Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (the false prince series txt) 📗

vermilion stretched solemn as a church window clear to Canada.

At the table, Harry fed his bunched nerves sparingly with toast and a little scrambled eggs while Bud went over the plan of the hunt on the worn sheet of lodge stationery and Chris sat unusually attentive at his side and Jesse stood in the kitchen and puffed nervously on a cigarette.

54 / CHUCK LOGAN

Their eyes were loud and sticky and stumbled toward each other.

Becky, face washed and wide awake now, came down the hall in a gray wind suit and cross-country ski boots. She pulled her hair back and knotted it into a practical ponytail.

“What are you doing?” asked Bud.

“I’m going to ski.”

“You can’t ski today. The woods are full of hunters. There’s two feet of snow on the trail around the lake,” said Bud.

“Some snowmobiles went through last night. The trail’s fine. It’s the first snow of the season,” said Becky, sitting down and tightening the laces on her boots.

“She shouldn’t go out there,” Bud said to Jesse.

Jesse nodded. “Maybe you should wait.”

“Mom,” said Becky, drawing out the sound.

“Hush,” said Jesse.

Then Bud stuck his elbow into a puddle of syrup from the blueberry pancakes and Jesse scolded him lightly as she came to his aid with a damp dishcloth. As she tended to Bud’s spill, her eyes ambushed Harry through Bud’s thick cowlick.

“We go along this ridge that skirts the shore,” Bud was saying.

“Then we follow it east away from the lake till we come to where it peters out into these three fingers that go down to the swamp.”

“Once the first shot goes off, all the deer head for the swamp, that’s what Larry says. The deer we want has thirteen points and the long tine on his left antler is way bigger than the other side. You can’t miss him,” said Chris in a touching attempt at mimicking a man’s deeper voice. He looked focused, purposeful, his hair combed straight back; a different person from the punk of last night.

Bud nodded. “We’ll set up on the ridges. Harry on the first one, then me, then Chris.” Bud marked Xs on each of the three crooked fingers he’d drawn.

Becky piped up. “Give up. Larry always shoots the biggest deer.

Five years in a row.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 55

“Not this year,” said Bud.

It was time to bundle up in blaze orange. Chris went to the bathroom. Bud fiddled with the snowshoes out on the porch.

Harry carried his plate to the kitchen counter. Jesse stood a bare inch away and said in a low voice, “You don’t have to go out there.

They’d probably have more fun, just the two of them.”

For a moment there was only the sound of their breathing.

“Look, I know why you’re here,” she said with tired candor. “He doesn’t have the guts to bail on his own.” The left side of her smile jerked. “When I met him he was too good to be true, we were going to put this town back on the map. He can get you to believe almost anything.”

“So what happened?”

The other side of her smile twitched. “What he was running from in the Cities caught up with him and he started changing on me, drank himself into that tub of guts out there. I gave up a lot for him.

And not just to be his sport fuck. So yeah, I got him to make it legal.

And when he splits I have no qualms about taking his money. Answer your question?”

Becky approached with her leggy runner’s stride and thrust her body between them. “Oops, sorry,” she said, in a mocking imitation of her mother’s voice. She dropped a pile of dirty plates into the sink with a crash and gave them both a look of pure disgust as she moved away.

“And last night?” asked Harry.

“Life goes on, Harry. It’s going on right here. Isn’t it?”

Harry exhaled carefully. Ten years of discipline slipping, every day a sober penny rubbed shiny with his sweat. Bud with his idle fucking millions.

“You could tell them you forgot something. And come back for a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you a thing or two about Bud Maston,”

she said simply.

Revenge Fuck was beautifully written all over her face. She read his mind and gave him a man-weary expression. Her eyes tightened.

“Bud’s not the only one in need of help,” she said under her breath.

56 / CHUCK LOGAN

“Kid’s stuff,” Harry muttered but his eyes were manacled to hers and he knew he was going to throw his life at her like a pair of dice and it was an exhilaration he hadn’t known in ten years sober.

She reached over and plucked a red cord that draped from his parka pocket. Slowly she drew out his compass. She slid it on the counter behind the toaster.

“You could say you forgot your compass,” she said in a steady voice.

Sleepwalking, out of breath, Harry retreated to the mud porch.

He put on a blaze-orange coverlet and tried to look busy, checking the contents of his backpack. Through the doorway, he saw Becky grab Chris by the arm and pull him back into the lodge. A muffled disagreement tugged between them, fast, their heads close. Chris’s eyes caught Harry’s glance and burned with a look of such intensity that Harry guiltily broke eye contact.

They know. Becky must have overheard the scene in the bathroom last night.

Chris stared straight ahead, holding a piece of pancake in his hand, munching, as Becky continued to whisper in his ear. He shook his head. Becky lowered her eyes. Chris’s face had transformed since he’d left the table and gone to the bathroom. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a wind tunnel.

Outside, on the steps, they struggled into the snowshoes. Bud handed out ammunition and made sure Chris was loaded and on safe. By the porch light, Harry loaded the Remington—four bullets, copper-yellow streaks, with fat, soft lead noses. With Jesse’s plea careening in his head, he pushed the bolt forward, slid a