Chapter 33
Carrie
Our first date is meant to be dinner. Getting all dressed up, putting lipstick on, and hoping it will be kissed away later. But we can’t wait, don’t want to wait. So we take the day off and carve our first date out of a January Tuesday.
Matthieu offers to drive my car, and we travel away from Woodsmoke, away from the clutter of collective stares and speculation. His hands drum on the steering wheel as he drives, and I sing along to old songs that the local radio station still plays, staring out of the window to watch as the landscape peels open, the mountains drifting away to linger on the horizon.
“Nearly there. Twenty minutes,”
he says, and I glance over at him, catching his grin as he keeps his gaze fixed on the road.
“Any more hints?”
I’ve been trying to guess all morning where he’s taking me. We began our first day off from working on the cottage in months by making pancakes in the cottage kitchen and toasting the day with fresh coffee in the French press I bought. The only details I’ve wrangled are that it’s best to wear thick socks, a hat, and gloves and to pack a thermos of tea. We’ve got biscuits, a thermos of tea, and enamel mugs in a basket on the backseat, and I’ve been asking questions ever since. “Is it . . . outside?”
“Yes.”
“Is it in the mountains?”
“No.”
“Are we going skinny-dipping in a lake?”
That grin flashes again as he shakes the black wings of his hair from his eyes and my stomach swoops, remembering that mouth on mine the other night. There’s something about making Matthieu smile. I love the way his smile lights up his whole being, how his angles smooth and the shadows under his eyes vanish.
“Do you want to go skinny-dipping?”
I laugh and he shakes his head, taking a turn off the main road onto a track that tails off, toward the mountains. I scrutinize the track, my heart thrumming in my chest. I can’t remember the last time someone surprised me like this, staking out a whole day of their time to hand over as a gift. Matthieu is the kind of person who makes you feel like he has all the time in the world, just for you. The kind of person who leans in intently, listening to every syllable you utter. I snuggle back into my warm coat as sparks fill my veins for the hundredth time in the last few days.
“So not skinny-dipping, and not in the mountains . . . are we cross-country skiing? Husky riding?”
He barks out a laugh. “Keep guessing, I love it. How many huskies have you seen around Woodsmoke?”
I chuckle and shrug, trying to guess again where we’re heading. We’ve barely been apart as we take our time with the last handful of fixes to the cottage. It feels like we’re squeezing out more time, so that we can linger in the bubble that has suddenly formed around us. He leaves only to sleep at his cabin each night.
I don’t want to ask Matthieu about his future plans. About what he intends to do after he has to give up the cabin. But I hold on to a hope that this bubble of time is like a promise, a binding promise. That Matthieu will linger on after the renovations, and the frost, and that somehow we will find a new routine in a summer in Woodsmoke together. I haven’t voiced any of this. I don’t want to upset the delicate newness of the “us”
that might be. But it’s on my mind, it’s filling my thoughts in a smoky haze, and for the first time in a decade I feel like I’m home.
“Penny for them,”
he says, glancing at me. “You’re lost again. You do that.”
“I—well, I’m just . . . thinking about Woodsmoke. About the cottage and . . . us.”
“Us?”
I smile and suddenly I want to gauge his reaction, to see what he might be thinking. “I don’t know, I’m thinking about my roots here. About . . . staying.”
“Staying.”
I nod, looking over at him. “Staying.”
“Well . . .”
he begins, then his face clears as he pulls over onto a narrower track. “We’re nearly there.”
I sit up, taking in our surroundings, trying to place it in my memories. It’s not long before we pull up into a tiny car park and Matthieu cuts the engine.
I get out of the car and scan the horizon, then start grinning as I realize where we are, what this place is. “Ice-skating?”
Matthieu nods, assessing my reaction. I gaze over the lake, now frozen over for another month at least, and breathe out a sigh of vast contentment. “We don’t have to, if you’d rather not,”
he says. “We can walk, and watch the skaters—”
“It’s perfect,”
I say and tentatively hold my hand out to him. When he grasps it, another knot inside me loosens and heat washes through me, right to my core. “Let’s go.”
At the lake’s edge, another couple sits on a bench outside a gift shop, lacing up their shoes. A few people are already out on the ice—a man skating in smooth swoops, a tartan scarf tied around his throat, and a woman holding the hand of a child, coaxing her slowly across the ice. We go over to the gift shop to rent skates, and I tell the shop assistant my size. She hands me a pair of skates a size too big.
“Thick socks,”
Matthieu whispers, winking at me. “They never have exact sizes. It’s potluck what you get.”
I leave my boots behind the counter and sit on the bench outside beside him, lacing up my skates, my breath forming puffs of cloud. “How have I never heard of this place?”
“It’s a secret?”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’m a Morgan. Secrets are what we do.”
“It’s fairly new, I think. So maybe they weren’t doing this when you were last home.”
I love how Matthieu has surprised me, shown me a different side to the mountains. A playful side, a side not closely guarded and full of tricks, like those in Cora’s book. I feel like the mountains are mine again, that seeing this side of them is reclaiming a piece of the home I wasn’t sure would be mine to come back to.
