Part 6
By the time Jenna reached the edge of Black Lake, the sun was beginning to dip behind the tree line, casting long, bruised shadows across the water. The lake was perfectly still, its surface a glassy, impenetrable dark green reflecting the dense pines that bordered it. There were no houses here, no roads, no sounds except the wind rattling the dry cattails along the muddy bank.
She stood at the edge of the water, feeling a strange, profound sense of relief. The frantic, exhausting machinery of her mind had finally shut down. There was no more fear of Richard, no more dread of her father, no more carrying the suffocating weight of the empty woods.
Jenna slowly unlaced her heavy boots and stepped out of them. She didn’t bother taking off her coat.
She waded into the lake. The water was shockingly cold, a heavy, biting chill that instantly soaked through her clothes and clamped around her ankles. The lake bottom was soft, thick with decades of decaying leaves and heavy silt. Her bare feet sank deep into the mud with every step, pulling at her like a physical hand.
She kept walking. The water rose to her knees, then to her waist. The heavy wool of her coat absorbed the lake water, adding ten, then twenty pounds of dragging weight to her shoulders. She welcomed it.
The drop-off was sudden. One moment the water was at her chest, and the next step, the muddy bottom vanished beneath her feet.
“Hey! Get out of there!”
The voice was loud, sharp, and male, shattering the silence of the cove.
Jenna didn’t turn around. She let out her breath and slipped her head beneath the dark, freezing water. The silence of the lake swallowed her instantly. She closed her eyes, letting the heavy wool coat pull her down into the cold dark.
But the peace lasted only a few seconds. A violent splash erupted above her. A strong hand grabbed the back of her coat collar, hauling her upward with brutal force.
Jenna broke the surface, gasping instinctively for air as river water rushed into her lungs. She thrashed, trying to pull away, but the man had a firm grip under her arms. He dragged her backward through the shallows, his boots slipping and sliding in the mud, until they both collapsed onto the grassy bank.
Jenna rolled onto her side, coughing up lake water, her chest heaving violently.
Beside her, the man sat up, spitting water into the grass and furiously wiping duckweed from his face. He was in his late thirties, wearing a soaked flannel shirt and heavy denim work pants.
“You out of your mind?” he snapped, wringing out the hem of his shirt. “There’s a massive undertow right there. You could’ve drowned.”
Jenna pushed herself up on her elbows, shivering violently, her wet hair plastered to her bruised face. She glared at him, her voice hoarse and raw. “I know. I didn’t ask you to pull me out.”
The man stopped wringing his shirt. He looked at her closely, taking in the bleeding cut over her eyebrow, the dark bruises on her jaw, and the absolute deadness in her eyes. He let out a slow, tired breath, the anger bleeding out of his posture.
Before he could answer, there was a rustle in the tall grass. A little girl, no more than six or seven years old, trotted into the clearing. She was wearing denim overalls and holding a fistful of crushed dandelions.
“Daddy, you got all wet,” the girl said, her bright blue eyes wide with surprise.
Then she looked at Jenna. The child didn’t seem afraid of the bruised, shivering woman on the ground. She walked right up, knelt in the damp grass, and carefully reached out her small hand.
“You have green stuff in your hair,” the girl whispered.
With incredibly gentle fingers, she pulled a string of wet algae from Jenna’s tangled hair. The child smelled faintly of sunshine, dirt, and laundry soap.
Jenna stared at her. A heavy, suffocating lump rose in her throat. Her hands began to shake even harder. She instinctively reached up, lightly covering the child’s small hand with her own freezing fingers.
“Thank you,” Jenna whispered, her voice breaking. She looked away, staring back at the dark water. “But you shouldn’t have pulled me out. I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Everybody has somewhere,” the man said quietly, watching her.
“I don’t,” Jenna said, wrapping her arms around her wet torso. “My husband… my house. It’s gone. Everything’s gone. I have nothing left.”
The man studied her for a moment. He turned to the little girl. “Annie, sweetie, why don’t you go see if you can catch one of those yellow butterflies we saw on the path? But stay right where I can see you.”
“Okay,” Annie chirped, immediately distracted. She hopped up and began wandering through the tall grass, her eyes scanning the wildflowers.
The man pulled a dry handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to Jenna. “My name is Tom. And whatever mess you’re walking away from, the lake isn’t the way to fix it. Things change. You just have to stick around long enough to let them.”
