He stops what he's doing to turn and look at me. Those brown-green eyes arepiercing,though they're clouded with a kind of sadness I can't quite decipher.
"No," he answers, almost to himself. "I don't."
Then he goes back to cooking.
I look around again. It smells like coffee and woodsmoke in here. The windowpanes are frosty to the touch, but the interior of the cabin is warm, fragrant, bright, safe.
It occurs to me, in a distant sort of way, that this is actually very cozy. Under different circumstances—circumstances in which I was not being aggressively ignored by a grumpy ex-Bratva fixer with a Rottweiler and an unwavering commitment to monosyllabic conversation—this might even benice.
"So," I try again, "since we're stuck here?—"
"My answer has not changed, Caroline. It's still a no."
"You literally don't know what I was going to?—"
"You were going to ask me about the envelope."
I frown and shut up.
He's right, obviously. He's been right about everything I was going to say before I said it, which is infuriating and also, on some primal lizard-brain level that I refuse to examine, a little bit hot. Nobody has ever been able to read me like that. My own father couldn't read me like that, and he was a Harvard Law grad and Supreme Court clerk who cross-examined me about my homework.
"Okay, fine," I concede. "Yes. I was going to ask about the envelope. But I was going to build up to it! I had a whole thing planned. There was going to be context, and emotional resonance, and a natural conversational arc?—"
"'It all started when I was born,'" he quotes sardonically.
I feel my face go hot at the memory of last night. "I was concussed. That doesn't count."
A strange battle takes place at the corner of Afon's mouth. It's definitely not a smile. At most, it's the ghost of the memory of a smile that died a long time ago, rather gruesomely, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
But it'ssomething,so I'll take it.
"Afon." I edge closer into the kitchen, and he freezes in place, one unbroken egg still cupped in his huge hand. "I didn't chase you through the Catskills for six months because I enjoy suffering. I mean, I clearlydoenjoy suffering, on some level, because I went to law school. But that's beside the point."
He's still facing away from me, but he's listening. I can feel the full heat of his attention.
"My father left me a letter," I press on, gently. "And you left me something, too. Between the two of them, I have about sixty percent of a story that I need one hundred percent of. You are the only person alive who can give me the other forty."
Wolf lets out a little whimper in his sleep. Outside, the wind picks up and sends a gust of snow skittering against the windowpane.
Afon returns the egg to its carton, still unbroken. He turns slowly in place and looks down at me. As I meet his eyes, there's that sadness again—that deep, old, heavy fog.
"You're not going to like what's in the other forty percent," he rumbles.
My heart kicks. That's not even close to an answer, but it's still closer than anything else I've uncovered thus far. At least it'san actualsentenceabout thetopic.I want to do a victory lap around the cabin, but I stay very still, because I have a sense that if I spook him, he'll retreat back behind his wall of grunts and monosyllables and never come out again.
"I'm a big girl," I whisper. "I can take it."
He studies me for a long moment. His eyes roam across my face—the lump on my forehead, the dried blood I can still feel crusted at my hairline, the rat's nest my hair has become after a night on his couch. I probably look like absolute hell. I certainlyfeellike absolute hell.
But I hold his gaze and I don't flinch.
Finally, Afon exhales through his nose. It's not quite a sigh. It's more like the sound of a man making a decision he knows he's going to regret.
"How do you take your coffee?" he asks.
I grin shyly. "Am I safe to assume you don't have oat milk, half-caf non-dairy whip, or lavender-and-rosehip syrup?" At the sight of the thunderstorm that that sentence inspires on his face, I hasten to correct myself. "I'm kidding. I mean, I'm not, but I am. Just black is fine."
He exhales—maybe that's a laugh? kinda? sorta?—and then turns to start fussing with the coffee pot as the eggs on the cast iron pan start to sizzle. I retreat to the couch again, tuck my legs under the blanket, and let myself feel, for the first time in six months, the warm, tentative glow of progress.