When I step out on the ice, Matthieu’s hand is there to guide me. We glide slowly at first, my heart beating in my ears at the thrill of trying to stay upright, trying to find my center. Then, after a while, after our slow spinning, I gradually find it. I let go of his hand, trusting myself to find my own way across the ice, the smooth mirror beneath me reflecting back the sky.
I laugh, breathlessly, moving a little faster, getting as close as I ever will get on the ground to flying. Matthieu circles me, laughing as well, and we move farther out, where it’s just the two of us. I slow, almost to a stop, breathing in the cold air, tasting the scent of the mountains on my tongue. I turn slowly, taking in the mountains, the vastness of them. The hulking shapes ruling this corner of the earth. And I know in that moment that somehow they have given Matthieu to me. That somehow they knew. That the mountains, my home, just knew.
I turn to him.
He is still spinning in circles, absorbed with the feeling of flying, of freedom. There is no one like him, I am sure of it. No one who glows quite as he does with such a steady, warm light. I take another breath and push off to skate beside him. There’s no one else on the ice, I notice distantly. There’s only us.
“Hey,”
I say, smiling at him.
“Hey,” he says.
He slows, reaching for my hand, and we slowly spin to a stop.
“You know, I’ve always wanted to be kissed on the middle of a frozen lake.”
“What, like this one?”
“Just like this one.”
“Oh,”
he says, his eyes growing dark. “Who are you going to kiss?”
I shrug, looking round. “I don’t know yet . . .”
Matthieu chuckles, turning my chin toward him with his fingertips. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I murmur.
Matthieu raises his eyebrows in question before leaning in to kiss me. I laugh against his mouth, drawing my arms around his neck and giving in to this moment he’s created, just for us.
“Carrie . . .”
he says softly, running his mouth gently along the line of my jaw. “I think we should do this first date thing again. It’s pretty good.”
I tip back my head, sighing in delight as his kisses trail down my throat. “I agree.”
And right there, under the watchful eye of the mountains, with just the two of us on this vast frozen lake, Matthieu’s mouth on my skin, and his arms wrapped around me, I fall a little.
I fall into that place of perfect first dates, of dappled light and frost and slow dances. I fall into it with Matthieu.
We build the last of the furniture the next morning. He’s in the upstairs front bedroom, and I’m in the lounge putting a set of shelves up in the alcove next to the fireplace. He drops something and I hear him swear. There’s a thump, like an angry fist or a boot, then silence. I pause, place the screwdriver on the floor, and walk to the hallway.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just . . .”
He mutters something I can’t quite catch.
I take the stairs two at a time, turning on the landing to rush into the room he’s in. I push the door open and find him sitting on the floor, one hand cradled in the other as he stares absently at the wall. There are shadows beneath his eyes, like charcoal with the edges smudged. “Your hand?”
“Caught it between the slats.”
He shrugs, attempting a smile, then closes his eyes. “Didn’t sleep well. I don’t know. Careless.”
There is a heaviness to him. A tiredness I haven’t really seen before. Perhaps caused by hurting his hand, or not getting enough sleep. Then he blurts out, “It’s the anniversary today.”
“Anniversary?”
I sit down beside him, taking his injured hand to check it over. It’s just as rough as my own are now, and there’s an angry red mark along the joints of his thumb and index finger.
“You know I told you I used to come hiking with my brother? Henri?”
I still, wondering if this is the moment. The moment when I’ll find out more about the map, the twine, the cabin. “Yes.”
“Well, this is the day we lost him.”
Matthieu sighs. “I heard it gets easier, and I guess it has over the years. But this day . . .”
I bring both my hands around his, looking up at him. Noticing the way his hair is a little wild at the edges, his eyes dull beneath his heavy brows. I try not to register any surprise and instead allow him a moment to collect himself. That’s the thing with Matthieu. He’s quiet, thoughtful. In his manner and in the way he treats me. I don’t want him to feel rushed in this moment. I want him to share a piece of himself with me.
He keeps his gaze trained on the wall, as though seeing a thousand memories there. “Henri was older than me by a few years. But now I’m older than he ever . . .”
He swallows. “He would have teased you. Relentlessly.”
I lean my head on his shoulder. “I’d love to hear more about him. If you want to tell me.”
Matthieu takes a minute, and I wonder if he’s not quite ready. But then he blows out a breath, his fingers curling back around mine, and begins to talk. To tell me about Henri.
“He played guitar, and he spent hours working out each song, finding the right notes to something we heard on the radio. And . . . he was the one who made my whole family laugh. Real belly laughs, the kind that tip you backward in your chair at the dinner table.”
He huffs a laugh, looking at me. And I leave the space for him to keep talking.
As we sit there, with the sun wending its way through the sky, I figure Cora can’t be right. He’s just the quiet type, someone who chooses not to go into Woodsmoke too often. Or maybe he shops the next town over, perhaps avoiding memories of Henri. I do know how that feels, but I can imagine him being caught in cobwebs of memories if he traipsed through town.
He has to be real. How could someone who carries this much love and grief and promise not be?