“Can I ask you something? Two things, actually.”
My hand tightens on the dish. “Depends.”
“What’s your last name? Mae mentioned it, and I forgot.”
Easy one. “Redmond.”
She nods. “So, Jace Redmond. Do you always eat standing at the counter?”
“When it’s just me.”
“But tonight you sat down.”
I don’t have an answer.
I turn. She stares at me with an expression I cannot read, and my skin feels too tight. “'Night, Rosalind.”
“Ros. Everyone calls me Ros.”
“Goodnight, Rosalind.”
Her nose scrunches.
When I reach my bedroom, I close my bedroom door and stand on the other side of it, my throat pulsing.
She learned my stove. Sat at my table. Made me sit across from her where I could smell her vanilla scent.
Familiar thoughts about her leaving surface but offer no comfort.
Footsteps sound in the hallway. She must be going to the guest room. A door closes, but I don’t feel any better. I plop onto my bed.
Spool scratches at a door. Not mine. Hers.
A door clicks open.“Hey, buddy. Come on in.”
The door closes.
My dog sleeps with her. My cabin smells like her. My table has a second plate on it for the first time in four years.
I lie down. The dark offers no escape.
three
. . .
Rosalind
I need something to do.Anything. The cabin’s quiet feels heavy. Jace is up the mountain, and I have Spool, who doesn’t seem to mind my endless ramblings. I clean the cabin, my mind percolating on Evelyn’s inventory lists.
That evening, Jace takes a seat at the table without being asked. I place the plates, then sit across from him. We eat in silence.
I’ve logged forty-one words today. Thirty of the words were functional:Coffee’s there. Towels in the hall closet. Weather’s supposed to clear by Thursday. Road’s still out.The other eleven were single-syllable answers.
If only tracking his words were enough, but his hands have become my new obsession. Wide palms. Long fingers. Knuckles scraped from today’s work. His right thumb has a faded scar across the pad.
Jace Redmond also holds the fork like a tool and eats with a stillness that pulls me in. He stares at the plate, fixed, as if held there.
I look at my plate. My stomach clenches.
