Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zoe drove the way she did everything else.
Completely in command, no wasted motion, hands easy on the wheel of her Jeep while the mountain road climbed and curved ahead of us.
She knew every turn before it came. She'd brake just early enough, taking the curve clean, and accelerating out of it without thinking about it.
I watched her from the passenger seat and thought about how that was the thing people missed about competence.
It didn't announce itself. It just worked.
"You've driven this road a few times," I said.
"Once or twice." The corner of her mouth curved. "Or about four hundred times."
The town had dropped away behind us. The trees pressed closer on both sides, the kind of old-growth canopy that turned morning light green and gold. Tennessee in early fall was not a subtle thing.
"Tell me about Judy and Janice."
She was quiet for a moment, the way she got when something mattered to her.
"They were friends of my Granny's." She adjusted her grip on the wheel.
"She knew everyone up here. Knew their people, their histories, what they needed and what they were too proud to ask for.
" She paused. "She used to bring Chloe and me up here in the summers.
We'd pile into her old Buick, and Granny would pack a basket like she was feeding an army.
Biscuits, fig preserves, that terrible sweet tea that Chloe loved and I pretended to. "
She gave me a sly look. “Can you imagine how sweet something had to be for me not to like it?”
"How old were you?"
"The first time? Seven, maybe eight. Chloe and I had never been anywhere that felt so far from everything.
It felt like the edge of the world." She slowed for a switchback, took it clean.
"Granny would knock on their door and Judy would open it before she'd finished knocking, like she'd been listening for the car the whole way up.
She'd pull us both inside and start fussing.
Did we want cookies? Were we cold? Had we seen the new rug she'd put down in the hall? "
I could see it. Two little dark-haired girls in a mountain cabin, somebody's grandmother making them feel like the most important visitors in the world.
"And Janice?"
"Janice was quieter. More watchful. She'd sit in her chair in the corner and work while Judy talked, and every once in a while she'd look up and say something that would stop the whole room.
" Zoe smiled at the road. "One time when I was about nine.
I was bored and I started pulling at a loose thread on one of their rugs.
Janice watched me do it for about thirty seconds, then she said, very calmly, 'Every thread in that rug has a name. ' I didn't touch another one."
"Every thread has a name."
"She meant the wool. They raised their own sheep when they were younger, and the whole family was involved.
The rugs weren't just craft, they were record-keeping.
Who was there. What year. What the season was like.
" She shook her head. "I didn't fully understand it until I was older, but I never forgot it. "
We came around a long curve and the valley opened up on my left. The morning was clear enough that I could see a long way.
"That's where we're stopping on the way back," Zoe said, without me asking. "I want you to see it right."
I was already looking.
"You said your grandmother was the one who introduced you to them. Did she know what you'd eventually do with it?"
"She died before I opened Gathered." Her voice stayed even.
"But I've thought about that a lot. Because the idea started here.
I was probably sixteen the last time Granny brought us up, and I remember watching Judy pull a finished rug off the loom, and Chloe said something like, oh that's beautiful, someone should sell that.
And I thought, yes. But not just sell it.
Show it. Tell the story of who made it."
She'd been sixteen. I let that sink in for a moment.
"Gathered was built around that."
"Not right away. I spent a few years figuring out what kind of store I wanted, what the soul of it would be.
And then one morning I woke up and I knew.
It could be more than a shop. It could be a showcase.
Real goods from real makers, and the maker's story on every tag.
" She glanced at me quickly, then back at the road.
"Judy and Janice were the first two people I talked to. "
"What did they say?"
"Judy cried. Janice said, 'Well, it's about time somebody did this right.'"
I laughed.
"I think I'm going to like Janice."
"Everyone does. She just takes a minute."
The road narrowed, the trees thickening on both sides until they nearly closed overhead. Zoe slowed and took a left fork I wouldn't have noticed without her, onto a track that was more packed earth than pavement.
"Almost there," she said.
The cabin was smaller than I'd expected and better built. Cedar plank siding, a covered porch with two rockers that had been there long enough to leave impressions on the boards. A kitchen garden to one side. Smoke from the chimney.
Before Zoe had the engine off, the front door opened.
The woman on the porch was small and round, white hair pinned up, wearing an apron over a flannel shirt. She had her arms out before Zoe reached the porch steps.
"There she is," she announced, like Zoe's arrival was the conclusion of something she'd been anticipating all morning. "I told Janice, I told her, she'll be here by nine."
"It's eight fifty-three, Judy."
"Which is close enough to nine." Judy pulled her in and held on. Over Zoe's shoulder, her eyes found me. Sharp eyes. She was taking inventory. "And who is this?"
"This is Adam."
Judy released Zoe, stepped back, and looked at me. I was definitely being measured.
"Adam." She said it like she was testing its weight. "Well. Come in then."
The inside of the cabin was warm and close and full of color.
Every flat surface had something handmade on it.
The floors were the rugs, three of them visible from where I stood in the doorway, and they were remarkable.
Not decorative. Alive. The patterns were intricate without being fussy, the colors the kind that come from dye baths rather than synthetic shortcuts.
I'd looked at enough materials over the years, enough finishes and surfaces, to know when something had been made by hand with real artistry.
I crouched down and put my palm flat on the nearest one.
"Adam's an architect," Zoe said from somewhere behind me.
"Hmm." That was Judy.
I stood back up. In the corner chair, needles clicking steadily, sat a woman who was watching me. Assessing me. This had to be Janice.
She was thinner than Judy, more angular, with the same white hair but worn loose to her shoulders. She didn't stop working.
"The warp threads in that rug are hand-dyed walnut," she said. "Three dye baths. 1987."
I looked down at the rug again. "It's extraordinary."
