Chapter 4
Chapter Four
LUKE
The pasta's overcooked.
I can tell before I drain it. The noodles sag off the wooden spoon like they've given up. Store-bought sauce sits warming in a small pot on the back burner, the kind with the red label Mable used to call sinner's sauce because only a sinner would buy it instead of making her own.
Mable would be shaking her head at me right now.
Mable would also be the one cooking, not me. For years, dinner was whatever she put in front of me up at the main house. Pot roast on Sundays. Chicken and dumplings when it rained. A plate handed over with a, you look too thin, Luke Davis and a flick of a dish towel at my shoulder.
A year ago, a phone call from a hospital gutted this ranch. Harold and Mable. Car accident. Gone within an hour of each other. Gabe was three hours away in Eden Ridge when he got the news, and none of us have been the same since.
I haven't eaten at the main house since.
I dump the noodles into the colander. Steam rises up and fogs the window over the sink. Through the glass, the cedars are black against a deep blue. Sun's almost gone. I can hear the creek somewhere past the tree line, full from the late spring melt.
I plate two bowls. Noodles. Sauce. A shake of Parmesan out of the green can that's older than it has any right to be.
Pathetic.
"Anna." I don't raise my voice. The cabin's small enough. "Come eat."
Bare feet on the floorboards. She's changed out of the sweatshirt into something softer, a long-sleeved shirt that hangs past her hips, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Hair down now. It's longer than I figured. Falls past her collarbone in a dark curtain that shifts when she walks.
Her eyes are red around the edges, but dry. She's pulled herself together quietly. Like it's somebody else's job to notice.
I slide the bowl across the counter to her.
"Thanks."
"Sit wherever."
She sits at the small table by the window. I take the stool at the counter, facing her at an angle, close enough to talk, far enough not to crowd.
She picks up her fork. Twirls it. Takes a bite.
I watch her face.
She chews. Swallows. The corners of her mouth pull up in the kind of smile women do when they're trying to make a man feel better about something.
"This is really good."
"No, it's not."
Her fork pauses.
"It's fine."
"Anna. I watched you chew that like it was a mouthful of paste."
Her lips press together. Her eyes drop to her bowl. A little sound escapes her, a huff that might almost be a laugh on a better day.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"I know."
"The sauce is a little..."
"Sweet. Yeah. It's got corn syrup in it. Bought it cause it was on sale."
She looks at me like she's not sure if I'm kidding.
I'm not kidding.
I get up and open the cabinet over the coffee pot. Pull out the blue tin.
"Got saltines. Want some?"
She actually laughs. Short. Surprised. Her whole face rearranges when she does it, and for a second, I forget what I'm holding.
"Saltines and pasta?"
"Cleanses the palate." I set the tin on the table between us and drop back onto the stool. "Old family recipe."
"The Davis family is very elegant."
"We're known for it."
Her shoulders come down another quarter inch.
She eats. Slow at first. Then faster, like her body finally clocked that fuel had arrived and decided not to waste the window. I don't look at her while she does it. I look at my own bowl, at the dark outside the window, at the coffee can on the counter that needs replacing.
The quiet isn't bad.
Neither of us tries to fill it.
When her bowl's half empty, she breaks a saltine in half. Sets one piece on the edge of her plate like she's saving it for later.
"Your whole cabin is tidy."
"Habit."
"Military?"
"Yeah."
"My dad was Navy. Before I was born. He still folds towels like a psychopath."
I huff. "Sounds like a man who knows what he's about."
"He'd like you."
She says it without thinking. I watch her hear it a second after it's out. Watch her cheeks get the faintest color in them. She takes a drink of water to cover it.
I let her have the cover.
"You didn't eat at the main house tonight," she says.
"No."
"Do you normally?"
"Used to. Gabe's the big cook now. Always makes a plate for me."
"Why'd you stop?"
Because Mable used to be at that table, and a year's not long enough to walk back in and sit in a kitchen where a woman like that used to be.
I don't say that.
"Got busier."
She nods like she knows I'm lying and isn't going to push.
We eat.
Somewhere outside, a barn owl calls. Low and long. Anna's fork pauses. She tilts her head toward the window.
"Is that an owl?"
"Yep."
"I've never heard one in real life before."
"City girl."
"Connecticut, originally. Then Portland."
"Same difference from where I'm sitting."
"Uncultured."
"Ma'am."
That huff again. I'm collecting them.
She pushes the bowl away. Sits back. Runs her thumb along the rim of her water glass. I can see her working up to something, the way the line between her eyebrows goes from soft to sharp.
