Page 5

She notices. Of course she notices. "There it is," she says, grinning now. "I was starting to think you didn't know how."

"I know how."

"Rare talent, apparently."

We keep moving, and I show her how to build a quick shelter from downed branches if she's ever caught out after dark, how to start a fire without matches using birch bark and enough patience, and how to tell if a trail's been used recently by something other than deer. She picks all of it up fast, hands steady, focus complete once she commits to a task. Nothing like the vague, distracted energy I expected from someone who spends her life in front of cameras.

By midday we've climbed high enough that the valley opens up below us, a whole sweep of forest gone gold and rust and deep burnt orange, the kind of view that stops most people mid-sentence the first time they see it. Zoey stops walking entirely.

"Okay," she says quietly. "That's — I don't have a joke for that one."

"Most people don't."

We sit on a flat outcrop of rock and I pull out the lunch I packed without really thinking about why I packed enough for two. She doesn't question it, just accepts the sandwich I hand over like it's the most natural thing in the world, and for a while neither of us says much. Just the wind moving through the trees below, the occasional call of a hawk somewhere out over the ridge, and the particular quiet of two people who don't feel obligated to fill every gap in conversation.

"Can I ask you something," she says eventually, still looking out at the valley instead of at me.

"You can ask."

"Why do you live way out here? Alone, I mean. Yvonne mentioned you don't really come into town much."

I turn the question over before answering, the way I turn over most questions about myself. "Town's crowded. People ask things I don't want to answer." I glance at her sideways. "You'd know something about that."

"Fair point." She's quiet for a second, and I can see her deciding whether to push further. She doesn't. "I get it. Wanting to be somewhere nobody needs anything from you."

"That's most of it."

"What's the rest?"

I don't answer that one, and to her credit, she doesn't chase it. She just nods, like she understands there are things people aren't ready to hand over yet, and goes back to eating her sandwich while the wind pulls strands of dark hair loose around her face.

I watch her do it and feel something shift, quiet and unwelcome, low in my chest. I came up here to teach her how to survive whoever's watching her. I didn't plan on noticing the particular way sunlight catches in her eyes when she's not performing for anyone, or how much I want to know the rest of what she's not saying, the parts underneath the composed public version of herself.

This is supposed to be a job. A favor to Yvonne. A responsibility, nothing more.

I've kept people at a distance for seventeen years because closeness is how you lose things. I know exactly what it costs to let someone matter, and I know exactly how fast that cost comes due.

But sitting here, watching her look out over a valley like it's the first beautiful thing she's let herself see in years, I understand — clearly, uncomfortably — that keeping my distance from this particular woman is going to be a great deal harder than it should be.

"We should keep moving," I say, standing before I can think better of it. "Storm's supposed to roll through tonight. Want you to know the fast route back before it does."

She looks up at me, something curious in her expression like she caught the shift in me even if she doesn't know what caused it. "Lead the way," she says, and gets to her feet without argument.

I start down the trail ahead of her.

5

ZOEY

Ispend the morning at Yvonne's kitchen table shelling beans from her garden, an activity so far outside anything I've done in the last decade that I catch myself laughing at my own hands for not knowing how at first. Yvonne shows me the trick, thumb pressed just so along the seam, and doesn't comment when I get it wrong four times before it clicks.

"You're a fast learner," she says, watching me work through a second bowl. "Most city folks give up after the first try."

"I don't really have anything better to do." I split a pod open clean on the first attempt and feel disproportionately proud of it. "Besides, this is the first thing in months that doesn't require me to perform for anyone."

Yvonne's quiet for a beat, the kind of quiet that means she's about to say something she's been turning over. "You know, most people who rent that cabin come here running from something ordinary. Divorce, burnout, a bad year." She glances at me, gentle but direct. "You're running from something else."

I don't answer right away, my hands still moving through the beans without my permission. "Is it that obvious?"