Jenna could not feel her legs. The damp earth beneath her smelled of crushed yarrow, broken pine branches, and damp soil—a sharp, green scent that would turn her stomach for the rest of her life. She lay motionless in the tall grass, staring up at the darkening canopy of the woods. The man was already gone. The heavy crunch of his boots snapping dead branches had faded into the thick Appalachian timber minutes ago, leaving behind a silence so absolute it made her ears ring.
Her cotton dress was hiked up around her waist, the fabric torn at the collar. She did not move to pull it down. Her arms felt like lead, her head stuffed with cotton. Her cheeks burned as though she had been slapped, and she tasted the metallic tang of blood where she had bitten through her lower lip to keep from screaming. The world around her had lost its color, bleaching out into pale, unnatural shades of gray and winter-white, even though it was the middle of summer.
She had no idea how long she stayed there, pinned to the forest floor by the sheer weight of what had just happened.
The spell broke only when the evening chill rolled up from the creek bottom, settling over her bare skin. The sun had dipped below the ridge, throwing long, bruising shadows across the woods. Jenna finally forced herself to sit up. Her spine ached. Her hands shook violently as she patted the flattened grass, searching for her fallen cotton headscarf.
She dragged herself over to a rotting birch stump and leaned her back against it, struggling to command her own body. Her fingers felt thick and useless as she picked dry pine needles and dead leaves from the scarf. She tied it slowly over her tangled hair, tucking the loose strands away. She needed to look normal. She had to look exactly the way she had when she left the house.
Before stepping out of the tree line, Jenna stumbled down the steep embankment to the narrow creek. The mountain runoff was bone-chilling. She plunged her hands into the rushing water and scrubbed her face, her neck, and her arms. She rubbed her skin until it bloomed angry and red, trying to wash away the scent of him, the heavy heat of his breath. The freezing water numbed her hands, but it did nothing to quiet the panicked thrumming in her chest.
She pulled herself up the bank and began the long walk home, her legs unsteady.
On either side of the wide clearing, clumps of St. John’s wort and wild chamomile nodded in the breeze. To her right, the ancient, towering pines stood like a solid black wall. To her left, the woods opened up into a sprawling meadow that bordered her family’s acreage.
It was a hard, unforgiving piece of land. Her parents, Bill and Martha, worked themselves to the bone every year just to pull enough from the dirt to feed four children. Aside from Jenna, there were three younger girls. Bill had wanted a son to help run the farm. With every daughter Martha delivered, his resentment had deepened, hardening into a bitter, unpredictable rage.
When Bill drank—which was often—the farmhouse became a minefield. The heavy thud of his boots on the porch was enough to send the younger girls hiding under the beds. Jenna had learned early how to make herself invisible, but it rarely worked. Her father was a man who needed somewhere to put his anger, and a heavy leather belt hanging by the woodstove was his preferred method of delivery. He would use it for the smallest infractions: a spilled cup of water, a door shut too loudly, a chore finished five minutes late.
Because of him, Jenna lived her life in utter, obedient silence. She followed orders. She kept her head down.
Earlier that afternoon, she had simply gone into the woods to forage. It was a good season for wild mushrooms, and within a few hours, she had filled her woven basket to the brim. She had been on her way back, pausing in the clearing to look at the blanket of wildflowers, when she heard the sharp crack of a branch behind her.
She had turned to see a tall stranger stepping out from the tree line.
He was young, handsome in a rugged sort of way, with dark eyes and a bright, easy smile. When he started walking toward her, Jenna’s instincts had flared. She quickened her pace, heading for the property line, but he easily matched her stride.
“Heavy basket you got there,” he had said, his voice smooth and entirely too friendly. “Let me give you a hand with that. You’ve been working hard.”
“No, thank you,” Jenna had replied, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead. “It’s not heavy. I’m used to it.”
He laughed, a low, rasping sound. “Stubborn. I like that.”
She had tried to walk faster, her boots slipping on the damp grass. “Who are you? I haven’t seen you around town.”
