“How long were you together?” I asked.
“Forty-two years.”
The number settled into the room with a weight that surprised me. Mr. Harlan lowered his gaze to the table as if the memory lived somewhere on the surface of the wood.
“Forty-two years of waking up next to the same person,” he said slowly. “Forty-two years of knowing someone would be sitting across from you at dinner.” His thumb moved along the napkin, smoothing a fold that didn’t need smoothing. “You don’t realize how much of yourself lives inside another person until they’re gone.”
The words were quiet, yet the meaning inside them carried force.
Forty-two years.
I couldn’t imagine it.
For a long time, my life had been defined by movement. It was easier to leave a place before anyone expected too much from me than to stay long enough to risk failing people who depended on me. New towns, new work, temporaryarrangements that ended before anyone looked too closely at who I was or what I carried with me.
At the time, I had told myself that suited me. Freedom sounded better than admitting I simply didn’t trust myself to stay.
Pine Hollow had changed that, even if I rarely allowed myself to think about it. Somewhere along the way, the work here had stopped feeling temporary. Pete and Nora had stopped feeling like coworkers, and their routines had started to matter to me.Theyhad started to matter to me. The lodge had become a place where I woke up each morning, already thinking about what needed to be fixed, checked, or prepared before anyone else noticed.
I had put down roots here.
The part I still kept guarded told me that letting people depend on you carried weight. The closer someone stood to the center of your life, the more damage you could do if you failed them.
That possibility had always made distance feel safer.
Mr. Harlan was describing a life built beside another person for forty-two years, a partnership steady enough to shape decades of shared direction.
That kind of closeness required a level of trust I had never fully tested.
Mr. Harlan took another bite of stew. “You ever married?”
“No.”
“Ever come close?”
I thought about the people who had crossed my path over the years. There had been friendships and occasional relationships, connections that lasted for a while before the natural pull of different lives carried everyone in separate directions. None of them had ever settled into the center of my world.
“No,” I said.
Mr. Harlan nodded slowly, as if that answer confirmed something he had already suspected. He focused on the stew again, turning the spoon through the broth.
“Darlene used to say people aren’t built for too much quiet,” he said after a moment.
He glanced around the cabin as he spoke, taking in the small table, the single chair, the orderly surfaces that rarely changed from one day to the next.
“She hated eating alone,” he continued. “If she knew someone in town was by themselves, she’d find a way to invite them over for dinner. Didn’t matter if they barely knew each other.”
He gave a small shake of his head.
“I used to tell her the house was already busy enough without adding more people to it.” His mouth curved slightly. “She never listened. Strange thing about that now,” he added.
“What’s that?”
“You notice the empty spots more once somebody’s been sitting there a long time.”
His gaze drifted briefly toward the single chair before returning to the bowl. The words settled into the room quietly.
I thought about what he had said while the wind moved through the trees outside the cabin. Because the truth was that I already had somewhere I returned to. Even if it was mostly in my mind.
