“No.”
“I’ll put them back if you want.”
I take a sip, warm and strong, and set the mug on the counter. “Don’t.”
Behind me, she exhales. The chair creaks again. Her pen writes. Spool plops down.
Back to work. The space hums. The scratch of her pen. The woodstove popping. Spool’s tail thumping.
I stand at the window. My coffee goes cold. The cabin is too quiet now, my world off balance.
A lesson, sharp and cold, still stings. I remember Mom, packing lunches, singing as she zipped my coat. She left me anyway.
I’ve known it’s a stupid lesson since I was seventeen. Still, I’ve lived by it. Yet…
Rosalind’s been paying attention.
The pass clears in one week. Then she leaves.
That cold dread from Tuesday returns, a knot tightening in my gut. My father stood at a window like this for years. He kept the stove lit, the roof patched, and the bed made on his side. Is that my future now?
Dusk settles over the peaks. The kitchen warms. She hums.
Not moving from the window, I drink my coffee. I don’t turn around.
I can’t.
five
. . .
Rosalind
The next day,I stop trying. For days, I’ve been performing: cooking dinner, plating meals, folding blankets, taking up as little space as possible. My mother would be proud. My grandmother, too.
But Jace doesn’t notice. He always misses it. The pasta I made or the kitchen I cleaned. My humming while chopping onions, though I sensed his stillness behind me. Last night, I left my reading glasses in the kitchen. When I came back, he was staring at them, not me. He only notices when I forget to be useful.
So I stop.
I leave my cardigan on the back of the couch. Let my index cards spread across the kitchen table. Hum when I feel like it. Read on the couch with my shoes off and my knees up. Stop worrying about being a good houseguest.
Still, the thought of being truly seen without the comfortable shield of being “useful” makes a cold knot tighten in my stomach. It feels like stepping into a void… But it’s the only way to find out if Jace Redmond will ever stop what he’s doing because I’m here.
I’m not sure when that’ll happen—if it will—but I’m working on it.
The cell signal holds long enough for a call with Evelyn about the progress I’ve made.
“Ros,” she marvels, “you’re absolutely invaluable. Worth every penny.”
After we hang up, I sit on the porch with the phone in my lap.
I’ve been told I’m valued before: a discount, a call back, a second look once you got past the obvious. I’ve never been told I’m worth every penny by a woman who writes the checks. I took a screenshot of the call log because I don’t journal and need to remember this happened.
Spool presses his head against my knee.
“She thinks I’m worth every penny.”
His tail thumps on the porch boards.
