“Why are we stopping, Mama?” Dez’s voice was muffled by the heavy mounds of snow surrounding them on all sides. “Don’t we have to keep walking to get to the highway?”
Jade had spent the past few hours doing what she could to protect her daughter from worrying, but she couldn’t keep up her pretense anymore. “Baby, we’ve got to stop. I don’t think we’re going to find the highway tonight, and it’s already dark.”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“I think we’re gonna have to snuggle up real close to stay warm and try to rest here.”
“You mean outside?” Dez sounded as incredulous as if Jade had told her that her real daddy was Santa Claus.
Jade tried to keep her inflection positive. “Come on. It’ll be fun. Remember last summer when you were begging me to take you camping?”
Dez pouted. “But it’s not summer.”
“No, but we’ll think of it as an adventure, all right? And then when you’re a little old woman you can tell your babies and grandbabies and great-grandbabies all about the night you slept outside with your mom in the winter, and they’ll think you’re making it up.”
Dez continued to pout. “Well, what’s the point of telling them a story like that if nobody’s going to believe me?”
“I guess you’ll just have to tell them it’s true whether they believe you or not.”
Jade squatted down with her back against a spruce tree. Its branches were wide enough that they’d kept most of the snow off the ground. She wondered if covering Dez with the spruce needles would help her stay warm.
“It’s pokey down here,” Dez whined.
“Shh. Let me think for a minute.”
Jade situated her daughter between her legs and wrapped both arms around her. “I think you better give me that sweatshirt back,” she finally said. “We’ll tuck it around us both. Is that okay with you?”
Dez shrugged. “Fine.”
“You’re a good girl, baby. Did you know that?”
Dez didn’t respond. Jade put the sweatshirt back on, thankful that it was large enough she could zip it up with her daughter snuggled against her chest.
“It’s a good thing you’re my little skinny britches, or else you wouldn’t fit. Now you’re like a baby kangaroo in its mama’s pouch.”
She waited for Dez to laugh, but she was silent.
“You okay, baby?”
Dez let out a melodramatic sigh. “Yeah. But next time I say I want to go camping, can we please do it in the summer?”
“Yeah, baby. We can do it in the summer.”
Dez fell quiet again, and Jade wondered how she’d ever manage to fall asleep.
“Mama?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I’m hungry.”
Jade squeezed her eyes shut. So many times in her life as a single mom, she’d felt ill-prepared, unequipped to care for a child on her own. So many times she’d had to make sacrifices. Coffee in the morning or money to pay the heating bill. New winter boots for Dez or gas to drive to Anchorage where groceries were cheaper. There was that time she got behind in her rent because Dez caught strep throat so they were out of the daycare for a week. Jade had gone whole days eating nothing but a can of beans. But that whole time, no matter how bad things got, her daughter had never missed a meal.
Help me, God. I can’t do this.
Jade still wasn’t sure if resting here was the best idea or not. What if Dez drifted off to sleep and never woke up? But Jade was exhausted, and the longer she walked around in the woods in the dark, the more likely she was to get them even more lost. No, the best thing was to stay put. Was anyone out here looking for them? She hadn’t thought about Ben all night, but he must be searching for her. She prayed God would lead him to this part of the woods. Wherever this part of the woods was.
She held her daughter close.
“Mama?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“That guy who was holding you, he was a bad guy, right?”
“Yeah, baby. He was a real bad guy.”
“Is that why you had to shoot him?”
Jade tried not to show her surprise. “What makes you think I shot anybody, baby?”
“Because I heard the bang when I was outside running away. And I can feel the gun you’ve got in your pocket.”
Jade squeezed her daughter more tightly. “You’re a smart girl. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“You had to do it, right, Mama? Because he was such a bad guy?”
Jade decided she couldn’t avoid her daughter’s questions anymore. “Yeah, baby. Mama had to do it.”
They sat in silence, a silence that reminded Jade of everything she’d done at that cabin. Everything she’d risked to save this precious little girl, a little girl who might freeze to death overnight zipped up in this oversized sweatshirt.
“Hey, Mama?”
“What, baby?”
“Is God gonna be mad at you?”
“For what? For shooting that bad guy?”
“No. I mean about the demons.”
At first Jade didn’t know what her daughter was talking about, then she let out her breath. “Oh, baby, that was just a whole bunch of nonsense. That woman was crazy. I don’t want you to think about a single word she said, okay?”
“Yeah, but did you really have demons making you do bad things?”
“No, silly. Of course not.”
“Are demons real then?”
Jade would have loved to talk about nearly anything else, but she knew Dez was stubborn enough she would just keep on asking until she got her answer.
“Yeah, baby. There’s demons. But the Bible says God’s stronger than all of them, so it’s not something you need to spend a lot of time worrying about.”
“Do you think demons make me do any of the bad things I do?”
Jade was surprised. “What kind of bad things are you talking about?”
Dez lowered her voice and leaned into her mom. “Well, once at daycare I told one of the Cole twins she was stupid. I know it’s a bad word, Mama, and I felt really sorry for it afterward and even gave her my Twinkie at snack time. I don’t even know why I said it. We were just playing together is all, and I wasn’t even mad, but I looked at her and said that. Think it was a demon in me making me say such a bad word?”
“No, baby. Demons can’t live in people that way, not people who belong to the Lord.”
“Do we belong to the Lord?”
“Of course we do. Remember when you were down in Sunday school with Mrs. Spencer and you asked Jesus to forgive all your sins and teach you how to live a good life?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, that means you’re a Christian, baby, and demons can’t live in Christians. So I want you to get all that nonsense out of your mind. It was just crazy talk from a crazy woman.”
“Do you think Auntie Sapphire has demons, Mama? Is that why she did all those bad things to us?”
“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know. Now I want you to try to get a little rest okay? Give Mama a chance to think and figure out what we’re gonna do next.”
Dez turned and nestled against Jade’s chest. Her body relaxed, and her breathing slowed down.
“Hey, Mama?” she said sleepily.
“What, baby?”
“Do you think God really talks to people in dreams like Auntie Sapphire said?”
“I’m sure he does, but I want you to stop thinking about that woman now, you got that?”
“Okay, but I was just wondering, what if we pray and ask God to give us a dream to tell us how to get out of the woods?”
“You go ahead and pray that, baby. Mama’s too tired.”
“But if I pray it, do you think he’ll answer?”
“You go ahead and pray, and I’ll listen in, okay?”
Jade shut her eyes and listened to her daughter’s confident prayers. Her five-year-old trusted God to give her a dream to lead them out of the woods. But all Jade hoped was to stay warm enough that they’d both be alive when morning rolled around.