Chapter 14
The sun had already dropped behind the mountains by the time I turned onto my drive. The truck's headlights cut through the gathering dusk, catching the shapes of trees and brush as I bounced along the rutted dirt road.
It was pulled well off the lane into a small clearing, tucked back against the treeline where it wouldn't be obvious to anyone just passing by. Positioned by someone who knew how to be unobtrusive, someone who needed somewhere to be but didn't want to be noticed being there.
I'd noticed tracks before and wondered who made them. Could be someone turning around, or it could be someone lost. Could be trouble.
Only one way to find out.
I got and walked back down the drive, my boots crunching on gravel. The evening air was cool and damp, carrying the smell of fir and the hint of rain. I approached the driver's side window slowly, not wanting to startle whoever was inside.
In the dim light, I could barely make out a small figure. I knocked gently on the glass.
The woman inside woke with the controlled alertness of someone who had learned to sleep lightly. No flailing, no confusion, just eyes snapping open, body going still while her mind caught up.
She turned on the overhead light. I saw she was young, maybe in her mid-twenties. Asian, with shoulder-length black hair that was mussed from sleep. Light brown eyes that assessed me quickly through the window.
I watched her measure me. Watched her take in my height, my build, my hands held loose at my sides, my face. Watched her decide, in approximately three seconds, that I was not a threat.
She rolled down the window halfway.
"Hey." Her voice was a little rough from sleep but steady. "Sorry. I didn't think anyone lived up here. I'll move."
"You don't have to."
She blinked. "What?"
"You're welcome to park here if you need to."
She studied me again, more carefully this time. Looking for the catch, the angle. The price.
"Why would you let a stranger park on your driveway?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because people don't do that. Not for free."
I shrugged. "Seems like you needed somewhere to be for the night. I've got more space than I know what to do with. Doesn't cost me anything to let you stay."
She was quiet for a long moment. I could see her thinking it through, weighing options, calculating risks.
"I can pay you something," she said finally. "For the spot."
"You don't have to."
"I want to. I paid by the night at the campground down the road. It was a good place to stay until those tweakers showed up and turned it into a goddamn circus. That's why I had to leave and find someplace else."
"Tweakers ruin everything," I agreed. "Sorry you had to deal with that."
"Yeah, for real. So, uh... Ten bucks a night, maybe? I know that's not much, but..."
"Ten's fine."
"Really?"
"Really."
She reached for her wallet, pulled out a crumpled bill and handed it through the window.
I took it. I folded it and put it in my pocket. No performance of generosity, no insistence that she keep her money. She wanted to pay, so I let her pay. Owing nothing to a stranger feels safer than owing something. I understood that.
"I'm Thomas," I said.
"Grace."
"Nice to meet you, Grace. You need anything, I'm in the cabin up the hill."
"Okay." She hesitated. "Thank you. For real."
"Sure. Get some rest."
I walked back to my truck, leaving her there in her car.
I drove to the cabin, happy to be home. The lumber could wait until morning. Tomorrow I'd unload it and start work on the floor. But tonight I was tired from the drive and hungry and ready to be inside my own walls.
The cabin was cold. I reminded myself to schedule the wood stove inspection, then pulled out a pan and a can of baked beans. I sliced up a couple of hot dogs and diced half an onion. Simple food for a simple night.
While the beans bubbled and the onions softened, I found myself thinking about Grace.
About the way she'd woken up, alert and controlled, about the way she'd measured me before deciding I wasn't dangerous.
Those weren't skills you learned in a comfortable life.
Those were skills you learned when comfort wasn't something you could count on.
I wondered if I should take some food out to her. A bowl of beans, maybe? Something hot.
But no, that felt wrong. She'd been careful to establish the transaction, to make this an exchange rather than a favor. Showing up at her car with food would muddy that. It would make her wonder what I wanted in return. It would make her feel obligated when she'd worked hard not to be.
Better to leave her alone. Let her have her space and her privacy and her ten dollars' worth of parking spot.
At least I know who's been parking there.
I stirred the beans, adding a little hot sauce. I wondered idly what Grace would do if she needed to use the bathroom. There was nothing but woods out there. She'd figure it out, I supposed. People always did.
The knock at the door made me jump.
I set down my spoon and wiped my hands on a dish towel. I walked to the door, thinking it might be Grace. Maybe she needed something after all? Maybe she'd changed her mind about staying?
I opened the door.
Scout stood on my porch, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders for once instead of pulled back in its usual ponytail. She wore her usual denim shirt and canvas pants, the ones patched and mended so many times. The Smith and Wesson rode on her hip in its deerskin holster.
"Thomas." She glanced past me into the cabin, then back at my face. "There's a stranger parked on your property."
"I know."
"You know?"
"I talked to her. Her name's Grace. She needed somewhere to park for the night, so I said she could stay."
Scout frowned. "You don't know anything about her."
"I know she's tired and she needed a place to sleep. That's enough."
"My father would say that's naive."
"Your father would probably be right." I stepped back from the door. "You want to come in? I've got beans on the stove."
She hesitated, then shook her head.
"I ate earlier. Venison stew. There was a buck that got itself tangled in old fence wire down by Miller Creek. Father had to put him down, so we've been eating well this week."
"That's good."
She stood there on my porch, not leaving but not coming in either. Her hands fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. I could feel something else in her, something she hadn't said yet.
"Is there anything else, Scout?"
She bit her lip. Looked away, then back at me. The directness she usually carried seemed to have deserted her for the moment.
"I was wondering," she said slowly. "If maybe I could watch Wuthering Heights again. If that's okay."
"Of course it's okay."
"I know I've already seen it twice. And I know you probably have better things to do than let me use your television.
Repetition makes for an uneasy mind. But I've been thinking about it all week.
