"Wait," I say. "Is this…?"
"Almost there."
The trees thin. The truck bumps over a rise. And then we're in a clearing, and I know exactly where we are, because I've seen this clearing in my nightmares and my daydreams both.
This is where I face-planted into a rock.
This is where it all started.
But it's not the same. The old cabin is gone. I knew that. Reznik's men burned it. I figured the spot was just a black smear in the dirt now, a grave for a house.
It's not.
There's a cabin here.
A new one. Cedar shingles and a stone chimney and a tin roof, just like before, but newer, the wood still pale and raw in places where it hasn't weathered yet. There's a porch. There's a woodpile, of course, stacked neat and high against the side. There's a stovepipe with a thin curl of smoke coming out of it, which means someone's been here, which means?—
"You built this," I say.
Afon puts the truck in park and shuts off the engine. "I did."
"When?"
"Started in May. Been coming up on weekends. Whenever you thought I was off doing Lukas's business." He scratches the back of his neck, looking almost shy, which is a thing I never thought I'd see on this man. "I wanted it done before today."
I look at the cabin. I look at him. "Why today?"
"Get out of the truck and I'll show you."
So I get out. Wolf bolts past me the second I open the door, sniffing everything, marking the corner of the porch like he's reclaiming his territory. He bounds up the steps and turns around and barks at us, like,Well? are you coming?
Afon comes around the truck and takes my hand. He walks me across the clearing to a spot maybe twenty yards from the porch, half-hidden behind a tree.
"Here," he says, "is where you fell."
I look down. There's a rock there, half-sunk in the dirt, with moss growing over one side. The rock.Therock. The one that cracked my skull open and knocked me out and started this whole insane chain of events that ended with me married to a former hitman and the proud co-owner of a vegetable garden and a bullet-scarred dog.
"You kept the rock," I say incredulously. "I'm flattered."
"Couldn't move it if I tried. Thing's the size of a Volkswagen under the dirt." He looks down at it with me. "But yeah. I kept it. Built the place so I could see it from the kitchen window."
"Why would you want to see the rock that nearly gave me brain damage?"
"Because that's where you came from," he says simply. "I was standing at the sink and I looked up and there you were, falling on your face. I thought my whole life was over." He squeezes my hand. "Turns out it was just starting."
Well, what am I supposed to say to that?! I just lean into him. He puts his arm around me, and we stand there looking at the rock for a while, the leaves coming down around us, Wolf supervising from the porch.
"Do you know what today is?" he asks.
"Saturday? I think?"
"It's October thirty-first."
I think about it. And then I get it, all at once, the whole thing clicking into place. "Oh!"
"One year ago today," he says, "you walked out of those trees and ruined my life."
"Savedyour life."