She looked at me a beat longer. Then she went back to her needles.
Judy brought out coffee and something in a cast iron skillet that turned out to be a kind of apple cake I'd never encountered before, dense and barely sweet, with walnuts pressed into the top. We sat at the kitchen table and Judy talked. It was clear that she didn’t get many visitors and she was glad of the chance to visit.
Zoe told her about James, and she had lots of questions. She asked me what I was building in Jasper Creek. I told her. She asked three follow-up questions that told me she'd understood it exactly.
Janice came to the table when her coffee went cold, sat down, and said nothing for four minutes. Then she looked at Zoe.
"You brought him up here."
"I did," Zoe said.
Janice looked at me again. Then she picked up her coffee.
"Good," she said.
That was all she said. It took me a moment to realize it was a verdict. I had passed.
We spent another hour at the table. I carried out the rugs and textiles Zoe had come for, loading them carefully into the back of the Jeep while Judy supervised and offered commentary on each piece. Janice stood on the porch and watched.
When Zoe hugged her goodbye, Janice held on a beat longer than I expected.
"Come back before winter," she said quietly. "Both of you."
Zoe stopped at the outlook like she had promised. "Here," she said.
We got out. The air was cool enough that I could feel it through my jacket. The ridgelines opened up in front of us, three of them, stepping back in diminishing blues until the farthest one was barely a suggestion against the sky. Beautiful.
I put my arm around her. She leaned into it, just slightly.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she turned to look at me, and there was something in her expression I hadn't seen before. Not the humor, not the prickliness, not the warmth. Something underneath all of it.
"I need to say something and I need you to hear it."
"I'm listening."
"You told me you love me." She looked back at the ridgelines. "And I'm honored. Adam, genuinely, it means everything. But you don't know me. Not all of me. And the parts you don't know yet," she paused, "I'm not sure they're worth what you think they are."
I didn't say anything. Obviously, she needed to get things out, and I was going to let her.
"You’ve heard the stories. My parents in prison.
But I lived it. The thing is, my mother chose herself.
Every single time. She dressed it up as love for my father, but it was just self-obsession.
She was a narcissist, through and through.
Except when it came to my father. Him she put first, that was the order of things.
Norville first, then Wanda, and occasionally she’d remember she had kids.
For a long time I was terrified I was made the same way. "
I was shocked. That was the last thing she was. The absolute last. But I needed to listen. To understand.
She exhaled. "I'm not. I know I'm not. But in my youth, I was self-centered. People got hurt because I only cared about myself.”
“All kids are self-centered. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“Chloe wasn’t.”
“Maybe not in a way you understood, but I bet she could tell you times she was.”
She shrugged. “But that’s the past. I know I’m not that way anymore, or at least I try not to be, but there are still moments when I'm not sure I'm worthy of someone like you." She finally looked at me. "Someone who is as good as you are."
I turned to face her.
"I see you, Zoe."
"Adam."
"I want to see all of you, and I think you’ve shown me a lot of who you are. Even the cranky parts who doesn’t like spreadsheets, and I heard about how you upcharged that asshole. That is something I totally approved of.”
“You don’t think that was a tiny bit wrong?”
“Not in the slightest. He deserved it. Are those your sins these days?”
She shrugged. “Probably.” She looked down at her feet. “I resented Chloe for getting to take Olivia home.”
I could barely hear the words. “That’s just being human. If you didn’t, I would say you didn’t have a heart. How do you feel now?”
She looked up at me with a smile that swallowed sunshine. “Like the bestest aunt in the world.”
“Your so-called bad parts are your human parts that are most lovable. Now tell me. Do you love me?”
"I adore you," she said. The words were careful. "I adore you, and I'm working on believing I deserve to."
"That's all I'm asking." I said it and meant it. "I'm not asking you to get there on my schedule. I'm asking you to trust that I know my own mind. And what's in my mind is you. You and James and this life I'm trying to build here."
The tear that slid down her face, she didn't try to stop.
She turned back to the ridgelines. I kept my arm around her.
We stood like that until she was ready to go.
She didn't say much on the way down the mountain. I watched her from the passenger seat without making it obvious. She was processing. I'd been around enough people under pressure to know the difference between silence that was stuck and silence that was working. Hers was working.
When we hit the main road back toward Jasper Creek, I asked, "You okay?"
"Yes." She said it without hesitation. "You gave me a lot to think about."
"Good stuff, I hope."
She glanced at me. "Yeah. Good stuff."
I watched the familiar outskirts of town appear. The feed store. The turnoff toward Maverick's.
"You know that thing you said. Adoring me."
"Adam."
"I need you to know something." I kept my voice level. "That word, from you, is the best gift I've received since James was born."
Her breath caught.
"Do not," she said, her voice dropping to something that was almost a growl, "make me emotional when I'm operating a vehicle."
I pressed my lips together.
She pulled up in front of my house and put the Jeep in park. I reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and when she turned to look at me I kissed her. Soft. Deliberate. The kind of kiss that didn't need to go anywhere to say what it was saying.
When I pulled back, I kept my hand against her jaw.
"I want a date," I said. "The three of us. You, me, and James."
She blinked. "The three of us? Isn’t it too soon?”
"The three of us. And I want you to stay over."
Something moved through her expression. Surprise, then consideration, then something that looked like it might be longing.
"Adam. That's a big step."
"I know it is."
She looked at me for a long moment. The afternoon light was coming through the windshield and catching the brown in her eyes, and she was thinking hard, I could tell, turning it over from every angle.
"I'll think about it," she said.
It was the best possible answer. From Zoe, thinking about it meant she was already halfway there.
I got out of the Jeep. She waited until I was on the porch before she pulled away, and I watched the Jeep until it turned the corner and disappeared.