Louis Hannibal Nez
By the time Marie regains consciousness, it is daylight.
She lies on the living room floor, her face pressed against the wood. For a few seconds she cannot remember where she is. Then the rain, the bridge, the identical cabin, and the two bodies beside the pit come back to her.
She tries to get up. Everything hurts. Her hands are scraped, her knees coated in dried mud, her clothes still damp. Her head feels heavy, as though she has spent the night underwater.
Then she hears footsteps on the stairs.
Marie turns her head. Sunny appears on the bottom step, her hair disheveled, her face exhausted. At the sight of Marie on the floor, she freezes.
“Mom…”
Marie tries to speak, but her voice barely comes.
“Sunny.”
The girl comes down slowly. She approaches with caution, as though afraid to get too close.
“What happened to you?”
Marie looks toward the front door. It is open. Sunlight streams in, revealing the muddy footprints across the living room.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “What time is it?”
Sunny does not answer.
“Where’s your father?”
The girl takes a step back.
That movement unsettles Marie more than any answer could.
“Sunny?”
The girl lowers her eyes. She presses her hands against the sides of her pajamas.
“Mom, I can’t take any more.”
Marie feels something tighten inside her chest.
“What are you saying?”
“I can’t go on living like this.”
“Like what?”
Sunny raises her eyes. There are tears on her face, yet she does not seem about to cry.
“You killed Dad.”
Marie goes still.
“What?”
“You killed him and buried him beside the house.”
“No.”
“I saw you.”
The words hang between them.
Marie tries to stand, but her legs give way. She leans against a table and manages to stay upright.
“Sunny, I haven’t killed Joseph.”
“You have a knife.”
Marie looks at her hands. They are empty.
“Where’s your father?”
Sunny begins to cry silently.
“I’m afraid of you.”
Marie feels the floor begin to tilt beneath her feet again.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Don’t come any closer.”
“Sunny…”
“Don’t come any closer!”
The girl runs toward the stairs. Marie stays beside the table, unable to follow. She hears her daughter enter her room and slam the door.
For a long time, she does not move.
Then she looks outside.
The clearing, the pit, and her double’s body are no longer visible from the living room. The vegetation seems to have returned to normal. The day is bright. The stream flows as usual. There is no trace of the storm.
Marie spends the rest of the day trying to find an explanation.
She searches the cabin. She looks for the knife. She checks that the SUV is still parked by the entrance. She walks around the nearby grounds but does not dare go as far as the clearing. Whenever she looks that way, she sees only grass, shrubs, and disturbed earth.
Joseph does not appear.
Nor does Sunny come out of her room again.
When night falls, Marie sits by the living room window. She stays there, watching the bridge. The lantern on the opposite hill does not come on again.
She cannot sleep.
Whenever she closes her eyes, she sees the woman in the kitchen whose face she could never make out. She sees the knife entering Joseph’s chest. She sees her double’s body beside the pit. Then she hears Sunny’s voice.
I’m afraid of you.
At dawn, Marie goes up to her daughter’s room.
“Sunny.”
There is no answer.
She knocks on the door.
“Sunny, open up.”
The silence that follows alarms her at once. Marie tries the handle. The door is locked.
“Sunny.”
Still no answer.
Marie backs up a few steps and throws herself against the door. Pain shoots through her shoulder, but the lock holds. She tries a second time. The wood creaks. On the third attempt, the door gives way.
Sunny is lying on the bed.
Marie approaches slowly.
The girl’s eyes are closed, her skin pale. Beside one hand is a small open bottle with a label Marie recognizes at once.
Rat poison.
There is a notebook on the bedside table.
Marie puts a hand over her mouth. For a few seconds she cannot bring herself to move closer. Then, with trembling fingers, she picks up the notebook and opens it.
The first pages contain school notes, dates, and short phrases. Farther on, Sunny’s handwriting grows uneven.
Marie begins to read.
She finds no confession about her own death, no explanation of the pit. She finds something else.
Sunny writes that Joseph waited for her after school on some afternoons. That he made her get into the SUV. That he told her to keep quiet. That he touched her even when she begged him to stop.
Marie stops breathing.
She reads on.
The girl describes how she tried to talk to her mother but could not find the courage. She also writes that Joseph warned her no one would believe her and that, if she said anything, she would destroy the family.
Marie closes the notebook.
For years she has believed she knew her husband. She has shared a home, a bed, a daughter, and a life with him—a life now revealed as something built on falsehood.
She looks toward the window.
Across the stream, a column of smoke begins to rise above the hill.
Marie approaches the glass.
The opposite cabin is burning.
She hears no screams. Sees no figures. She only watches the dark smoke rising into the clear sky.
Then she understands that the bridge had not taken her somewhere else.
It had taken her to another moment.
And perhaps it had not yet finished showing her what she needed to see.