13. Gideon
GIDEON
The month closes with me and the books under the office lamp, setting what this lodge spent against what it took in.
What came in looks better than it has since the severance.
Eleven rooms selling, dinner service six nights, Rhys’s winter regulars coming back one by one. I should be able to enjoy that.
Instead I’m studying the spending I have approved for Briar.
The first line is one set of winter tires, sedan-rated, bought down-mountain and paid in cash.
The earlier chains did not fit her rims, which I discovered because I checked them.
I put the new tires on myself before dawn, flat on a mechanic’s creeper with the headlamp off so no east-wing window would light.
Rhys caught me on the last wheel and waited until I finished the torque pattern.
I told him the lower mechanical room needed work. Neither of us mentioned the car.
“Nice morning for it,” he said.
“The lower mechanical room needs work this week.” I stood and collected the creeper. “I know a volunteer with free mornings.”
“Worth it,” he said. He saluted me with the mug and went off whistling, too happy to hide it.
The next line is one case of suppressant support, her brand, added to the standing pharmacy order under clinic contingency.
The town clinic stocks two brands, neither hers, and the pass closes in hard weather.
A mixed-designation winter residency has a duty of care.
Ordering it was reasonable. Knowing her exact brand meant noticing how often she checked the bottle and how carefully she counted the remaining doses.
The case arrived with Soren’s delivery. He read the label, looked at me, and shelved it beside his chamomile without comment.
The third is weather stripping, forty linear feet, east wing, with particular attention to the draft that runs under the door of the room she keeps her files in.
I found that draft standing in her office when she wasn’t in it, palm flat to the floorboards, feeling for cold, a trick my grandfather taught me.
The lodge has a hundred drafts. I have opinions about one of them.
The fourth never made the books, because the birch is ours and the labor is mine. I restock the lobby basket when the room is empty, which means I know where she is.
The fifth costs nothing. My shifts run one slot ahead of hers, room by room, for weeks.
I leave the dining room warm before her meal observations and the library fire set before her sessions.
Nobody asked me to do it. The rota records ordinary maintenance.
It does not record that I time every job so she receives the warmth and never has to share the room with me.
I rule a line under the lot and total it, and then I give the total a heading, because everything in this office gets a heading.
Liability management, I write, in a firm hand. I have never lied on paper before tonight.
The heading is a lie. I have spent the better part of a thousand dollars keeping Briar warm.
Every line keeps her warm, dosed or mobile without requiring me to stand near her. I arranged it that way because I do not trust myself to care for her in person.
Biology waits out sturdier rules than hers, I told her. Mine is no exception.
I take the last birch load up late, when the lobby should be empty. It should be, and it isn’t.
She’s fallen asleep on the hearth stones with her back against the settle, tablet gone dark on her knees, one hand still loose around the poker, a sentry who lost the argument with the watch.
The fire’s burned down to the stage that needs tending, and the light off the coals does something to her face I’ve got no word for.
It takes the assessor out of it and leaves the woman who walked into my library and rang.
The correct procedure is to withdraw and send Soren, who has standing, or Rhys, who has shamelessness. I stand there instead, holding an armful of birch, and I run both sides of the argument again in the doorway at volume zero.
If I wake her, I have to speak to her at night, by firelight, with no table between us. Neither of us allowed for that.
I bank the coals low so the fire will hold for hours.
I set the draft screen at the angle that keeps the warmth on the hearth stones, move the poker out of her loose hand, and leave tomorrow’s birch in the basket.
She does not wake. I stand there long enough to make sure her breathing stays even, then leave without touching her.
She doesn’t so much as stir. There’s a smudge of ash on her knuckle, and I look at it for a good deal longer than a man needs to look at a knuckle. At the doorway I allow myself one look back, and I write down neither of them anywhere.
Soren makes her tea and remembers the exact steep.
Rhys writes in the reservation book after close and hides the page with his forearm.
I have put tires on her car, stocked her medication and kept every room warm before she entered it.
I stand in a dark doorway with her scent in my sleeve and pretend I am the only man in this house exercising restraint.
I looked at the reservation book once, after close, because a pack alpha inspects what his lodge is promising.
Rhys’s night writing turned out to be one booking, renewed over and over in the pavilion column, spring season, a date held with no party name and no deposit.
Just one word sits where the reservation should be, in handwriting that pressed hard enough to emboss the page. Family.
I close the book and say nothing. I leave Rhys’s booking in place.
Back in the office, I leave the tires and medical supplies in next month’s budget. I know they will be needed.
That’s all it is, and the books will back me, seeing as I’m the man who writes them. I’ve agreed with myself on the story, and I’m sticking to it. Only one of us believes it, and it isn’t me.