Chapter 6
Chapter Six
LUKE
Three days.
That's how long I've been pretending the woman in my cabin isn't slowly rearranging my goddamn life.
She moved the coffee mugs. Found a logic in the cabinets I swore was already perfect and proved me wrong inside an afternoon.
Cooked dinner two nights running, both of them better than anything I've put on a plate in this house since I bought it.
Galbi one night. A noodle dish the next that had me going back for thirds before I caught myself.
Her stuff is creeping into the bathroom too. There’s a small pink bottle of something I do not understand on the counter next to my razor. A hair tie on the doorknob.
Three days, and she's wearing me down by existing.
I stand at the kitchen window with my coffee and watch her braid her hair on the porch in the early light. Bare feet. My old gray hoodie pulled over her knees. Hair shining wet from the shower. Concentration on her face like braiding it is the most important task she's got today.
I should not be looking.
I'm looking.
I knock on the window. She jumps. Spins. Sees me. Sticks her tongue out.
I jerk my head toward the truck.
"What?" she calls through the glass.
"Coming with me today."
"Where?"
"Work."
"What kind of work?"
"Cattle work. Boots, jeans, layers. Five minutes."
She narrows her eyes. Considers. Pushes herself off the porch boards and goes inside without arguing.
That's new.
I rinse my mug. Twist the lid on a thermos for her.
Grab my keys. I'm not leaving her in the cabin alone today.
Madison drove back to Eden Ridge yesterday afternoon to pick up some files, and the thought of Anna in this cabin without another set of eyes on her for ten hours has been gnawing at me since I woke at four.
She's safer with me. She's also driving me out of my mind.
Both things are true at once, and I've decided I can live with one of them better than the other.
She comes out in jeans, a flannel of mine she stole off the spare bed two nights ago, and a pair of boots Madison scared up from somewhere. Her hair's in the braid now. No makeup. Hands shoved in the flannel pockets like she's never been so cold.
"Reporting for duty, Sergeant Davis."
"Captain."
"Excuse me?"
"Was a Captain when I got out."
Her eyes round. "Oh."
"Truck."
She climbs in.
The morning's spent on the south fence line. Diego and Kidd are already out there, working up the wire repairs that need doing before we move the herd next week. I park, hand Anna the thermos, and tell her to stay on the lowered tailgate where I can see her.
She takes the thermos. Sits on the tailgate. Starts pointing out cows by color and giving them names.
"That one is Susan. She's judgmental."
"That so?"
"And Brenda. Brenda is very social."
"Susan and Brenda."
"They have rich inner lives, Luke. Don't be reductive."
Diego, about ten feet down the fence with a pair of pliers in his teeth, makes a sound that is definitely a laugh and definitely not directed at me. I cut him a look. He cuts it right back.
By the third hour, I look up from the post I'm setting, and Anna's not on the tailgate.
My pulse goes from idle to redline in half a second.
I drop the post. Stand. Scan.
Find her.
She's at the paddock fence on the other side of the access road, two hundred yards off. Leaning her forearms on the top rail. One of the geldings has its head over the fence and is breathing into her hair like it's known her ten years.
She's smiling at it. Not the careful, polite smile. A real one.
Diego comes up on my shoulder. "Boss."
"Yeah."
"You want me to finish this stretch."
"Yeah."
"Take your time."
"Diego."
"Yes, sir."
"Fuck off."
He's already walking off whistling. I close the distance to the paddock at a pace I will not call hurried.
Anna doesn't turn around when I come up behind her. She lifts her hand to the gelding's nose and does some little click thing with her tongue, and the horse drops his head into her palm like she's got a treat. She does not have a treat.
"He likes you."
"He's a good boy. Aren't you a good boy? Yes, you are."
"That's Tuck."
"Hi, Tuck." She rubs along the bone of his nose. "Hi, baby. You are very handsome."
"I forgot you said you knew horses. How did you get frequent access to horses in Connecticut?"
"My grandmother had a place in Texas. We spent every summer there until I was seventeen for training. I rode every day." She glances at me sideways. "Until I moved to Portland, anyway. Haven't been on one in five years."
Five years and she's standing here easier than half my hands look in their first week.
"You want to ride?"
She pauses. The hand on Tuck's nose stops moving.
"I... yeah. God. Yeah, I'd love to."
"Get him saddled. I'll pull Buttercup."
She turns. Looks at me full on. The braid is starting to come loose on the side facing the wind, and a piece of hair is stuck to her cheek.
