Chapter 22
The walk back from Abner's homestead was a lot easier than the approach. Going downhill was always faster and easier than the climb. There was a lesson in that, I think.
When I came out of the treeline, I saw a familiar Subaru parked beside my truck.
Claire was sitting on the porch steps in the morning sun, her red hair loose, a covered dish and a thermos beside her. She stood when she saw me crossing the clearing.
"Good morning, Claire. Been here long?"
"Not long at all. Have you eaten?"
"Not yet."
"Good." She picked up the dish and the thermos and nodded toward the door. "I made too much corned beef hash for breakfast. And you look like a man who's been doing chores since dawn."
"That obvious?"
"You have chicken feathers on your sleeve, Thomas."
I looked. I did.
She led me into the cabin. Scout and Abner's pistols were still on the kitchen table where I left them. I made a mental note to take them back that night. Claire waited as I took both guns and placed them on my leather armchair.
"Where's yours?" she asked.
"I keep it in my bedroom. I'm not real comfortable wearing it just yet. I need more practice."
"Smart man."
"I just know my limits."
She poured coffee from the thermos into my mug and set it in front of me, then went to the stove to warm the hash and crack some eggs she'd brought with her.
"Two eggs or three?" she asked.
"Three, please."
"Good. That's exactly what I have."
I sipped the coffee and watched her work. Claire moved through my small kitchen with the same unhurried competence she brought to her tea rows. Finding the skillet without asking, adjusting the flame, nudging the hash with a wooden spoon.
The morning light came through the window and caught her hair and the line of her shoulders and the snug fit of her jeans over her hips.
I let myself look the way I always ended up looking at Claire Beaumont.
There was nothing arranged about her beauty.
No effort in it, she was simply made that way.
The older I got, the rarer I understood that to be. Scout had it and so did Claire.
Claire set the plate in front of me. Corned beef hash crisped at the edges, three eggs on top, the yolks soft. I ate. It was delicious and I told her so. She waved it off and sat down across from me with her own coffee.
"Now," she said. "Tell me everything. Bessie Anne heard about the ambulance from Stella before I'd even fed the chickens."
I told her between forkfuls. Claire listened without interrupting, her hands wrapped around her mug, her green eyes on my face the whole time.
"Will Abner be okay?"
"I hope so. They moved him to Acute Care, not Intensive Care.
The nurse said that's a good sign. They want to keep him three days, minimum.
Scout's staying with him. There's a foldout chair in the room.
" I mopped yolk with the last of the hash.
"Until they're back, I'm running their homestead.
Goats, chickens, garden, batteries. I was over there this morning. "
"I've only been up there a few times. Was it still well kept?"
"Very well kept, very orderly. Animals cared for.
Every tool in its place. Fifteen years of battery readings in a ledger, not one day missed.
" I shook my head. "The head goat spent the entire morning judging me, though.
Cincinnatus. He watched me do every chore like a foreman who suspects the new hire faked his references. "
"Did you pass inspection?" Claire grinned.
"Provisionally. I'm to return before dark and he'll reassess."
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"You're a good man, Thomas."
Her hand stayed on mine. The kitchen was quiet around us, just the tick of the cooling stove and a towhee calling outside.
The touch lingered past the point where either of us could pretend it wasn't happening.
Her thumb moved once across my knuckles.
I watched her eyes and she watched mine, and the air between us felt charged as a summer storm.
She finally blinked and looked away. She drew her hand back slowly and wrapped it around her mug.
"And you?" I asked, letting us both off. "How are things at the farm?"
"Good. Really good. The second harvest check cleared.
We're out of debt for the year. All of it.
The last harvest is pure seed money now for our processing equipment.
The withering racks, the roller, the dryer.
Maybe even the start of the branding Dad dreamed about.
James Farm Tea, in actual packaging, sold by actual us.
Partnering with Irma's bakery and maybe more in the future.
" She allowed herself a small smile. "I keep doing the math over and over because I don't trust it quite yet. "
"Claire, that's wonderful. You're doing it, you're making it work."
"I couldn't have done it without you. You and Scout and Grace, that harvest day." She glanced toward the window. "Where is Grace? I half expected to smell Korean barbecue when I drove up."