About Cathy and Heathcliff. About the way the story works.
" She paused. "It's different, seeing it performed.
Different from reading it on the page. I can hear their voices now when I read the words. "
"That's the magic of film," I said. "Puts faces and voices to the people in your head."
"Yes. That's exactly it."
"Trailer's open. You know how to stream the movie?"
"I prefer you do it. Please. Also, your beans are about to overflow."
I rushed back to the stove and grabbed the pan off the heat and stirred it. The beans were fine, just starting to thicken the way I liked them.
"Crisis averted."
Scout almost smiled. "My father would say a man who can't mind his own cooking has no business minding anything else."
"Your father says a lot of things."
"He does. Most of them are true."
I led her out to the Airstream. Scout settled onto the bench, pulling her legs up beneath her.
She looked smaller somehow in the confined space of the trailer.
Younger, less like the capable woman who carried a revolver and quoted Thoreau.
More like the girl who'd never been to school or kissed a boy or seen a movie until a few weeks ago.
I found Wuthering Heights in my queue and started it playing.
"Come get me when you're done," I said. "I'll be in the cabin."
"I will. Thomas?"
I turned back.
"Thank you." Her eyes were serious. "For letting me watch it again. For not making me explain why I want to."
"You don't have to explain anything to me, Scout."
"I know. That's why I respect you."
I left her there with Heathcliff and Cathy and the moors, and walked back to my cabin through the dark.
The beans were ready to eat. I ate them straight from the pot, something I'd always loved doing.
I sat at my small table with my laptop open, searching YouTube for videos about floor repair.
There were dozens. Men in flannel shirts and baseball caps explaining how to sister joists, how to match old tongue and groove, how to blend new wood with old so the patch didn't show.
I watched three of them while I ate. Took notes on a legal pad. The work seemed manageable. Time-consuming, but not beyond my skills.
I thought about Grace out there in her car. I wondered if she was warm enough. Wondered what had put her on the road, sleeping in campgrounds and strangers' driveways.
I thought about Scout in my trailer, watching a movie she'd already seen twice because something in it spoke to her. Something about love and wildness and a passion that destroys as much as it creates.
Then, almost against my will, I opened an incognito browser tab and typed in an address.
Sybil's social media came up first. Public, of course. My ex-wife had always believed her life was interesting enough that strangers should want to see it.
I clicked through to her profile.
My Wi-Fi signal was strong and the pictures loaded quickly.
Sybil at a restaurant.
Sybil at a wine bar.
Sybil at her favorite casino, holding a glass of champagne and smiling at the camera.
And in almost every photo, a man I didn't recognize. He had his arm around her in most of the shots.
I scrolled down to the captions.
"Finally found the love of my life," Sybil had written under a picture of the two of them at sunset, some beach I didn't recognize. "This amazing man is helping me get past my trauma and learn to trust again. So grateful for second chances."
I stared at the words for a long time.
The love of her life. Past her trauma. Learn to trust again.
Twenty-two years of marriage, and I was trauma she needed to get past. Twenty-two years of trying, of compromising, of slowly losing myself in the machinery of her father's insurance firm, and I was something she needed to recover from.
I waited for the pain to come. Waited for the familiar twist in my chest, the anger and grief and resentment I'd felt when she first told me I wasn't the man she used to love.
But nothing came.
I looked at the picture again. At Sybil's smile, bright and practiced. At the man beside her, at the sunset behind them, orange and pink and perfect.
And I felt relief.
Not happiness. Not satisfaction. Just relief. Like setting down a weight I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten it was there.
Sybil had moved on. She was happy, or at least performing happiness for her followers. And I was here, in a cabin with a rotted floor and a cold woodstove and twenty-two acres of forest and meadow that belonged to me.
We were both where we were supposed to be. I wished her the best. I hoped she was happy.
I closed the browser tab and went back to watching videos about floor repair.
The knock came a couple of hours later. Soft, hesitant.
"Come in, Scout."
The door opened. Scout stepped inside, her cheeks flushed.
"It's finished," she said.
"Did you enjoy it?"
"I cried again. At the end, when Heathcliff dies. Even though I knew it was coming." She shook her head. "I don't understand how that works. How a story can make you feel something even when you know exactly what's going to happen."
"That's the mark of a good story, I think. It doesn't matter if you know the ending. The journey still moves you."
"Yes." She considered this. "Yes, that's right."
I stood, stretching muscles that had stiffened from sitting.
"You're welcome to come watch films anytime you like, Scout. There's a whole library on that streaming service. Thousands of titles. Take your pick."
"Maybe... maybe I could watch Great Expectations?"
"I don't know what that is, but I'm sure it's available on the app."
"Thank you, Thomas. For everything."
She crossed to where I stood and rose on her toes to kiss my cheek. Her lips were soft and warm against my skin, there and gone in an instant.
Before I could respond, she was out the door and rushing away into the night, her footsteps fading quickly into the darkness.
I touched my cheek where she'd kissed me. Stood there for a moment in the open doorway, watching the shadows where she'd disappeared.
Then I closed the door and went to wash my dishes.
The morning came gray and damp, clouds hanging low over the mountains. I made coffee and pulled on my jacket and got to work unloading the truck and preparing the lumber.
In the afternoon, I walked down the drive for the mail. The clearing where Grace had parked was empty.
I stopped at the edge, looking at the marks her RAV4 had left. Tire tracks in the soft earth. A flattened patch of grass where she'd been parked. A small circle of gravel where she must have turned around.
She was gone. Off to wherever she was going, or away from wherever she'd been.
I hoped she was okay.
The mailbox held nothing but a flyer for an insurance company and a postcard advertising the upcoming Port Chasten Salmon Days festival. I tucked them under my arm and walked back up the hill to get back to work.