"Luke."
"Yeah."
"What happens now?"
I set my fork down.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything." She lets out a breath. "Nothing. I don't know. I've been here for three hours, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You're supposed to eat. Sleep. Let Madison do what she does."
"That's it?"
"For tonight, yeah."
"And tomorrow?"
I look at her. Sit with the question.
"Tell me what happened, Anna."
Her face goes still.
"Madison didn't..."
"Madison gave me the cliff notes. Portland. Office. You saw something you shouldn't have. That's all I got."
"Why do you need to know more?"
"Because I'm the one with a gun in my closet and you under my roof. And I don't do my job half-informed."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Her fingers move up to the ring on her left thumb and starts turning it. Round. Round. Round.
"It was Tuesday night."
I wait.
"I stayed late. I was doing a campaign report for my boss, Marcus." The name comes out clean. Rehearsed. She's said it to herself a lot. "I was the only one on the floor. I thought I was. I ordered food. I went down to get it. When I came back up..."
She stops.
"Take your time."
"I heard them arguing. Him and another guy. I was just..." She lifts one hand, helpless. "I was just gonna walk past. I don't know why I stopped. And he, Marcus, was talking about money. Shell accounts. Somebody fucking up. And then he..."
Her throat works.
"He shot him."
"Yeah."
"Three times. With a silencer. Like he'd done it before. Like it wasn't even..." She shakes her head. "And I dropped my food. The bag. It hit the floor and made this sound, and Marcus, he, he knew someone was there. I ran. I got to my car. I got home."
"Your car."
Her eyes come up.
"How'd you know?"
"Madison."
"Right." A humorless laugh. "Smashed out the back windshield.
Flattened the tires. Left it in the parking garage for me to find.
A message. He got to it in the time it took me to drive from the office to my apartment and call Madison.
I was in my apartment ten minutes max. That's how fast. And my apartment is twenty minutes away. Twenty minutes, Luke."
I keep my face still.
"Okay."
"It's not okay. It's, they know where I live.
They know my car. They probably know my parents' address.
They probably know..." Her voice is climbing.
Her fingers on the ring are going faster.
"They probably know everything about me, Luke.
I was just a name on a payroll spreadsheet a week ago and now I'm, I'm… oh God."
"Anna."
"I keep thinking about it. What if he'd turned around a second faster?
What if I hadn't dropped the food? What if he'd gotten to my apartment before I did?
What if somebody, what if I'd been in the stairwell when he came down?
I don't know what a man like that does to a woman who saw what I saw, I don't, I don't..."
"Anna. Look at me."
Her eyes find mine.
"He didn't. None of that happened."
"But it could've."
"It didn't."
"It could."
"Not while you're here."
She stares at me. Her chest is going too fast. I watch her try to slow it down and lose.
"You don't know that," she whispers. "You don't know who he works for. You don't know what they're capable of. You're one man."
"One's enough."
"Luke."
"You think I'm blowing smoke up your skirt, Anna?"
She doesn't answer.
"I'm not."
Her throat moves. Her eyes drop. Her fingers finally stop turning the ring.
"I don't know how to do this." Quiet. Ashamed.
"I don't know how to be the kind of person this happens to.
I grew up riding horses and taking piano lessons, and my mom still picks out my scarves for winter.
I don't know how to, to fight somebody. I don't know what to do if a man puts his hand on me.
I can't even, in my head, I can't get past the part where he grabs me. I just freeze. Every time."
Something inside me leans forward.
"You ever taken a self-defense class?"
"Once. In college. We learned how to yell really loud."
"Useful."
"Apparently not."
"Here's what we're gonna do." I stand and clear the bowls. Her eyes follow me. "Tomorrow morning. Oh-six-thirty. You and me, front porch. Wear something you can move in."
"What?"
"I'm gonna teach you a few things."
"Luke, I don't..."
"You don't have to fight off a man twice your size. You have to know enough to buy yourself ten seconds to run. That's it. Ten seconds of grip breaks and one good strike to the right place. I can teach you that in a week."
She's staring at me like I've grown a second head.
"Why?"
The water runs over the bowls. I don't look at her when I answer.
"Because you're sitting at my table telling me you freeze when a man puts a hand on you. And I'm not having that."
Silence.
I scrub the bowls. Rack them. Shut the water off.
When I turn around, she's still in the chair. Eyes on me. Something different on her face now.
"Oh-six-thirty," she repeats.