Chapter 4
james
I park my truck across the street and wait because I'm not going to walk in there five minutes before closing like some kind of stalker.
I have enough self-awareness to know that a six-foot-three, two-hundred-twenty-pound man showing up right before a woman locks up alone could go one of two ways, and I'm not risking the wrong one.
She comes out pulling on a jacket that's too thin for the altitude. She's got a laughably large bag over her shoulder, and she stops when she sees me. It’s not a startled stop. It’s more like a pause.
I get out of the truck.
"James, hi. It looks like the coffee place is closed," she says, nodding at the dark café next door.
"It closes at four." I knew that. I didn't think it through. Smooth work, Holt. Twenty-one years of military strategy and I failed to account for small-town business hours. "There's the bar."
She glances down Main Street toward the neon-lit sign at the end of the block. The Broken Antler where the drinks are strong and the gossip is stronger. I watch her weigh it.
"Or I've got coffee in the truck," I offer. "Thermos."
She looks at me. Then at the truck. Then back at me.
"You just carry a thermos of coffee around?"
"Yes."
"At all times?" Her eyebrows pull together.
"Yes."
The corner of her mouth twitches, and for a second I think she's going to laugh. She doesn't, but it's close, and the almost-laugh does something to my chest that the actual laugh will probably kill me with.
"Okay, prepared. I like it," she says. She pauses for a moment and seems to consider it. But in the end, she blows out a breath and gives a soft shrug. “Yeah, okay then. Let’s grab a truck coffee.”
We end up leaning against the tailgate of my truck on Main Street with a thermos of black coffee between us. The sun is going down behind the canyon walls, and the steam from the hot springs is rising between the old mining buildings like the whole town is exhaling.
She holds the thermos cap with both hands. Her fingers are long, slender, and they wrap around the metal like she's trying to absorb the warmth through her skin. I poured her the cap. I'm drinking from the thermos.
"How long have you been in Iron Peak?" she asks.
"Three months."
"That's not long at all."
"Well, I grew up here. Left at seventeen. Came back." I don't elaborate. I'm not going anywhere and I'm not in a hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world.
"Military?" she asks, and her eyes drop to my forearms. I watch her look at my tattoos.
"Twenty-one years."
"That’s quite the career. And now you're—"
"A handyman." I take a drink. "All around Iron Peak, but lately Nora keeps me busy up at the bed and breakfast up the road. You’ve seen it up on the ridge.”
"The place with the green shutters and the wraparound porch. Yeah, it’s beautiful up there. But that's such a big shift for you, isn’t it? Military hero to Mr. Fix-it."
"Not as much as you’d think. Fixing things is fixing things,” I shrug.
She nods slowly, like she's filing away every sentence I let out. She's observant, I can see it in the way her eyes move, the way she tracks details. She's always reading the room.
"What about you?" I ask. "How long have you been here?"
"Technically?" She pushes her glasses up. "About nine hours."
I look at her.
"I drove in this morning," she says. "First day at the library. First day in Iron Peak. First day of—” She stops and takes a breath. Her fingers wrap more tightly around the thermos cap. "Just a day of firsts."
There's a whole world in that pause and I want to know every bit of it. But I don't walk into it. Instead I just hold the space open and let her decide how much of it to fill.
"Do you like it? Being back?" She fills it with a question instead, which tells me everything I need to know.
"Most of the time. Some days aren’t so good."
"That’s honest." She looks up at me with so much sincerity it makes my chest hurt.
"Don't know how to be anything else."
She looks at me over the rim of the thermos cap, and her dark eyes are steady even though her hands aren't. "That's good. The world could use more of that."
We chat as the sun drops behind the cliffs and I’m lost in her. The hot springs steam thickens as the air cools. Main Street goes blue-gray and the neon sign from The Broken Antler buzzes to life at the end of the block. A few trucks rumble past us. Someone waves from a porch but I hardly notice.
"I should probably go," she says. But I don’t miss the hesitation in her voice. "I'm still figuring out the road and I’ve got to get all the way up the canyon in the dark."
"I'll follow you."
“What? No.” She blinks. "I mean, that’s nice but you don't have to. I don’t make a habit of having strange men follow me home." She pushes her glasses up her nose and tucks a wayward curl behind her ear.
I hold my hands up. "Listen, the canyon road's tricky at night. Tight curves, no guardrails. I'll follow you up. Make sure you get there. Then I’m going to head home and we’ll both sleep better at night knowing you're safe. That’s all. I won’t even get out of my truck.
I’ll give you three flashes of my headlights instead. "
“Three flashes?”
“Yes, I’m here. You’re safe. Goodnight.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I hold still. I'm good at holding still, it's one of the few things the military gave me that's useful in civilian life. The ability to be motionless and nonthreatening and present all at the same time.
She bites her lip as she considers my offer. Then says, "Okay.”
I follow her up the canyon road. Her Civic takes the curves slowly with brake lights flashing at every bend. I keep my truck back far enough that my headlights aren't in her mirrors, but close enough that she knows I'm there.
We stay like that until she pulls into the driveway of a small cabin at the top of the ridge.
I watch as her taillights go dark and wait until her porch light comes on.
It’s a dim, yellowish glow but I can see her.
Evelyn hauls her bag inside on her shoulder then turns to look back down the road at my truck.
I flash my headlights once. I'm here. Then a second time. You're safe. And finally a third. Goodnight.
She gives me a small wave then disappears inside. I sit in my truck in the dark with the engine running and the canyon walls black against the stars. I press my thumb into the center of my palm where her hand was four hours ago.
I feel like I’m going insane. It’s not possible, but somehow I knew the second I saw her.
I can’t explain it. I spent twenty-one years trusting my gut in situations where the wrong call meant somebody didn't come home.
But my gut has never once spoken to me the way it did when Evelyn Porter looked up at me from the floor of that library with picture books on her knee and fear in her eyes.
I don't know her yet. I don't know what she's running from or what put that flinch in her shoulders. But she's it for me. And whatever followed her to Iron Peak, it's going to have to come through me.