"Really?"
"Yeah, ma'am."
"Anna."
"Anna."
A smile breaks across her whole face, and I have to physically turn around and walk to the tack room because I do not have the discipline today.
She tacks Tuck herself. Bridle. Saddle. Cinches it the right amount on the first pull and tells him he's a good boy in a low voice the entire time. She mounts clean. Settles in like she never left.
I watch her from where I'm finishing Buttercup, and I am in trouble.
We ride out west. Through the working pastures, past the south paddock where the herd's grazing, up into the timber where the road thins out to a trail.
The morning's gone warm. Late spring sun cutting through the firs in long bars.
Birds are making a racket. Buttercup huffing under me, still annoyed I didn't bring her another peppermint.
Anna rides quietly for the first ten minutes. Just looking. Tuck under her like he forgot anyone else was ever in his stable.
"This is the most beautiful place I've ever been."
"Yeah?"
"You're not impressed by it anymore."
"I am. I just don't say so much."
"You don't say much in general."
"Rumor has it."
She laughs. Nudges Tuck closer. Our boots almost knock as we ride side by side up the trail.
"Tell me something, Luke Davis."
"Like what?"
"Anything. I've been talking at you for three days. You owe me content."
I look over at her. Sun on her cheekbones. That piece of hair still stuck. She catches me looking and doesn't look away.
"I had an older lab named Bear. Died last fall."
"Oh, Luke."
"Old age. Good death. He's buried up here, actually. On this trail."
"Will you show me?"
I turn Buttercup off the main trail. Anna and Tuck follow.
A quarter mile off the path, there's a clearing I made myself. Mountain view between two big firs. A flat stone I hauled up here on a pack horse one Sunday when I couldn't bear to be in the cabin. I cut his name into it with a Dremel.
BEAR. GOOD BOY.
Anna swings down off Tuck without a word. Walks to the stone. Crouches. Puts her hand on it.
"Hi, Bear."
I dismount slowly.
"How long did you have him?"
"Eight years. Found him on the side of the road outside of Bend. No tag, no chip, nothing. Vet said he was about three then. He rode shotgun with me ten thousand miles before I landed here."
"He was loved."
"He was."
She stands. Doesn't ask anything else. Just dusts her hands on her jeans and looks at me like she’s reading my soul. I have to clear my throat.
"There's a spot up the ridge. Want to see it."
"Yes."
We mount back up.
The spot is a rock outcrop a half mile higher up, open to the south. The whole valley is laid out below it. The river cutting silver. Wild Peak's pastures and timber spread out like a map. On a clear day you can see all the way to the next county. Today is not a clear day.
I've been clocking the sky since we left the cabin. Front coming in fast off the coast. Spring storms here move quicker than people give them credit for. By the time we crest the ridge, the south is dark gray and the wind's shifted cold.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Is that coming this way?"
"In about ten minutes. We're heading back."
We turn the horses. Get maybe a quarter mile down before the first hard splat hits my hat. Then the second. Then the bottom drops out of the sky.
"Shit." Anna's already pushing wet hair out of her face. "Luke, this is not a sprinkle."
"No, ma'am."
"Anna."
"I know, Anna."
I scan the trail. There's a hunter's lean-to about a hundred yards off the spur, built decades ago by somebody for elk season and patched by me twice in the years I've been here. Three walls. Stone fireplace. Tin roof. Dry firewood under a tarp if no one's been up to take it.
"This way. Come on."
She follows. The rain's coming sideways now. I get Buttercup and Tuck both tied under the overhang where the trail bends, blanket the saddles, and hustle Anna up the path toward the lean-to.
We get inside, and I shoulder the door closed behind us. The roof's holding. The wood's stacked. The wind's hammering on the tin.
Anna's soaked through. Hair dripping. Flannel clinging to her in a way I'm going to have to ignore for my own sanity. She's shaking already, lips going pale at the edges.
"Sit down. By the fireplace."
"It's so cold."
"That's why we're making a fire."
I crouch at the hearth. The lean-to has a small grate, a stash of dry kindling I refilled two months back, a half-burnt log somebody else left.
I work fast. Anna sits on the rough wood floor a few feet behind me, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them.
I get a flame in under two minutes. Build it slow.
Feed it. The light spreads through the small space, gold against the gray light coming through the slats.
I turn around.
She's so cold she's shuddering.
"Anna. Take those off."
"What?"
"The flannel. The boots. They're soaked. You'll stay cold all the way to the cabin."