Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Cecil’s story becomes a little shady after that. As with most estates when both parents die, Rosie and Memphis’s assets were divided between their children. Since Roderick’s parents were deceased, their share went to him.
Only one piece of property was excluded from the asset register. The cabin Cecil calls home. Even before they had met, Rosie had the deed for the cabin placed into Cecil’s name. It was a seemingly innocent gesture from a survivor to her savior until you unearth how much a piece of land like this is worth to a mining company. The ground out here is filled with minerals—minerals neither Rosie nor Cecil ever want to see mined.
That’s why Cecil never leaves. Roderick is working off the theory that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and since he believes it won’t be long until Cecil ‘takes himself out to pasture’ as he often quotes, I see his visits becoming more frequent.
“D-did they ever find out who put the s-spikes on the road the night of Rosie’s first accident?”
Cecil places a bucket under the stream of blood flowing from the deer’s sliced neck before shifting on his feet to face me. Usually, he sets my ears on fire with stories from back in the day. Today, he doesn’t seem as interested. “A local journalist was on the case more than the sheriff’s office. I don’t know if she found out anything. She vanished around the same time of Memphis’s death.”
He doesn’t articulate the word ‘death’ like he believes it. He mutters it out with a scoff like he either doesn’t believe Memphis is dead or that his death wasn’t an accident.
He has good reason to be suspicious. Although the culprits were smarter the second time around when they remembered to remove the spikes that punctured Memphis’s SUV’s tires before a search team was called in, it was clear to anyone with half a brain that the circular holes in the front tires were not from sticks perforating the rubber matter.
Despite rumors circulating that Memphis had been murdered, the coroner ruled his death as an accident due to excessive speed and an increase in blood-alcohol content.
Naturally, Memphis’s family blamed Cecil. Rosie wouldn’t hear a word of it, though. She defended Cecil right up until the day she died, but regretfully, the assurance of a dead woman isn’t much to go off. Cecil was removed from his position the day of Rosie’s funeral, kicked out of the house they shared with only the clothes on his back and ordered to return the truck he had been using to the quarry.
Although I’m not one hundred percent sure how much time passed before he arrived at the cabin Rosie had left him with a bundle of rope and an extra sharp knife, I do know his bid to end his life was as unsuccessful as mine almost four years ago.
Every time he got close, he heard Rosie calling his name. It was so crystal clear he pulled his knife out of his pocket and hacked it through the noose on the brink of killing him.
After landing with a thud, he searched the dense woodlands for her for hours. When he failed to find her, he took shelter in the hollow of an old tree and slashed his wrists. He woke several days later in the cabin she had left him with bandaged wrists and a robust pulse.
He doesn’t know how he got there or who carried him from Rosie’s crash site to the cabin, but the curiosity in learning their identity is what has kept his heart beating the past several years.
He travels to the hollowed-out tree once a day to pay his respects to both Rosie and the person who saved him. It was where he was coming back from when a deer must have caught his eye. Although we have plenty of meat from a late fall hunt, there’s no such thing as too much protein for a growing man. I’ve bulked up so much the past three-and-a-half years, even with my hair now past my shoulders, you couldn’t accuse me of being feminine even if you spotted me from behind.
I learn a wish to splurge during winter isn’t the reason for the last-minute hunt when Cecil says, “His hide is extra thick.” A grin pulls at my lips when he mutters, “Figured my floorboards would appreciate a bit of cushioning between your lard ass and itself this winter.”
That’s as good as it gets for compliments from him. He makes out every improvement we’ve done to the cabin the past three years is to add resale value, where, in reality, it’s all for me.
Cecil never had any children, but he’s more of a father to me than my own father ever was.
“Let’s see if y-your assumptions stack u-up.” After lifting the dead carcass off the table like it doesn’t weigh a thing, I toss it over my shoulder then nudge my head to the storing room I’m in the process of building. “What did I tell y-you last month, Cecil? Stinky t-toilets and dead animals belong outside.” I stray my eyes to the deer heads he mounted to the wall late last year. “Only l-living things are meant to sleep inside.”