Chapter 4 #2
“How is bringing her here supposed to help us?” Donovan said. “We could have gotten anyone else to take care of Jake.”
“This is best for everyone,” Caleb urged.
“You’re being riskier than usual,” Donovan said. “Having her here will mess things up.”
Caleb raised his hand. “I’m not talking about this anymore, Donovan.”
Donovan opened his mouth to respond, but Caleb had already turned and disappeared into another corridor.
I pressed my back to the wall and waited for the sting to settle in my chest. I reminded myself it was normal for families to be skeptical. They had every right to question my abilities.
So why did that feel so bad?
A shadow fell over me.
I flinched as Donovan came around the corner and saw me.
He stopped. His eyes narrowed further.
I clung tighter to Jake’s charts.
“Were you listening?” he asked.
I steadied myself. “Enough to know you have concerns about my being here.” My voice still came out shaky. “I’d prefer you direct it at me rather than around me.”
Donovan’s expression eased, but he didn’t look happy either.
“You weren’t our first choice,” he said. “No offense, but we don’t take kindly to outsiders.”
“That much was clear.”
“I don’t doubt you’re capable,” he said. “Your nursing history’s enough to prove that.”
“Then what does it have to do with?”
He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re just not one of us.”
My throat tightened.
“You understand this is temporary,” he said. “You’ll be gone when it’s over.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care about my patients,” I said. “Jake is sick and he trusts me. And I’m going to make sure I don’t take that for granted.”
Donovan held my gaze. “Good,” he said plainly.
“Oh, and don’t even think about going past the perimeter,” he said. “I know you like snooping, but the wildlife in this area can be unpredictable. The last thing we need is an injured nurse.”
Then he was gone.
I stood in the hallway and sank back against the wall.
The exchange could have been worse, but it soured the good mood lunch with Jake and Maureen had put me in. I was useful but not trusted.
I’d dealt with worse. I reminded myself of this the whole walk back to Jake’s room.
By late evening, I was restless.
It didn’t matter that I was exhausted. I went through Jake’s charts a second time, trying to discern a pattern in when his pain flared up the most and where, what worked, and what didn’t.
Outside, it was already dark. The trees pressed close to the glass.
I can’t focus here, I thought.
I picked up Jake’s charts, a couple of medical books, and made my way downstairs.
I considered working in the kitchen, but something about the evening made it look lonelier than it did when everyone was around working and eating.
I remembered the fireplace area from the tour.
That would work.
After making some tea in the kitchen, I headed there.
I heard the fireplace crackling. Someone else was there.
As I moved into the room, I saw Caleb.
He wasn't reading. A book sat closed on the arm of the chair, and in its place was a spread of papers across the small table — some folded into thirds like correspondence, others marked with handwriting dense enough that I could see it from the doorway.
A leather-bound ledger sat open underneath everything else, anchoring the pile.
He had a pen in his hand and was frowning at something on the top sheet.
He looked up when I appeared in the doorway.
I moved to leave.
"There's plenty of space," he said.
I considered the offer for a moment.
I took the other chair — the one across from his — and set Jake's charts on my knees. Caleb returned to his papers without comment, the pen moving in short, deliberate strokes.
I watched him for a moment before I could stop myself.
"Does the family business always keep you this late?" I asked.
Caleb didn't look up immediately. "It keeps me when it needs to," he said. He turned a page in the ledger. "Timber doesn't run on a schedule."
"Neither do sick people," I said.
He glanced at me then — just briefly, the corner of his mouth shifting slightly. He went back to his papers.
We didn’t talk at first. The fire was the kind that settled rather than crackled — steady and low and oddly comforting. I expected the silence to be awkward in the way that silences between strangers usually were. But it wasn’t.
Finally, Caleb tidied up his documents and went for the closed book on his chair.
“Donovan talked to you,” he said, as if reading the book out loud.
“He did.”
“He’s protective,” Caleb reassured me. “He doesn’t mean to be harsh. I know how it comes across.”
Caleb turned a page in his book, though I was fairly sure he hadn’t finished reading it.
“For what it’s worth,” he continued, “the people in this house don’t let anyone in. You were the right choice.”
I looked at him. He was watching the fire.
“How?” I asked. “You didn’t know me.”
Caleb considered the question. “Sometimes you just know.”
I wanted to press it. I also found, oddly, that I didn’t — or couldn’t, quite. Something in the directness of what he’d said made pushing at it feel like pressing on something I didn’t want to name.
I thought about what I’d said to Donovan. About Jake trusting me. And then I thought about the seven years I’d spent in other people’s houses, other people’s crises, packing up before anything could take root. Never staying long enough for a place to become something I’d miss.
“I understand, I guess,” I said. “Not wanting to let anyone in, that is.”
I looked toward the window, toward the dark that pressed up against the glass the way dark does in places far from everything else. “I’ve spent a long time learning not to let things mean anything.”
Caleb didn’t fill the silence. Instead, he let it settle between us.
The fire settled lower. Neither of us moved to add wood. I went back to my charts and he went back to his book. We stayed like that for another hour without speaking — two people in the same warm room by mutual, unspoken agreement.