Chapter 26
Sam ate by herself that evening. She’d buried the used bear spray can in the garbage while her food heated. Black-sided, red-topped: she couldn’t stand to look at it. Elena was out there, wandering without her, because of that thing. In the back bedroom, their mother was fitful, in and out of sleep. The muscles in her cheeks were drawn tight by pain. Sam washed her plate and utensils in the sink. She watched the window.
Hours passed that way. Dusk was coming. Sam texted Elena, but got no response. When, at last, a person moved on the road, Sam tugged her shoes on and went outside. It was only Danny Larsen walking his dog, but still, it was someone.
Danny watched as she came down the front walk. His smile, that constant mask, was mediated. Tender. He looked almost worried for her. “How are you doing?” he called.
“Did you see it today?” Sam asked.
He hesitated. “See what?”
“The bear was right on our road. A couple hours ago. You didn’t see?” Sam pointed down the pavement.
Danny turned to look after. The dog bounded around his knees. Before this month, the only times Sam and Danny had stood so close were accidents, bumping into each other while she ran an errand in the pharmacy or brushing by on the way to class. He was still big, he carried muscle, but time and his beard had softened him. At this distance, Sam could see how landscaping had aged his skin.
“No way,” he said. “Right there?”
“You really didn’t see it?” Sam let her arm drop. “Doesn’t it…It’s never come onto your property?” Was her family really the only one pursued?
“Not that we know of. But we’ve got the dog.” Danny leaned to rub its yellow back for emphasis. His fingers played in its fur. The dog lifted its head, stretching its long throat, and grinned. Its lips were black and teeth brushed white. “She barks at everything that moves out the window. Wildlife stays away.”
“Well, hooray for you,” Sam said. She sounded nastier than she had to, she knew.
Danny didn’t slip toward irritation. If anything, the wrinkles between his eyebrows deepened. “Want to keep her at your place for a bit?”
“Oh,” Sam said. Automatically: “No, no.”
“She’s friendly.”
“No,” Sam said, “it’s— No. Thanks. It’d be too much for my mom, I think. Any barking.” She felt flushed. Couldn’t tell if it was discomfort from Danny always being so nice or the lingering pepper spray.
“How is your mom?”
“She’s okay.”
Danny was studying her. Asking in silence for more. To her surprise, then, she gave it to him. “She’s not great. It’s been a tough few days.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Sam shook her head. Against her better judgment, she liked his sympathy—liked talking to someone, anyone, after these hours solo in the house. Liked being treated gently. Her face and neck stayed warm.
“The offer for the dog stands,” he said. “And I’d be glad to help with whatever else you all might need.”
“More home repairs.”
“Sure,” he said. “Hammer at the ready over here.”
Sam laughed, a little, in spite of herself. “Well,” she said. “Thanks. If one of our windows jams, I know who to call.”
“Do. I’m serious.” His eyes were clear, steady blue. The quiet sea. “Do you have my number?”
Sam stuttered at that. No, she— Why would she? He didn’t blink. He had her take out her phone. He recited the digits while she punched them in, and saved them, and there it was: Danny Larsen in her contact list.
“Text me so I have yours,” he said, and she did.
Her phone showed no notifications. Elena hadn’t written back. Sam returned it to her pocket to wait. The dog, tongue out, was curled at Danny’s feet.
“What would you do if you did see the bear?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. Take a picture? It’s pretty special to see, right?”
Its thick, rippling, brutal arms as it stepped forward, shifting its weight from side to side. Elena’s monstrous shadow. “I’m not sure about special,” Sam said.
He shrugged. “That’s just what I heard.”
The last time, he told her he’d run for his gun. “You wouldn’t shoot it?” she asked.
“Whoa,” Danny said. His beard curled over his chin and hid the corners of his mouth, so she couldn’t tell what quirks were there, the edges that would expose whether he thought she was ridiculous. She could only see his furrowed brows. Those deep blue eyes. “I don’t even know if that’s legal.”
“But if it was a danger to you?”
“Is that what’s going on?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
Sam couldn’t answer. The bear hadn’t harmed Elena, but it kept coming closer to her, sniffing around her body, seeking to be soothed by her hands. How long would it be before it bit down? And even if it never touched them, Sam felt the risk it ran her family. Everything about the bear was dangerous.
She didn’t know how to convey this to someone who was, at best, a neighbor, and who was really only a stranger. She said, “We’re fine.”
He chewed on his cheek. Up close, his face was sweeter, both older and younger, than Sam had expected. “I get that you’re scared,” he said. “It’s a scary situation.”
Sam had to nod at that. “Elena walks to work every day.”
He sighed. “I know.” He had seen her, then, moving pale and graceful down their road, vanishing onto the trail where a bear prowled. He had liked Elena once; he noticed her still. How could he not? That beauty. The princess of Portland Fair Road.
“It could come near—”
“Sam,” he said, “you know, we can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. If that’s what she’s decided, then you’ve got to accept it.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “No. I know that.”
He opened his mouth to say more, then stopped. “I mean,” he said. “You should ask her to be careful, definitely. If you want. But you can’t…”
Sam said, “Wouldn’t you be worried about her, too, if you were me?”
She was seeking, for reasons she couldn’t quite sort, Danny’s continued tenderness, his low and gentle voice. She got it. The sound washed over her. Cool tap water across burning skin. “No doubt I would be,” he said. “Absolutely. Sam, I get— I see how important you are to each other. How close you are.”
And it was probably just her loneliness, Elena’s absence, the breakup with Ben, the stress of her mother, but hearing that made tears come to Sam’s eyes. Prickling there, welling at her lash lines. She couldn’t look at Danny anymore. She stared at the dog instead. Dumb thing, with its tongue hanging.
Danny kept going. “Elena knows what she’s doing,” he said. “She’s so smart. You can trust her, Sam, I promise. This is going to be okay.” God, the sound of him. His solidness. When she stood here, beside him, she didn’t feel that any bear would dare step out of the falling darkness. He and the dog seemed to come from a different plane of existence, where life went along easy and nothing hurt. This close to him, Sam could enter that world, too, almost. It felt unbearably good. It made her cry.