“You ask too many questions, beautiful,” he had teased, stepping seamlessly into her path, cutting off her route to the meadow. “What’s your name?”
“None of your business,” she had snapped, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs.
He hadn’t backed down. Instead, he kept talking, his tone casual, crowding her space. He mentioned the poor hunting season, the weather, smoothly steering her away from the open field and deeper into the shadow of the pines. By the time Jenna realized she could no longer see the roof of her family’s barn, panic had set in.
“Why are you following me?” she had demanded, her voice shaking. “Leave me alone. I need to get home.”
The easy smile had vanished from his face, replaced by something flat and terrifying. “You really thought I was just walking with you to make conversation?” he had sneered. “I came to get what’s mine. And I’m not leaving until I do.”
She had told him to get away. She had taken a step backward, preparing to run, but he lunged. The sheer physical force of him hitting her sent them both crashing into the dirt. The struggle had been agonizingly brief. He outweighed her by eighty pounds. When she screamed, he hit her across the face hard enough to make her vision white out.
“You make another sound,” he hissed, his eyes wide and dark, “and I’ll make it worse.”
When it was over, he had calmly stood up, adjusted his clothes, and walked away without looking back.
Now, moving mechanically up the dirt driveway toward the farmhouse, Jenna felt the tears finally spill over her eyelashes. She swiped them away angrily. She could not tell her mother. Martha was too broken, too exhausted from a lifetime of Bill’s heavy hands, to offer any protection. And if her father found out, he wouldn’t comfort her. He would blame her. He would beat her within an inch of her life for ruining herself, for bringing shame onto his house.
She wiped her face on her sleeve as she approached the barn. The sun was fully down. She walked straight to the feed shed, picked up the heavy metal buckets, and began her evening chores.
She threw grain to the chickens and lugged the heavy slop buckets to the pig pen, her arms trembling under the weight. The muscles in her back screamed, but she kept moving, relying on the rhythm of the work to keep her from falling apart.
Her ten-year-old sister, Allie, burst out the back door of the house, letting the screen slam shut behind her.
“Where have you been?” Allie whined, crossing her arms. “The hogs are screaming. The cows are starving. I had to watch Irene all afternoon because Mom and Dad are still out in the south field.”
Jenna dumped the slop into the trough. She didn’t look up.
“And Mary knocked over the milk bucket,” Allie continued, her voice pitching higher. “It’s all over the kitchen floor. I don’t know how to clean it right.”
“Leave me alone,” Jenna muttered, gripping the empty metal bucket so tightly her knuckles turned white.
“I’m tired!” Allie complained. “I’ve been dealing with the babies all day, and you just disappeared!”
“I said get away from me!” Jenna shouted.
Allie jumped, her eyes going wide. She stared at her older sister in shock. Jenna was the quiet one. Jenna absorbed every complaint, every harsh word, and never raised her voice. Allie slowly backed up, turning and scurrying into the house without another word.
Jenna leaned her forehead against the rough wood of the fence post, trying to catch her breath. After a long moment, she walked inside. The kitchen smelled of sour milk. She silently filled a bucket with soapy water, dropped to her bruised knees, and began scrubbing the wooden floorboards until her hands ached.
When the floor was clean, she picked up her youngest sister, Irene, bouncing the toddler on her hip while she heated water on the stove. She bathed the little girl in the tin tub, dressed her, and then quickly washed herself again, desperate to remove any lingering trace of the afternoon.
Her parents still hadn’t returned from the fields. During the harvest push, they often worked by tractor headlights until midnight.
Jenna put her sisters to bed and finally retreated to her own cramped room at the back of the house. It held nothing but a narrow iron-frame bed, a small wooden nightstand, and a few faded dresses folded neatly in a drawer.
She closed the door, making sure the latch clicked into place. She climbed into the narrow bed, pulled the quilt over her head, and pressed her face deep into her pillow. Only then, in the suffocating darkness, did she allow herself to break. Her shoulders shook violently as she sobbed, the sound completely swallowed by the heavy cotton. She wept for the girl who had walked into the woods that morning, knowing with a cold, terrifying certainty that she was never coming back…
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