The light fades, and the temperature drops. I should go inside.
I don’t.
As darkness arrives and the stars appear above the peaks, I sit with him. He’s given me something special.
“We should go inside,” he says finally.
Spool stretches and then follows us inside.
“Goodnight, Jace,” I say reluctantly.
“Goodnight, Rosalind.”
That’s more than I get most nights. Still, as I lie in bed in the spare room with Spool curled against my hip and the stars visible through the window, the want grows.
Beyond my door, Jace moves through the cabin again. The stove door opens. A log crackles on the fire. The armchair creaks.
I’ve waited my entire life. I didn’t even know I was waiting until now. Now I’m in a bed I do not own, listening to a man I met a few days ago. I wouldn’t trade this hour for any other.
eight
. . .
Jace
I’m losing ground.Pressure drop before a storm. Metallic in the air. Trees going quiet.
Today, I’m sitting closer to her on the porch. My chair is angled toward hers, away from the peaks. “What are you reading?”
Her head snaps up. She holds up the paperback by Marilynne Robinson from my shelf. “Housekeeping.Have you read it?”
“Twice.”
“What did you think?”
Tell her it’s good.I say instead, “It’s about how loss makes a house feel like a body. How the people who leave take the walls with them.”
She stares at me. I bite the inside of my cheek until blood blooms on my tongue. “My mom left when I was nine.”
Rosalind doesn’t speak, just sets her book on her lap. The quiet is worse than pity, a truth of my past she simply holds.
“My dad wasn’t much of a talker before that. After, he was less.” I face the peaks again. “He kept me warm and dry. I only understood after he was gone.”
“My grandmother showed love with vanilla extract and library cards. Some people speak in maintenance.”
As I grip the coffee mug, Rosalind returns to her book, and the quiet settles more heavily. She turns the page. My eyes snag on the freckle at the top of her cheekbone. Then a loose strand of hair falls across her glasses. Her mouth shapes words only she can hear.
I squeeze the mug until the ceramic creaks.
Dad wasn’t broken. He just never had anybody who spoke the language back the way Mom had. Rosalind makes it clear.
She moves through my cabin with an unhurried grace, fills the kitchen when she cooks, and hums while she washes dishes. Her index cards are spread on the table, her eyeglasses are sitting on the counter, and her cardigan is on the couch. These are now part of the cabin’s landscape.
I need a way to unlearn her before the pass is cleared.
Later, inside the cabin, I watch her sideways. For four years, the side-eye has been my face. Tonight, it feels like the barrier itself.
One direct look, and I’m at her side. If I do that, I’ll touch her, and my defenses will shatter.
