She had to leave. Anna packed only what she needed into a canvas sack. Mike’s old shotgun. Shells. An ax. A knife. Matches. A little grain. She left the cabin in perfect order. Then she went fifty miles north into a hidden valley boxed in on three sides by steep rock walls. Mike had shown her the place once on an old map. No trail led there. Big game avoided the scree slopes. No inspector would risk his legs climbing in.
That short northern summer became a season of punishing labor. Work was the only thing that kept madness at bay at night. She built a half-buried shelter. Thin and wiry now, Anna cut young pines with steady ax blows. She hauled wet stones from the creek, skin tearing from her fingers. She packed the walls with thick moss for insulation.
By September the shelter was done. Small, low, almost swallowed by the earth—but solid enough to survive winter. The heavy labor had thinned her fingers, and the smooth wooden ring no longer stayed on. Afraid of losing the last thing she had from Mike, Anna threaded a cord through it and wore it around her neck close to her heart. There it always stayed warm.
The first winter completely alone was the real test. One January night the cold hit so hard the logs of the shelter cracked loudly. The little iron stove she had pieced together from scrap metal barely managed to warm the space around it. The corners frosted white. Anna sat on the bunk wrapped in Mike’s old sheepskin coat.
Then, just outside, came a sound. Low and drawn out, a wolf’s howl rose over the snow and hung in the frozen air before other voices joined it. A pack was hunting nearby. She could hear them moving around the shelter, their paws crunching dry snow. One wolf came right up to the door and drew in the air with a loud sniff.
Anna lifted the shotgun from her lap. With her thumb she cocked both hammers. The metallic clicks sounded sharp in the dark. She sat and waited for the blow against the door. But inside her there was only stillness. The old animal fear—the one that had once made her curl up in a prison corner or hide under the floor from a dog—was gone. In the world of people there had been cruelty and betrayal. Out here there were only clear instincts. If the wolves came in, she would shoot. If she missed, the wilderness would take her to Mike. It was simple. Honest.
The wolf stayed by the door a few seconds longer. Then the crunch of steps moved away. The pack left, accepting her right to that small patch of ground. Anna slowly lowered the hammers and set the gun beside her. That night she understood she could survive alone. But the real danger waiting for her would not come with fangs.
The winter of 1980 brought little snow but constant freeze-thaw cycles. By day the surface softened; by night it turned to slick ice. Anna was walking to the creek for water, carrying a heavy metal bucket in her right hand. On a downhill stretch, hidden under a dusting of fresh snow, was a sheet of ice. Her boot shot out from under her. She flung out her arms, trying to catch herself, but the bucket pulled her sideways. She fell hard, all her weight crashing onto her twisted right leg.
A sharp, blinding pain exploded in her ankle. In the still woods came a dry, ugly crack. Anna gave a muffled cry and buried her face in the snow. For several minutes she lay still, waiting out the first shock. Her breathing was ragged. When she tried to sit up and put weight on the leg, another wave of pain sent blackness across her vision. Broken. Badly, maybe displaced.
The shelter was a little over a mile away, uphill. The cold was already working under her clothes. Anna rolled onto her back and looked up at the heavy gray sky. Sleepiness began to creep over her, stealing what strength she had left. Her eyes wanted to close. Then she heard Mike’s voice in her mind.
“You’re a mother.” The words came back as clearly as if he were standing over her. Anna opened her eyes wide. The drowsiness vanished. She had no right to give up. She had a daughter somewhere waiting for letters. Ellie believed her mother was alive. To die here would be to betray them both.
She sat up in the snow. The pain sharpened her focus. Anna took the knife from her belt, cut several straight branches from a nearby bush, and tore strips from the hem of her undershirt. Grinding her teeth, she splinted the swollen leg and tied it tight.
Then she rolled onto her stomach. She grabbed a root sticking out of the snow and pulled herself forward. For more than a mile she crawled. She hooked her fingers around rocks and tree trunks, leaving a wide furrow behind her in the snow. When she ran out of strength, she pressed her forehead to the crust, took ten deep breaths, and reached forward again. The trip took nearly five hours. By the time she dragged herself over the threshold and shut the door behind her, it was dark. But she had made it.
She spent the next months mostly inside the shelter. The leg healed, but never fully. It always ached when the weather changed. Then came the quietest and cruelest blow of all.
Two years passed. Spring came again. Leaning on a stout stick, Anna made the long dangerous trip back to Mike’s old cabin. There, beneath a marked stone in the ruined smokehouse, was their drop point. She moved the stone. In the little hollow, protected from damp by a piece of rubber, there was always an envelope from John Peterson.
This time the hollow was empty. Anna sank to her knees. She felt around in the dirt, checked the cracks between the old logs. Nothing. She left her own letter in the hiding place and went back. A month later she returned. Her letter was still there, untouched.
Old Mr. Peterson had died suddenly of a heart attack in his apartment in town. He had not had time to pass on the secret of the woodsman and the fugitive woman. The mechanism that had tied Anna to the outside world broke for good. The next year she came again. And the year after that. The emptiness beneath the stone became its own kind of sentence. The line was gone.
Anna stood by Mike’s grave. The wooden cross had darkened from rain and snow. She looked at the weathered wood and understood that now she was truly alone in the world…
