* * *
Ash
I woke to scratching at the closed bedroom door. For a moment, I didn’t move, transfixed both by the sight of Pete stretched out beside me and the most tranquil view I’d ever seen. Jed and Max had given us their bedroom, complete with its floor-to-ceiling glass wall, and the lake shimmering in the gray morning light wasmagical.
My fingers itched for my sketchbook, but I’d never do the view justice with a pencil. I settled for slipping out of the bed and opening the bedroom door. Jed and Max’s smallest dog, Zola, padded in and got up on her hind legs to sniff Pete’s elbow. Apparently satisfied with his scent, she hopped up and curled against his back. He didn’t stir, but then, herarelydid.
I left him to sleep and drifted to the bathroom across the cabin’s narrow hallway. Then I searched out the kitchen and found Jed at thetable.
“Mornin’.” He rose and retrieved a mug from a cabinet. “Sit. Have some tea. Did yousleepokay?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I just blinked, and I have no idea what timeitis.”
“Well, you’ve gained two hours. And it’s quiet here too. Nothing like citysleeping.”
He wasn’t wrong there. Silence had freaked me out in the past, but I liked it here, it suited my mood, and despite being dazed from nearly a week on the road, Ifeltgood.
I took a seat at the kitchen table and accepted the chipped mug that Jed slid my way. “What kind of teaisthis?”
“Rooibos. Max got me hooked on it, and I’ve got no intention ofquitting.”
“I don’t need another addiction.” I said it with a grin, but Jed’s shrewd gaze warmed with empathy. “Where is Max, anyway? Stillasleep?”
“Yup. He doesn’t get up untilseven.”
“Jesus. What time isitnow?”
“Fivethirty.”
I was torn between horror and the odd satisfaction that came with getting a jump on the day. Pete wouldn’t wake up for a while, but I was used to that. Early mornings had become my own in recentyears.
“So…”
I glanced up to find Jed watching me in that unobtrusive way of his. “So…what?”
“What’s happened between now and when I last saw you? You and Pete aren’t fighting,areyou?”
“What? Oh, no… we don’t really fight. We’resulkers.”
Jed chuckled. “I’m a sulker too. Max throws thingsatme.”
“I can’t imagine that. He’ssonice.”
“That’s why he doesn’t sulk. He’s not selfish enough to stew in his owntemper.”
I’d never thought of it that way. Were Pete and I both selfish… on some level, at least? Or were we just too wrapped up in our combined misery? “We didn’t fight, but we had some shit to deal with before we got here. I wasn’t sure if he was even goingtocome.”
Jed said nothing, just folded his hands around his mug. I took a sip of the strange earthy tea and searched for a way to explain what had gone down between Pete and me without betraying a secret I’d take to my grave. “I told him I thought he was depressed. He agreed with me, but we haven’t figured out what todonext.”
“You’ve done the first part, though. That’s often thehardest.”
“Not for Pete. It took him a while to admit he has a problem, but it’ll be harder for him to dissect himself the way you have to when a shrink gets up in your face. Nooffense.”
“None taken,” Jed said. “It was one of the reasons I specialized in talking therapy—because I was so bad at it. I imagine Pete, like a lot of doctors… and soldiers, finds it difficult to be the one everyone wants to talk about. Sometimes we’re so used to focusing on the world around us, we forget how to look theotherway.”
That sounded about right, and it was a version of a theory I’d heard before from my own shrink when I’d talked about Pete. “Ilovehim.”
It wasn’t what I’d meant to say or even something Iwouldsay to someone I barely knew. But Jed merely slugged my arm and got up to put a battered old kettle on the stove, his unspoken reply reaching me as if he’d whispered it in my ear.Iknow.
