"Okay?"
"Okay. We go home."
"When."
"Whenever you want."
"Friday."
"Friday."
"After I kill the Ottawa trip and pack two bags."
"Two bags."
"To start."
He picks up my hand. Kisses the knuckles.
"Baptiste."
"Mercer."
"I was going to give you six months."
"Yeah, well. You were wrong."
"I see that."
Friday nightat eleven o'clock the cabin comes into view around the last bend and I feel something in my chest unlock that I did not know was locked.
Gray kills the engine.
I sit with my hand on the door and look at the porch.
"It looks different."
"It looks the same."
"It looks like mine."
He turns his head and looks at me and he smiles. Small. The one he does with the corner of his mouth. The one I have been thinking about since Toronto.
"It is yours."
We get my bags inside. He carries three. I carry one. The cast iron is in that one because I'm not an idiot.
The cabin smells like him. Like cedar and woodsmoke and the faint trace of whatever he's been cooking. The leather chair in the office is still in the office because he decided not to ship it. The fire is laid. He must have come up before the airport run and set it.
He lights it.
I stand in the middle of the living room and I watch him kneel at the fireplace and light the kindling, and I know with a certainty I haven't known anything before that this is my life now.
He stands up. Turns. Looks at me.
"Come here."
I come.
