She stopped and regarded her handiwork. It wasn’t perfect. Regina was fine with that. Nature isn’t perfect, after all.

Brushing her forearm against her sweaty brow, she looked one last time, before disappearing down the trail, still walking backwards and adjusting forest deadfall to vanquish her own tracks.

A hundred yards in, she turned around and started for home. Everything would be fine.

And indeed, it was.

That night Amy returned to their bed.

“I was so worried.”

“Me too.”

“Are we going to be all right, Regina?”

“Yes, love.”

“No one will take me away.”

“Never.”

“Are you sure they won’t come back?”

“No. I have a plan though. At least I think I do. I have to do something. I’ll go back for the body and get rid of it once and for all.”

“Too risky.”

“Not now, Amy. Later. I’ll wait awhile. When I’m sure that no one is coming back. When no one is looking for him.”

Amy snuggled against Regina’s breasts, and Regina stroked her long, shiny braid. She pulled the faded blue eiderdown to cover their shoulders. In that moment, all seemed perfect. Like nothing bad had ever happened. Or ever could. Safe and sound. Secure. Regina’s hands traveled downward, pressing so lightly, so tenderly against her wife’s body.

Regina breathed in Amy’s sweet scent.

“I love you, Amy. Stay right here.”

She kissed her tenderly.

“You are everything to me and you will always be my love.”

“I love you, Regina.”

“Always and forever.”

One

I know it is only tomato soup left at the bottom of the cup from yesterday’s rushed attempt at lunch. I know that. I know blood. And yet it’s like a little trick to me, maybe tic is a better word. Something, among many, that I can’t shake. I have seen so much blood. In my life. At my job, of course. As I sit at my desk at Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, with posters of the magnificent Olympic Range looming over me, I think of the things that spark a memory of blood. A child’s finger painting pasted proudly in the window of her classroom. The smear of brick red lipstick on the collar of Sheriff’s starched, white shirt. The explosion of juice left by falling cherries on the sidewalk in front of my home in Port Townsend, Washington.

Sometimes I wish I had been born colorblind.

Or I came from a place where the color red was meaningless. Innocuous. Just another color. Like the blue of the Pacific or the green of the firs and spruce trees that stumble down the snowy Olympic Mountains to the foothills, and finally, the meadows below.

Blood oxidizes and dries to a nice coppery brown. That’s good. Dry blood doesn’t cause me to catch my breath. Just fresh blood. Only cherry. Only scarlet.

The light on my desk phone flashes.

Red again.