"Bakery. Extra shift. She's on until early afternoon. I called her last night from Seattle and filled her in. She offered to drive over and stay with Scout. The two of them have grown close. I told Grace she had to work the next day and Abner would be insulted if anyone lost wages on his account."
"He would, too."
"And provide some quote from Shakespeare to back up his point," I joked.
Claire nodded, but then her gaze drifted somewhere past my shoulder and stayed there. I'd learned to read that look over the last few months.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She turned her mug a slow half-circle on the table.
"It's DJ. There's a thing this Saturday.
To celebrate Father's Day, they have this pancake breakfast at the firehouse.
The fire department does it every year. The volunteers cook, the kids tour the station, sit in the trucks, run the siren.
" She paused. "I told him I'd take him. He said he wasn't interested. "
"DJ? Not interested in fire trucks?"
"He's lying to spare my feelings. He's eight years old and shouldn't have to be thinking like that.
" Her jaw tightened, then loosened with effort.
"It's because of the firehose competition.
Fathers and sons team up. The father braces the hose, the son works the nozzle, and they shoot at targets.
The team that knocks them down the fastest wins a prize.
This year it's a baseball signed by one of the Mariners. "
"A firehose like that has real kick. He'd need, uh..."
My voice trailed off. I took a sip of coffee to cover the awkward silence.
"He'd need a man on the back of it," Claire said, cutting to the chase. "He knows it. DJ's watched the teams every year since he was five. He's finally old enough to do it, but..."
She looked down at her coffee. Her eyes were melancholy.
"I could go. I could hold it, I think. But the whole event is fathers and sons.
Or male figures, like uncles or grandpas.
They have pancakes at long tables, and he'd be the only one...
" She stopped herself, shaking her head.
"Anyway, DJ says he isn't interested. Fathers Day has always been rough for him. "
"I'll take him."
Claire's head came up. She blinked in confusion, then embarrassment.
"Thomas, no. That's not why I told you. I wasn't trying to get you--"
"I know you weren't."
"You don't have to--"
"I know I don't. I want to." I leaned back. "DJ wants to go, so let's go. I like to think I can manage that firehose. We'll find out Saturday whether that's true."
She stared at me, her eyes bright and searching.
"Why?"
"Because he's a great kid and I like spending time with him. And it sounds like fun." I picked up my coffee. "Also it never hurts to score brownie points with the pretty lady next door."
Color climbed Claire's throat and into her cheeks, vivid against the freckles. She swatted my hand... and then caught it and held it again, her fingers lacing through mine on the tabletop.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "You don't know what this will mean to him."
I had some idea what it meant. To DJ, and to her, and to me. Her hand was in mine and neither of us was letting go and the morning light was on her face. It felt like a moment that could suddenly turn into something more, something neither of us was ready for.
"Is there more hash?" I asked, breaking the spell.
Claire laughed, blinking the brightness out of her eyes. She stood, sliding her hand free of mine slowly.
"There's plenty," she said, picking up my plate. "Eat up."
The next day came swiftly. The sun was just rising, but I had already finished my second morning tending to the Flint homestead. It went faster this time, familiarity speeding the chores.
The walk back from Abner's homestead took twenty minutes. I spent most of it with my phone held out in front of me like a divining rod.
The Merlin app was listening. The morning chorus was at full volume, the woods alive with song, and the little cards stacked up on the screen as I walked.
Swainson's thrush. Pacific wren. Dark-eyed junco.
Wilson's warbler. All birds I knew now. I thought of them as my regulars, the reliable citizens of my woods.
Still, I kept watching for a new name. It had been two weeks since the app had shown me anything I hadn't already logged, and I'd developed a collector's hunger for it that I would have found ridiculous a few months ago.
The sun was just peeping over the ridge when I came out of the trees into my clearing when the phone rang in my hand.
The screen showed a number, not a name. But it was a number I'd come to recognize.
I grinned at the mental image before I even answered. Liberty Scout Flint, raised in the woods without electricity, now holding a flip phone to her ear in a hospital corridor in Seattle, probably operating it with the same deliberate precision she brought to skinning a raccoon.
"Good morning," I said.
"Good morning, Thomas. I am calling you on my telephone."