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“She didn’t come home.”
The forest was silent. Footfalls broke the natural peace jarringly, steps that crunched through underbrush and snow. Emilia didn’t return when she was told. At 5:30, when the sun began to set behind the tree line, to take off her snow-wet boots at the door and get ready for dinner. She knew not to wander too far afield, and to always take the dogs. She well knew how, at ten, to navigate the footpaths between trees and find her way home if she ever got turned around. Will taught her as much. Now it was after dark, and the dogs all came back without her.
Walking through the brush and calling his daughter’s name, Will deeply, profoundly regretted allowing Emilia to leave.
“She isn’t here, Will.” Hannibal spoke carefully and with resignation at the scene as presented. He pressed his gloved hands together, looking to the edges of the forest where the sun waned in dull orange fingers. “She would have heard us by now. Even if she hadn’t, she knows how to find her way home from here.”
“She might have wandered off the main path, or tried to cross the stream.” Will had told Emilia time and again: never go any further than when she could no longer see the lights of the house. Never try to cross water that was iced-over. Why would she begin ignoring him now? “She could be hurt.”
“Where did she say she was going?”
“Just to take the dogs out. She knows better than this.”
“Of course she knows better, Will. But she’s a child. Children defy their fathers whenever the opportunity presents itself, and never at their fathers’ convenience.”
“Is this my fault for letting her go?” Will said before he could help himself, resentment coiled precariously on his tongue.
A sigh. “Is there somewhere else a child might go, if she has wandered off the main path?”
Will shook his head. “There’s another house, down the road. It’s empty.”
“Then we’ll look for her there.”
A great, excitable bark echoed through the trees. It was Samson, the St. Bernard Emilia had been taking care of since he wandered onto the farm three years earlier. The other dogs followed in a chorus of barks and yips, Will’s small collection of terriers and sheepdogs. Following the sound led to the appearance of small footprints, trudging through the deep snow cover in an unsteady gait.
There was blood in the snow, too. Tiny droplets of red, gone black in the fast-approaching darkness. The dribble made a path through the open back door, up the stair case, and to Emilia’s closed bedroom door. Monstrous thoughts brought her fathers to its threshold, where they were met with a bloodied knife on the carpet and two small, snow-wet boots at the foot of Emilia’s bed. It was terror first, then the shudder of relief, that left Will at the door, still grasping the knob, as Hannibal sat down on the floor beside the bed.
“Emilia,” Hannibal said, in a soft and even voice. “Come out from there.”
The sound of fingers digging into carpet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wander off.”
Her fathers’ eyes met for a moment. Will collected the blade. It was a long, curved knife, wet to the hilt with blood. Neither of them recognized it. From under the bed, Emilia let out a tremulous breath.
“We’re not angry with you, but you’ll have to tell us what happened.” Hannibal reached out a hand toward the bed. Ten fingers, small and wet and red, crept out to meet it. “Now come here to me. Please.”
Quietly and on all fours, Emilia slid out from her hiding place. There was blood on her clothes and splashed across her face in thick flecks, still sticky in her hair. Her eyes were red from crying. Hannibal closed his arms around Emilia, to hold his daughter to himself as she curled against his ribcage. Recognition – bright, hot, and terrible – tightened in Will’s chest as he moved to sit beside them.
Terrible, like a thousand feverish scenarios come true. Terrible, all shattered as they were, and rearranged into the mosaic of breath and blood before him. Terrible, and then finally a relief, bone-deep and mute in its decisiveness, because there would be nothing left to hide.
Nothing left to hide from.
“What happened?” Will asked, as cautiously as he knew how to. Instinct, paternal and fastidious, brought his hand up to wipe the blood from her cheek, chin, and temple.
“I’m sorry. I know you told me not to wander off, but I wanted to go into the woods.” Emilia hiccupped against Hannibal’s chest, swallowed up as she was by his embrace. “But there was a hunter there, and he – and I didn’t mean to.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.” Another hiccup, and a soft whimper. “No, but he shot a deer, and the dogs got scared and ran home. And I saw him, and he was alone, and I thought – I thought about the knife on his belt. But I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t,” offered Hannibal, as he rocked her gently. “You only did what comes naturally to you. You must never be ashamed of that.”
“I just…I just wanted to see what he was made of. And there was so much blood…”
There would be work to do now. Evidence to dispose of, a body to render. Discussions to be held, finally, after many other, quieter discussions. For now, Will sighed, and closed a hand over the one that held his daughter’s trembling back. Her heart raced inside its little bone cage, pulse hammering under her skin.
Not from fear, as Will knew well.
“We’re just glad you’re safe,” he said, speaking of simple things rather than what would come next.
“You’re not mad at me?” she asked. A wavering hand pushed the blood-wet hair from her eyes. “Even after I ran?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Emilia.” Will caught Hannibal’s gaze, dark and knowing and expectant, and said, “This is all we could have hoped for.”