As soon as Rath shut the door, Rachel found a hairband on the counter and shoved back her platinum-dyed pixie cut. Her new style was an about-face to the long, natural dark hair she’d always worn, and which Rath thought had perfectly reflected her personality. He did not know the young woman this style reflected, but was certain Rachel knew her. Rachel had always known herself; it was Rath, as Rachel’s role of adopted daughter diminished and her many roles to the outside world expanded, who knew her less as she became more of a stranger to him.
Rath braced himself for her blitz of questions, but her lips persisted in moving silently, as they had when she slept as a child and murmured dialogues with her unconscious self, her face alternating from frowns to grins.
There were no grins now.
And the blitz did not arrive.
Her eyes searched the room deliberately, her head and body remaining still, just as Rath had taught her the one autumn she’d shown interest in deer hunting. Rath had taken her into the woods on the backside of Ice Pond, hiked up Mount Monadnock to the high ridges in search of a good buck’s track to follow. He’d taught her to look. Use just her eyes. Look. Study the woods, her surroundings. Learn it. But don’t give yourself away to your prey through movement. She’d practiced for weeks, enthused she was honing her peripheral vision.
Then, one morning, she woke up and her interest in deer hunting was gone.
Now, she charted the room, predator assessing her landscape. “What does he want?” she said and seemed almost in a trance. She locked eyes with Rath. Except for the radical hair color and the bobbed locks, she might have been her mother’s twin when her mother was her age. No. It was not quite her mother’s face. There was the subtle bend at the end of her nose that mimicked someone else’s DNA. Or did it?
“It was him in the shop, wasn’t it? Preacher? The man who killed my parents. Feet from me.” She yanked the hairband off and twisted its ends opposite each other, stressing the cheap plastic.
“I don’t know who else it could have been,” Rath said.
“Any old creep,” Felix said.
Rachel turned on him. “Don’t try to give me false comfort because you think it’ll make it easier.”
Felix flinched. “I’m not. There are lots of creeps, that’s all.”
“OK.” Rachel softened her tone. “We were both freaked by some guy. And—” She faced her father. “Preacher called you to threaten me. So—” She twisted the hairband. “How can he do this? Get away with it? Why is he even out after what he did? Free to go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants, the same things we do, when we didn’t hurt anyone and he’s murdered and raped?” She bit down hard on her lower lip. “I’ll claw his eyes out,” she whispered. “If I ever see him. I hope I see him. I will claw his eyes out. Cut his heart out.” She twisted the hairband until it seemed it would break in half. “What are we going to do?” she said.