Ren Frost's Arc

Chapter 6 of 13

They drove back under a bruised sky. Ren settled the rabbit in a crate near the cave lamp and counted heads by habit. Thirteen new. Sixty before. The snare site was a mile behind them in the dark, a bowl of rope and bent twigs sitting in a pool of frozen blood. Whoever owned that wire would walk to it at first light. She had hours. She woke Jason before dawn and they hauled stones from the pasture edge to the only road wide enough for a truck. They stacked them into a low wall, ice locking the gaps as they worked. It would not stop a person. It would slow one, and force them to be seen. Ren drove the last rock down with the flat of her boot and stepped back. Jason went to the cabin for the second pry bar. He was gone too long. When Ren followed, she found him in the small office off the kitchen, the desk drawer open, a tattered page in his hand. The deed. Her name on the line. No second line at all. "You bought it alone on purpose," he said. He did not look up. "The seller would have let me sign. You told him no." "I told him no," Ren said. Her throat hurt. "I was scared you'd leave and I'd lose the land too. So I made sure I couldn't lose it." She set her hand flat on the desk. "I should have asked you. I didn't. If you need to go, go. But the wall stays, and the animals stay, and I am telling you now instead of after." Jason folded the deed. He set it down. He picked up the pry bar. "Then we finish the gate before they come," he said, and walked past her toward the door. She followed him out into the gray light, the truth spoken, the wall waiting, and somewhere past the ridge a stranger already moving through the trees.