The voice was husky, pleasant, and devoid of mockery. Its owner was several inches shorter than Alex’s modest height, stocky under a heavy coat, with straight dark hair cropped at chin level. Black eyes in a web of sun wrinkles fixed on Alex.
Run. That was always her first instinct, the one Alex hated and had fought the past seventeen years of her life. It could still catch her like a kick to the stomach when she wasn’t prepared: run and hide away from strangers who would look at her face and judge, or ridicule, or pity.
That was the first instinct, but the second had been stronger since the day Father sent her to boarding school with only half her reconstructive surgery complete.
Stand your ground. Fight. Don’t let them win.
Like a wolf defending its territory. She imagined herself a wolf as she’d done so many times: strong and beautiful and certain of her place in the scheme of things. She straightened and waited on the porch as the woman thrust out a mittened hand.
“Hi. Hope I didn’t startle you. My name’s Julie… Julie Wakanabo. Heard you were our new neighbor, so I came to introduce myself.”
Julie wasn’t conventionally pretty, but her smile was open and warm, as if she had never seen the ugliness in the world. Alex took her hand and squeezed it firmly, holding Julie’s frank gaze.
“Alexandra Warrington,” she said. The fragile image of herself as a wolf shattered; she was only Alex again, her terrible flaws reflected in the eyes of a stranger.
Look your fill. I know what you see.
Clouds of beautiful red hair—her mother’s hair—framed a face that should have been equally beautiful. It still resembled Eve’s enough that her father hadn’t been able to bear looking at his daughter after the accident.
But her skin wasn’t her mother’s smooth, porcelain complexion. It was still a patchwork, puckered with striations from the original stitches, discolored where her fair skin had formed rough, leatherlike patches. The worst swath of scar tissue extended from her left temple to her jawbone.
She hadn’t looked in a mirror for over a decade, but she knew what she looked like. She’d heard voices aplenty describing her. Children’s, at the boarding schools. Look at her! Gross. Some soft, some in taunts and shouts. Later the voices of peers—those always in whispers. And the looks, full of pity and curiosity.
Over the years her face had improved, with surgery and time. But it had never been enough.
“I can’t stand the sight of you.” Father’s last words to her, the day of her graduation from college. And Peter’s:
“Do you think you’re going to find anyone else when I’m gone?” Voices that never quite went away. She’d stopped looking in mirrors long ago, but the voices told her what she was.
The bride of Frankenstein. Only she’d never be anyone’s bride.
“… just dropped by to welcome you, and ask you if…”
Alex snapped out of the past. This voice was in the here and now, and she was still clutching Julie’s hand in a death grip. She let go quickly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
Julie didn’t react to her brusqueness. Her smile remained uncomfortably warm. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do, moving in and all. I didn’t want to bother you. But I wanted to make sure it’s okay if the kids wander onto your land sometimes.” She made a wry face. “Sorry. I mean my nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and their friends. You know the south border of the rez is only a couple miles from here, as the crow flies, and the kids—well, it’s sort of their backyard, if you know what I mean. Didn’t want you thinking we were trespassing or anything.”
Alex quelled her instant reaction and wrapped her arms around her ribs. She’d already begun to think of this as her sanctuary, where she could be left alone to do her work. Already that modest hope was being taken away from her. Kids roaming all over her woods, scaring away the wildlife…
“They won’t be any trouble,” Julie said. Her expression was suddenly grave, and the serious look seemed somehow foreign to her round, pleasant face. “They won’t interfere with your work, I’ll make sure of that.”