I sipped my wine. Watched the creek move below us, fast and cold, breaking white over the edge of the limestone shelf and dropping into the pool. A hawk turned slow circles over the far tree line.
Peggy had handed me the saddlebags this morning without being asked. Had added a second wedge of cheese at the last second. Had not said a word about the fact that I'd come up from the trailer rather than down from the main house.
Nobody said a word about that anymore.
I wasn't sure when it had stopped being a thing that required navigating. Somewhere between the first week of January and now it had just—become true. I slept in his bed. Drank his coffee in the morning. The trailer was small enough that I knew the whole geography of it without trying—which drawer stuck, which burner on the two-burner stove ran hot, that he kept the good pan hung on a hook because there wasn't cabinet space for it.
I knew his brother Forrest came by on Thursday mornings. That he kept a spare set of boots under the bench by the door because there was nowhere else to put them. That he slept on his back with one arm over his eyes when he was deeply out and on his side facing me when he wasn't quite.
You learned a person fast in two hundred square feet.
The Holts had absorbed all of this without comment. Adam with his easy warmth, Gage with his complete lack of interest in anyone's business but his own. Even Dakota, who had the self-preservation instinct to keep his mouth mostly shut around me now.
What theyexpected—what any of them expected—I didn't know. Didn't ask.
Couldn't ask Sawyer without asking Sawyer, and I wasn't ready to do that.
"How long have you been coming out here?" I said instead.
He hummed. “Since I was a kid. Uncle Adam used to bring us out to the creek to swim during the summers—usually with a joint in his pocket, not that I knew that.” He chuckled. “They made it nice to live here, after everything. Never felt unsafe withAdam and Peggy. Never felt unloved, even though we didn’t look exactly like the other kids in Briar Hill.”
“You and Forrest and…” I paused. “Emmett, right?”
“Yep.”
“What does Emmett do?”
Sawyer smiled. “He’s a lineman—travels all over, lives up in Kansas most of the year to be there for big storms.”
“Isn’t that lonely?”
"Emmett?" Sawyer shook his head. "Emmett's never lonely a day in his life. That's not his problem."
"What's his problem?"
He considered this. "He doesn't stay still long enough to figure out what he wants. Easier to chase the next storm." A beat. "He's good at what he does, though. Really good. The kind of person you want showing up when the power's out and everything's sideways."
"Is he like Forrest?"
"Twin-like or personality-like?"
"Either."
"They look alike. Same jaw, same build." He turned his cup in his hand. "Personality—not much. Emmett's loud. Takes up space. Forrest used to be the one who'd let him run and then say one thing, quietly, and somehow that'd be the thing everyone remembered." He almost smiled. "They balanced each other out."
"Used to be," I said.
"Used to be." He said it without flinching, but something in his face settled into a different register. "Emmett comes home when he can. It's not the same without—" He stopped. "The three of us had a thing. It doesn't work as well with two."
I thought about that. About what it meant to be one part of a three-part thing, and to watch one of the others go quiet.
"Millie mentioned Forrest's fiancée," I said. "That's basically all I know."
Sawyer nodded once. Turned his cup in his hand.
"Sophie," he said. "Her name was Sophie."
"How long were they together?"
