He was my height, but narrow-shouldered and wiry. Where he looked like he could pick up and run a marathon next Tuesday, I looked like one of those European men who threw logs around for entertainment. Mom always said I got my brawny-man build from her side of the family.
My blue eyes were all his, though.
“So good to see you,” he said gruffly, patting my back before releasing me. “How was the drive?”
I settled into the couch while he flipped the lock on the front door again—odd, he never locks up like that—and sat in the armchair across from me.
The living room was cramped, with only the two items of furniture crowded around a coffee table that sat in front of a small wood stove, longer than it was wide. A breakfast bar countertop separated the living area from the kitchen, and a tiny mudroom led out back. The stairs built off the left wall led to a loft area where he slept, and a stand-up shower bathroom tucked under the stairs.
One-man cabin, indeed.
“The drive was fine. There was a whole group of people up on the highway just before the turn-off. Oh, and I had to move a limb that blocked the road. I was on the phone with Mom at the time, it nearly gave her a fit,” I said.
If anyone understood how suffocating her anxiety could be, it was him. Dad had clearly yearned for a smaller life, but herstress and worry over his job fighting fires in a helicopter was probably the biggest reason for their divorce.
Still, he’d never, not once, spoken ill of Mom in front of me.
“Be kind to your mother,” Dad said gently. “It’s not been easy on her being so far away from you with everything that’s happened.”
I sighed. “I know.”
She’d flown in the morning after I kicked Josh out, and was a godsend in the hectic days that followed.
I’d been so exhausted from the flare-up and steroid withdrawal that I barely stumbled from the couch into bed before passing out without even pulling the sheet over myself first. She’d kept me fed, ran errands with me when I was still hesitant to drive, and kept me sane—all of which was no easy feat.
When Josh’s hired help came to wipe the house of his existence, she’d stood in my living room wearing white ankle pants and a maroon University of Montana Grizzlies sweatshirt. Hands on her hips with her nose in the air, she’d surveyed the last of Josh’s things as they disappeared out the door.
“I’m glad you’re done with him,” she’d sniffed. “There was always something about you he wanted to change. He never stopped picking.”
She’d reached up and patted me on the cheek. “You deserve someone who wantsyou,Reece. You’re not an HGTV special.”
In hindsight, that was actually hilarious, given I was on day four of those joggers and could barely stand.
“Right, we should take off,” Dad said after a few moments of silence. It wasn’t easy for him to talk about my health, either. “We’re meeting Leonard and Bobby at seven thirty. I’ll drive.” He stood and grabbed his keys off the counter.
I heaved a sigh. “Alright. Let me pee first, and I’ll meet you out there.”
“Did you lock the door on your way out?” Dad asked when I stepped up into the passenger seat of his truck a few minutes later.
I pulled the door shut and buckled in. “Yes. Why are you being weird about that?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing at me before he pulled out, headed back up the road I’d come down just a few minutes earlier.
“The garage door to your shed was locked—I don’t ever remember you locking that. And you checked the front door about fourteen times in the five minutes we were inside. What’s going on?”
He heaved a sigh and ran a hand down his face. The headlight beams bounced along the encroaching tree line. “Someone broke into the shed a few weeks ago.”
I whipped my head around to look at him. “What? Did you see who it was? Did they take anything?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone. They must’ve come while I was on a shift. And…” He shot me a look I couldn’t place, knuckles white where he gripped the steering wheel. “Do you remember those old bear traps I kept hanging up in there?”
A shiver ran down my spine. “Yeah.”
Of course, I did. They’d freaked me out for my entire life.
“They’re all gone. Every single one,” Dad said quietly, almost disturbed. He turned onto the highway toward town. The pavement was smooth compared to the dirt road we’d just come from.
A beat of silence passed between us.
