“What does he learn?” I ask. “The fox.”
“That’s the part I’m stuck on.” She turns the mug in her hands. “My editor says the lesson needs to feel earned, not imposed. She can tell when I’m just telling kids what I think they should hear.”
“Smart editor.”
“Annoyingly so.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “I came out here thinking the mountains will clarify things. Give me some distance from the manuscript.”
“And instead, you got lost in them.”
“And instead, I got lost in them,” she agrees, something wry and self-aware in the way she says it that makes me want to smile.
I push off the counter and pull out the other chair, sitting across from her, close enough to see the firelight move in her eyes.
She watches me the way she probably watches everything, with careful attention that takes things in and turns them over. I get the impression she’s sketching me in her mind, as she probably would on paper if her sketchbook were open.
“Do you ever get lonely out here?” she asks.
“Sometimes,” I say. “But I’ve gotten good at calling it something else.”
“Like what?”
“Solitude. Preference. Choosing the easier thing.” I pause. “I’m not sure there’s much difference between me and your fox.”
She looks at me for a long moment. Something in her expression shifts. Not pity. I wouldn’t welcome that. More like recognition.
“He’s a good fox,” she says. “He just gets a little stuck in his ways.”
I meet a lot of people out here. Hikers, volunteers, the occasional ranger passing through. I’m friendly with most of them. I’m close to none of them, by design or default or somecombination I stopped questioning a long time ago. But I’ve never met anyone like this woman before.
I look at her—wind-tangled hair, borrowed sweatshirt, fingers finally warming around a mug—and feel, with a clarity that is almost inconvenient, that I don’t want her to leave in the morning and disappear back into a life I know nothing about.
Chapter Four
Alice
Thefirehasburneddown to coals by the time the conversation slows.
We've been talking for two hours. Maybe more. I've lost track of time the same way I did on the trail, except this time I don't mind. We've covered the fox, my editor, the particular challenge of drawing emotions on an animal face without veering into cartoon. He told me about a pair of black bear cubs he's been monitoring this fall, how the mother keeps moving them further up the ridge as the tourist season winds down and the woods quiet. He said it without sentimentality, just observation, but Icould hear that he found them remarkable. He finds a lot of things remarkable, I think, and keeps that mostly to himself.
"You should sleep," he says. "I'll take the couch. Bedroom's through there."
I should. I'm warm now, genuinely warm, the kind that has worked all the way into my hands and feet. The rational thing is to say thank you and good night and lie in the dark thinking about plot structure until I fall asleep.
I set my mug down on the table and stand up, and he watches me do it with an expression that is careful and very still, like a man making sure he understands what is happening before he responds to it.
I take a deep breath. I think I know what to do with the fox in my story now. He needs to be brave, take action, do something…new.
And so do I.
I walk around the table, toward Cal.
He doesn't stand, not yet. He just turns in his chair so he's facing me, and I stop in front of him, close enough that I have to look down slightly to meet his eyes. From here I can see the details I couldn't before: the faint weathering at the corners of his eyes and the line of his jaw.
"I don't do this," I say. My voice is steady, which surprises me. "I want you to know that. I never make hasty decisions. I research things. I make lists. I sleep on it."
"I know," he says.
"You can’t know that. You met me two hours ago."
