimed by him.

  “Avery, listen to me: Mom had an aneurysm. You’re a pain in the ass, but you can’t literally make someone pop a vessel.” I snort a laugh and wipe at my nose. “When you get back, want to do lunch? I … let’s come up with a strategy, a way to get you out of this for good."