The yarn bag feels heavier than it should as I head to my truck, parked at the end of Main Street where I always park. It’s far enough away that I don't have to talk to anyone. Snow is still falling, light and steady, covering the town in that particular quiet that only comes with fresh powder.
I should go straight home. Deliver this to Birdie, get back to my cabin, back to the safety of solitude.
Instead, I sit in my truck with the engine running, staring at nothing, her face filling my mind.
Those eyes. Brown and warm, lighting up when she smiled. The way she moved around her shop, graceful despite the ribbon chaos. How she smelled like vanilla and something floral whenI got close. The slight breathlessness in her voice when she first saw me.
She felt it too. That pull.
Fuck.
I put the truck in gear and force myself to drive toward Birdie's place, up the winding road that leads to our side-by-side properties on the outskirts of town. My cabin sits hidden in the trees, a quarter mile past Birdie's yellow house with its flower boxes and wind chimes.
I should go straight home. But after that fall last week, I need to check on her. Make sure she's okay.
The yarn bag sits on the passenger seat, and I can't stop thinking about how Isla's fingers felt brushing against mine.
Three years ago, I rolled into Silver Ridge with nothing but a duffel bag, my discharge papers, and a head so full of noise I couldn't think straight. I'd spent two years after leaving the military drifting—Vancouver, Calgary, random tiny towns whose names I barely remember. Working construction, getting in fights, drinking too much, sleeping too little.
The nightmares got worse. The hypervigilance. The rage that would come out of nowhere over nothing.
My last therapist—the one I actually listened to—suggested somewhere remote. Quiet. A place where I could learn to be still.
I found the cabin listing online. Fifty acres, off-grid, a fixer-upper that would keep my hands busy. The owner mentioned an elderly neighbor who'd been worried about the property staying vacant. That neighbor turned out to be Birdie Callahan, and she turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.
She appeared on my porch the second day I was here, carrying a casserole and wearing a flowing purple dress that looked like it came from a commune in the seventies. Probably did.
"You're the new neighbor," she'd said. "You look like you could use a friend and a good meal. I'm Birdie."
I'd tried to send her away. Told her I wasn't good with people. She'd laughed and walked right past me into the cabin, setting the casserole on my makeshift counter like she owned the place.
"Nobody's good with people, darling. We're all just pretending and hoping for the best."
Within a week, she was bringing me dinner twice a week. Within a month, I was fixing things around her house without being asked. Within three months, she'd figured out my secret.
I'd been knitting on my porch—stupid, careless—and she'd walked up the path without me hearing. By the time I noticed her, she was already smiling.
"My late husband used to whittle," she'd said, settling into the chair beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Said it kept his mind quiet. Is that what the knitting does for you?"
I'd expected judgment. Mockery. Instead, she'd asked if I'd teach her a few stitches, claiming her crochet skills weren't translating well to knitting.
That's how it started. Her selling my work at craft fairs, keeping my secret, funneling the money to veterans' charities that help families with kids. Never pushing me to be anything other than what I am.
I pull into her driveway, leaving the yarn in the truck. She's eighty-five and stubborn as hell, and that fall last week has been eating at me ever since. I need to see with my own eyes that she's okay.
Before I can knock, the door swings open.
"Mac!" Birdie beams at me, her long gray hair draped over one shoulder. She's wearing a tie-dye tunic and about fifteen bracelets that jangle when she moves. Her wardrobe hasn't changed since Woodstock, and I doubt it ever will. "Come in, come in. I just made tea."
She steps back from the door, and I catch the slight hitch in her gait. Still limping.
"Just checking on you." I follow her inside to her warm, cluttered living room, watching to make sure she doesn't stumble. It smells like incense and the rosemary bread she's always baking.
She settles into her favorite chair, wrapping a crocheted blanket around her legs. "I'm fine, Mac. The hip barely even twinges anymore."
I grunt, not entirely convinced, but she looks steady enough.
"So." She eyes me over her teacup, that knowing look on her face. "How was town?"
