You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

café with lots of chairs outside, under a blue sky filled with stars. She’d asked her father if he would buy her the poster, and he did. She’d hung it up in her bedroom but took it down after he died.

Wait a minute, thought Karin, stopping in her tracks. If this is where we were camping, then the museum is not so far away. If she had a bike, she could get there in maybe fifteen minutes. Walking, it would take longer, of course, but it was that way—toward that large cluster of pine trees. She was sure of that.

But if she got there now, it would be closed. It was the middle of the night. Did it make sense to go there and just wait there until morning? Or maybe she should go and find a security guard or something.

Still, if the museum was straight ahead, then that direction was north, and the Otterlose Forest was to the west, or left. If she was where she thought she was, then she wasn’t so far from the Scouts’ campsite either. It had to be within a half-hour walk, then. Maybe she should just go there. The Scout leaders would certainly still be at the campsite, waiting for her. Now she finally had a sense of direction. For the first time in hours she felt hopeful that she would actually make it there!

Feeling a bit better, she chugged up a little hill and rounded a curve in the trail. She was about to start running down the hill but stopped short. There, right in front of her, were two bright shining eyes. Yellow eyes. She could see them even in the dark. Then she made out the golden fur around its chin and its ears, standing upright. It was a wolf.

Chapter 18Here and Gone

Grace fumbled to find the button to press to end the call, and realized as soon as she’d done it that she could not call Karin because Karin had deposited her telephone into a black velvet sack that was now in the possession of the Scout leader in charge of the trip. What was her name? Grace was sure she could not remember. They’d only met for the first time that morning, because there had been a swapping of Scout leaders, for some reason, at the last minute. Someone had gotten sick…it didn’t matter why. What was her name?

Well, the obvious person to call was Martijn. If she called him again, he’d probably think she was somehow just going mad while he was out there quietly trying to enjoy nature. Talk about violating his need for “space.” But of course these kinds of moments had to override all that domain building, didn’t it? He was her partner, her husband; he had to be concerned about Karin’s welfare first.

It was ridiculous that she was even debating this with herself. When had she become such a second-guesser of her own will and needs? She pressed his number and waited for him to answer. She’d of course explain it and he’d of course feel as concerned as she did.

But he did not pick up the phone this time. It rang and rang, and finally she heard his message: “Ik ben er helaas niet. Laat een bericht achter de…” She hung up.

Martijn often went incommunicado. It didn’t have to be because of a fight. Sometimes something she said would irk him, and then, without warning, he’d just disappear. There was a piano bar called De Nachtwacht, where they sang Dutch ballads far too loudly, and sometimes he’d end up there. It was a harmless activity, basically, and it was a good way to shake off some tension, she reasoned. The bartender would call her if he’d had one too many, to bring him home. He was almost reliably there, unless he wasn’t.

Grace would try not to ask where he’d been when he came back, because asking that just meant she was as controlling as he always accused her of being. It was true that she had a possessive side, but was hers so much more drastic, as he would have it, than that of anyone else who loved someone? But, she’d wondered so many times, was this love? Did he love her if he was always feeling this angry at her, always in either fight or flight? Was she actually that hard to take? Was it love if he didn’t pick up his phone?

Panicking a bit now, Grace remembered that she had been given a list of emergency phone contact numbers this morning from the new Scout leader of the trip. What was her name? It was on a piece of paper she’d folded up and put somewhere. In a pocket or a purse. But what purse had she taken this morning?

Paper! It was maddening. Who used paper anything anymore? She was not going to waste valuable time looking for a piece of paper. She must know one of these people’s numbers. The man who had driven them, she thought. Grace could remember his name; she’d met him before, somewhere, at a hockey parent gathering. Something like that. He was somebody’s father. But her mind was completely blank. She should not lose her wits now. She had to hold it together.

Grace forced herself to slow down. She held on to the back of a chair, dropped her head, and took a series of deep breaths. Breathing. She had to do it—yoga and meditation had in fact taught her a few useful things. If she slowed her breathing, she could slow down the world, just a little bit, stop its turning.

Rutger—yes, Rutger. The driver’s name had been Rutger. Breathing was good.

But as she scrolled through her contacts on her smartphone, she could see that her hand was trembling nonetheless. She heard her own breaths, shorter and tighter again. Finally she found the number for Rutger and punched it in to make the call. But it didn’t work, probably because her index finger had