Jenna gripped the handkerchief, her knuckles white. The dam that had held her together for seven years finally cracked.
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice shaking violently. “I don’t deserve to be alive. God is punishing me, and I deserve it.”
She didn’t know why she was talking. Maybe it was the shock of the freezing water, or the fact that this stranger had looked at her bruised face without flinching. But the words began to spill out, jagged and broken.
She told him about the woods. She told him about the freezing barn, the pain, the tiny, motionless bundle she had wrapped in an old wool blanket. She told him about walking into the timber, leaving the child under the pine tree, and the sheer, paralyzing panic when she returned to find the hollow empty.
“There were tracks,” Jenna sobbed, dropping her face into her hands. “Wolf tracks. Right up to the tree. I looked for her. I screamed, but the woods were just empty. She was gone.”
Tom sat perfectly still. The wind rustled the tall grass around them.
“She had a birthmark,” Jenna whispered to the dirt, the tears finally coming, hot and fast. “Right here.” She touched the side of her neck, just under her jaw. “It was shaped like a little, uneven heart. That’s all I have. That’s the only piece of her I ever got to know.”
Tom didn’t say a word. He looked at Jenna, his expression completely unreadable, a strange tension gripping his shoulders. He slowly turned his head.
“Annie,” Tom called out, his voice a little tight. “Come here a second, kiddo.”
The little girl jogged back over, a yellow butterfly fluttering away from her outstretched hands. “I missed it.”
Tom reached out and gently took his daughter by the shoulders. He turned her slightly, facing Jenna, and used his thumb to pull down the collar of her denim overalls.
Jenna stopped breathing.
There, on the pale skin just below the child’s jawline, was a dark, distinct mark. It was shaped exactly like a small, uneven heart.
The blood roared in Jenna’s ears. The trees, the lake, the sky—everything seemed to drop away. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. Her trembling hand reached out, hovering an inch away from the child’s neck, terrified that if she touched the mark, the girl would vanish like a ghost.
“Go on back to the butterflies, Annie,” Tom whispered, his voice thick. “Stay close.”
Annie smiled at Jenna, completely unaware of the tectonic plates shifting beneath them, and skipped back toward the wildflowers.
Tom let out a long, shaky breath, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Seven years ago,” Tom said, his voice quiet and steady, “I was living in a cabin on the other side of that ridge. It was late April. Freezing cold morning. My dog, Dana—she was a German Shepherd mix, a real good hunting dog—she woke me up before dawn. She was frantic. Scratching at the door, whining, tearing at my pant leg. I thought there was a bear in the yard.”
Jenna stared at him, tears streaming down her bruised face, afraid to even blink.
“I grabbed my coat and followed her,” Tom continued. “She didn’t stop at the edge of the yard. She tracked a scent straight into the deep timber, pulling me the whole way. She dragged me right to the base of a massive pine tree.”
He looked down at his hands, pulling a piece of dry grass from his knuckles.
“My wife and I, we couldn’t have kids. We tried for a long time. When I found that bundle in the pine needles, I thought I was hallucinating. The baby was barely breathing. She was freezing. But she was alive.”
He looked back up at Jenna, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
“We named her Annie. My wife passed away last year. It’s just been the two of us ever since.”
Jenna sat paralyzed in the damp grass. The universe, which had felt so cold and cruel for so long, had somehow bent back on itself, returning the one thing she had thought was lost to the dark forever.
Tom stood up. He didn’t offer grand promises. He didn’t ask about her husband or the bruises on her face. He just extended a calloused, dirt-stained hand toward her.
“You’re freezing,” Tom said simply. “My truck is parked up on the dirt road. My house is just a few miles from here. We have a fire going, and there are some of my wife’s old clothes in the spare room. You can stay as long as you need.”
Jenna looked at his hand. Then she looked past him, to where Annie was crouching in the grass, watching a grasshopper.
“Are you nice?” Annie called out suddenly, looking over her shoulder at Jenna. “Daddy says we should only bring nice people home.”
Jenna reached out and took Tom’s hand. He pulled her up, steadying her when her cold legs trembled. She looked at the little girl with the blue eyes and the heart-shaped mark.
“I am,” Jenna whispered, the first true breath filling her lungs in seven years. “I promise.”