Chapter Twenty-One
Ashen
I was working on the reverse osmosis machine in the sugar shack, cleaning the delicate membranes with a focus I hadn’t known I possessed.
A week earlier, I wouldn’t have known what a reverse osmosis machine was.
Now, after seven days of simple, repetitive tasks under Gene’s quiet guidance, I felt like I could not only produce a batch of maple syrup come spring but also maintain a sourdough starter and predict the weather by the ache in my left knee.
This was my life now. And I wasn’t hating it. The rhythm of life in Maplebridge was slow, predictable, and oddly comforting. Did the world outside this small pocket of trees and dirt still exist? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. The quiet rhythm was a balm on a wound I couldn’t even feel anymore.
The door behind me creaked open and then shut.
I heard the soft pant of a dog and the click of nails on the concrete floor.
Stanley. I sighed without turning around.
Gene had been right about him. The dog was relentless in his cheerful affection, and it wasn’t his fault I would currently rather have all my teeth pulled without Novocain than spend time with any living thing.
But the wet nose that appeared at my knee didn’t belong to a dog that would leap for my face. The head that rested there was older, calmer, and when I looked down, I knew those gentle eyes.
My breath caught. I sank to the floor, my tools clattering beside me. Sparkles. She curled right up on my lap, gave my face a single, soft nuzzle, and relaxed against me with all the trust I didn’t deserve.
I hadn’t kept my promise to her.
My hand, seemingly of its own accord, began to stroke her soft fur. Hell, the way my life was going, maybe she wasn’t even real. Maybe this was nothing more than a hallucination, my brain finally snapping and sparing me from the truth of who I was by imagining her here to ease my guilt.
I glanced around the dusty sugar shack to see if there was a witness to my mental breakdown, and that’s when I saw her.
My stomach didn’t just flip, it bottomed out, a lurching drop into a cold, empty space. Sara. I looked away, squeezing my eyes shut, then forced myself to look back. Yes. She was still there, standing right inside the doorway, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket, watching me.
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to be said. She stayed where she was. I didn’t stand because I didn’t care enough to.
“How are you?” she asked, her voice soft, hesitant.
A harsh, ugly laugh escaped me. “Fucking fantastic. Thanks. Just loving life.”
Her lips pursed, a flicker of pain in her eyes before she masked it. “I know you probably don’t want me here.”
“You’re correct,” I said flatly. “I don’t.”
As if sensing my inner turmoil, Sparkles shifted, pressing her full weight against my chest. A warm, solid anchor in a world that had dissolved beneath me.
“You’re going through a lot right now,” Sara said, taking a tentative step closer. “But I also know how much your promise to her meant to you . . . I wanted to make sure she made it to you.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“I know, but . . . I didn’t want to be the reason why you didn’t go back for her.”
The self-serving nature of it, the way it still circled back to her, ignited a cold spark of fury in my hollowed-out chest. “Oh, so this is about you.”
She looked guilty but held my gaze. “Maybe. Maybe I didn’t want one more thing to feel bad about.”
“You think I give a shit how you feel?”
“No,” she said, her voice dropping. “But you do care about her.”
I turned my attention back to Sparkles. The dog was looking up at me with no anger, no doubt .
. . just love. Simple. Unconditional. It shifted something inside me.
Pain bloomed in a place where, for a blissful week, I’d felt nothing.
My hand trembled as I stroked her head, and the back of my eyes began to burn.
Still, she didn’t judge me. She kept looking up at me like I was the same man who’d promised to come back for her.
My insides shearing to pieces, I forced myself to meet Sara’s gaze. “I hate you,” I said, my voice hoarse, broken. “In a way I never thought I could hate anyone.”
“I know,” she whispered, and the fact that she didn’t argue, didn’t defend herself, somehow made it worse. “And it’s okay. I don’t need you to forgive me, but I do want only good to come your way.”
After a long pause that stretched into an eternity, she asked, “If you’re not ready for her, I can take her home with me.”
“No,” I croaked, my arm tightening around the sweet dog on my lap. “She belongs here.” My heart hardened, and I looked back at Sara, the woman who had given me hope in humanity only to tear it away. “But you need to leave.”