2. Ronan
two
Ronan
Boots meets me at the door, nose to my hand, quick check, you're okay, good and then she steps back and lets me in.
I make dinner. Eat it standing over the sink. She parks herself on my feet while I wash up, which makes washing up harder, and I let her.
"Found a woman on the east trail," I tell her. "Her and a kid."
Boots doesn't comment on this. That's what I like about her.
I take my beer to the porch, and Boots comes out and puts her head in my lap.
I scratch her ears and watch the dark, trying to figure out what I'm actually thinking about.
The answer is her mouth. She had full lips with an adorable pout, even when scared.
I know this is a stupid thing to be thinking about.
I found a lost hiker, I walked her out, done — that's the transaction, I do it a dozen times a summer, and I don't sit on my porch afterward thinking about any of them.
I'd come through the trees running the standard read.
Adult female, one child approximately four, adult carrying the child, posture tense but controlled, no visible injury.
That's the job. Then I got closer and she turned and I saw her face, the mud on her jacket, dark hair wet and stuck to her neck, tired in that deep ongoing way that has nothing to do with the trail, and her mouth was pressed flat, chin up, scared and not showing it, and something just. Landed.
She looked at me the way people look when they're deciding if I'm a threat. I'm used to that. I'm a large person, strangers in the woods, fine. Usually it goes away once they see the pack and the radio.
With her it went away slower.
And then the kid grabbed my hair like he was checking the structural integrity and announced that I was very tall, like I might not have heard that before. They were equally as charming and cute.
Boots sighs heavily in my lap.
"I know," I say.
I finish the beer. Go inside. Don't sleep particularly well, but that's nothing new.
Two years ago, but the memories always come back in my dreams. I've got a SAR call from two years back that comes up some nights, a woman on the backcountry trail east of town, thirty-six hours before anyone reported it, twelve hours longer than we had.
I worked it over for a year looking for a different answer and there wasn't one.
Now I just let it come up, let it go, and check my gear.
I check my gear.
Boots follows me around the cabin while I do it, stepping over straps, nosing at the pack. When I finally get into bed she jumps up and turns three times and drops against my legs. I reach down and put my hand on her side in the dark.
A few days later, I'm at Murphy's picking up rope when I see them through the window.
The kid is standing on the diner window seat with his whole face mashed against the glass. She's got one hand on his back and she's looking at the menu. Hair down today. Green shirt. Different than she was on the trail, less braced, almost smiling at whatever he's doing against the glass.
Then she looks up at the door.
Clocks the room. Looks back at the menu.
Does it again two minutes later.
I pay for my rope. Go to my truck. Sit there. Boots is in the back seat, her legs folded and belly up, completely asleep. Lucky.
I know what I'm looking at. People land in Silver Ridge running from things and that's their business, not mine. Except she has a four-year-old and she's checking the door of a diner on a Tuesday morning like she's waiting for something bad to walk through it.
Maple texts while I'm sitting there. Stuck window in room 4, no rush.
I look at the message for a while. I don’t remember how exactly I got looped into being the hotel’s handyman, but it’s been a thing for a while, and I don’t have the heart to tell Maple no.
I go to fix the window. It takes ten minutes. On my way out, the kid, Theo, is on the lobby floor with a pinecone and three pebbles arranged in a row, some system that makes sense to him.
He looks up. "Hi."
"Hey."
He goes back to his pebbles. I look down the hall.
Hallie at the desk in the alcove, back to me, one knee up, pen stuck through her hair. She reaches up to push it more securely into her hair without looking away from whatever she's reading. Just that. Just her hand going up, finding the pen, pushing it in.
I leave before she turns around.
Back in the truck Boots puts her nose on my arm.
"I know," I say.
She keeps her nose there.
I sit in the hotel parking lot longer than I need to, Boots warm against my arm, and think about a woman watching a door and the particular kind of tired that means you've been bracing for a long time.
Whoever she's bracing for is going to have to come through me first.