"Yeah," I say. "I would."
I look down at my gold ring. When she finds out what I've offered to Alexei, Caroline is gonna kill me. But she'll understand. She'll just read me the riot act and then say,So what do we do next?
Alexei grins. "They don't make men like you anymore, Afon Satyrin."
"No," I say. "I'm one of fuckin' one."
Matvei comes back then with three cups of coffee balanced in his hands, sets them down, and slides into the booth beside me. He looks between us, reading the air, but whatever he sees, he doesn't comment on. He just slides Alexei a cup.
"It's terrible," Matvei warns him.
"It always is," Alexei says, and wraps both hands around it like he's cold, like he's been cold for a while. "That's how you know it's the real thing."
Outside, the ocean rolls in gray and slow, and the old men play their cards on the cafe tables. I'm sitting between my brother's son and my oldest friend in a cafe that hasn't changed in thirty years, and I think:This is life.Friends who know they can count on you. Debts that aren't chains. A hand to put out when somebody needs it, freely, without a price stapled to it.
I spent my whole life being the man who stood between people and the woods, alone, asking nobody for anything.
Turns out you can do it standing next to someone instead.
"Alright," I say, and pick up my coffee. "Tell me what came out of Newark."
40
CAROLINE
Afon won't tell me where we're going.
He says it's a surprise, which is richly ironic coming from a man who spent the first week I knew him refusing to tell me what day it was. But here we are, in the truck, driving north, with Wolf stretched out in the back seat like the furry king he is. Afon's hand rests heavy on my knee, his wedding band glinting gold, humming along to some old song on the radio.
And yet I'm being incredibly grumpy and annoying.
"Just tell me," I beg. "You know I hate surprises."
"I know you do."
"So that's why you're doing it. You're punishing me."
"What would I be punishing you for?" he asks.
"For being right about the azaleas."
He laughs. He laughs a lot now. It still gets me every time, that sound coming out of him, like a hinge that finally got oiled aftertwenty years of rust. "You weren't right about the azaleas. They almost died."
"They didn't, though! They're thriving!"
"They're thriving because I moved them out of the shade, which I told you to do in May."
"Semantics," I say, and he laughs again.
I turn my gaze out the window as thick pine trees whip past. I know we're in the Catskills. I still recognize this environment, even if half my memories of it involves being lost, concussed, kidnapped, shot at, or some combination of the above. It looks different in October. The leaves are turning, all reds and golds, the whole mountainside lit up. It's beautiful in a way it never was when everything was white and also trying to kill me.
"You're taking me back," I say slowly. "To the mountain."
"Trust me" is all he says.
I do, so I shut up.
We turn off the main road onto a dirt one, and then off that onto a narrower one, and then there's no road at all, just two ruts through the trees. Wolf sits up in the back, ears perked, nose working. He knows this place. I can tell. His whole body has gone alert and happy.
