Chapter 2 #2
Outside, Madison walks with me toward my truck. Her voice is low.
"You hurt her further, Davis, and I'll make your life a legal hell you can't climb out of."
"I'm not gonna hurt her."
"I know you're not. I'm saying it anyway."
"Noted."
We load the bag into the back of the F-150. Madison leans against the tailgate and studies me.
"She's had the worst week of her life. She's running on coffee and adrenaline. She hasn't slept more than two hours since it happened. She's not eating. Just so you know what you're walking into."
"Got it."
Her tone softens. "She doesn't need a drill sergeant. She needs a wall she can stand behind."
I meet her eyes. "I know the difference."
Madison nods slow. "Okay."
Anna comes out of the office ten minutes later with Gabe. She's got her purse clutched against her chest like a shield. She walks past me without looking up and stops at the passenger side of the truck.
I open the door for her.
She freezes. Just for a second. Like she forgot people did that. Then she climbs in, and I shut the door softer than I'd shut it for anyone else. Gabe catches my eye over the hood of the truck.
Thank you, he mouths.
I flip him off behind my back where Anna can't see.
He grins.
The drive out to my cabin is fifteen minutes of bad gravel road through timber so thick the sun has to fight to get in. I take it slow. Anna's got one hand braced on the dash and the other twisting the strap of her purse in her lap, and every rut makes her flinch.
I turn the radio off.
She glances at me.
"You don't have to do that."
"Prefer it quiet anyway."
"Oh."
Silence.
A deer crosses the road up ahead, unhurried. I let off the gas. Anna watches it disappear into the ferns.
"How long have you lived out here?" she asks. It comes out thin. Like she's forcing herself to make words.
"Seven years."
"Alone?"
"Yep."
"That's..."
"Yep."
She almost smiles. I catch it in the corner of my eye. A twitch. Gone before it finishes.
We round the last bend.
My cabin sits in a clearing ringed by cedars.
One story, cedar siding going silver with weather, a front porch with two chairs nobody ever sits in but me.
A rain barrel at the corner. My truck tracks in the dirt that are the only tracks out here.
Gabe wasn't kidding. You don't find this place by accident.
I park. Cut the engine.
Anna doesn't move. I get out, come around, and open her door. Offer my hand. She stares at it.
"I don't bite, ma'am."
"Anna."
"What?"
"My name is Anna. Not ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am."
She huffs. Small. Almost annoyed. I'll take annoyed. Annoyed is better than whatever she walked in with.
She takes my hand.
Her fingers are cold. Colder than they should be for the weather. I help her down, and the second her feet hit the dirt, she lets go like my skin burns her.
I pretend not to notice.
I grab her bag out of the bed, walk ahead of her up the porch steps, and unlock the door.
Inside, the cabin smells like cedar, coffee, and the vetiver candle Mable gave me the last Christmas before she passed.
Main room opens to the kitchen. Wood-burning stove in the corner.
Couch I've had since I mustered out, brown leather, ugly as sin, mine.
Two doors off the back. Master on the right. Spare on the left.
Anna stops in the doorway.
Her eyes go across the room in a slow, careful sweep. I know that look. I've done that look. She's cataloging. Exits, furniture, sight lines, what she could use as a weapon.
I stand still and let her do it.
When her shoulders come down a quarter inch, I set her bag by the couch.
"Master's through that door on the right. Bathroom's attached. Spare's on the left. That's where I'll be."
She doesn't answer right away. Her eyes stay on the room like she's still working out the shape of it.
"I can take the spare," she says.
"No."
"Luke."
"You'll sleep better with a door that locks. The spare doesn't."
That lands. I watch it land. She swallows and nods once.
I carry her duffel to the master and set it on the bench at the foot of the bed. Come back out. She hasn't moved from the spot in the doorway.
"Bathroom's got towels in the cabinet. There's a spare toothbrush still in the packaging under the sink. Hot water takes about a minute to come through, so run it before you step in."
"Okay."
"Fridge is stocked enough for tonight. We'll figure out the rest tomorrow."
"Okay."
"Anna."
She looks at me.
I don't know what I was going to say. Something steady. Something that would put another quarter inch between her shoulders and her ears. But the words dry up somewhere between my chest and my mouth, and what comes out instead is the only thing that matters.
"Nobody knows you're here. Nobody's getting to this cabin without coming through me first. You understand?"
Her throat works.
"Yes."
"Good."
I step around her. Careful not to brush her arm. Head out to the porch to give her the room to breathe in a space that isn't watching her.
The screen door taps shut behind me.
I lean on the railing and stare out at the cedars. Wind's picking up. Somewhere past the tree line, a crow calls twice and goes quiet.
Seven years I've had this porch to myself.
I scrub a hand down my beard and try not to think about the fact that the cold place on my palm is the exact shape of her fingers.