Chapter 6
Astrid
The days after Penny's surgery had a shape I hadn't planned on.
Moose made the first move. He always did.
By the second Saturday, Penny was back on the couch like she'd never left it.
Moose had figured out that the back gate latch didn't fully catch if you nudged it at the right angle.
I started finding him gone at seven in the morning, his spot on the bed still warm beside me.
I'd cross the street in yesterday's jeans with two coffees from the pot I'd made too much of, and Easton would let me in without either of us making a thing of it.
The dogs would tear around the roses. We'd sit on the back step and watch them.
Neither of us called it anything. We both just kept showing up.
By the third week, it was reflex. His mug was on my shelf because we'd swapped them one morning and neither of us had suggested swapping back. I could tell when he'd been at the station by whether his boots were by the door.
I knew what I was doing. I just didn't say it out loud.
There was a Tuesday in the third week that I kept coming back to.
He'd been off shift since dawn. I'd crossed Maple at seven with two coffees and the wrong sweater on, because I'd grabbed the first one off the chair and only registered halfway across the street that it was the cashmere I never wore for dog mornings.
Too late to go back. I rang the bell with my elbow because both hands were full.
He opened the door in a Henley with the sleeves shoved to his forearms and his hair still wet at the ends. He looked at the sweater. He looked at the coffees. He didn't say anything about either one.
"Back step?"
"Back step."
We went around the side of the house. Penny was already on the porch like she'd been waiting for us, with Moose worrying the latch of the back gate from the inside. Easton let him into the yard, and the two of them went straight for the rose bed.
"Pen's not allowed in the roses," he said, settling on the top step beside me.
"Moose isn't either."
"Moose doesn't know that."
"Moose knows. Moose doesn't care."
He huffed something close to a laugh and took the coffee I held out.
Our shoulders weren't touching, but they weren't not touching, either.
The morning had that particular cold that comes off the river before the sun's high enough to do anything about it, and his thigh was warm against my knee where my leg had ended up.
I should've moved my leg.
I didn't move my leg.
He drank his coffee. I drank mine. Penny put her chin on his bare foot. Moose came over and dropped a bee-stung paw in my lap with the wounded dignity of a dog who'd been warned and had not, in fact, listened.
"Told you," Easton said.
"He doesn't listen."
"None of us do."
He said it while looking at the dogs. He could have been talking about any of us. I didn't ask which.
We sat there until the coffees went cold.
My fifteen-year-old self would have been completely undone.
That was the thought that caught me one morning, coffee in both hands, watching Moose steer Penny away from the garden bed she was too old to jump and too stubborn to go around.
Fifteen-year-old Astrid Matthews had spent three summers watching Easton Ford come and go from that bungalow and had never once gotten close enough to speak to him.
She also would have died if she'd known how it started. Three summers of watching from a safe distance, and the thing that finally got me across the street was a bath towel and a dog with her bra in his mouth.
I would have needed to break it to her gently.
I'd spent the afternoon at the kitchen table with the permits.
The lease was signed. The DEA registration went through.
The contractor walked the space on Tuesday and sent over a quote by Wednesday: exam tables, surgical lights, and the autoclave.
The building inspector had a date on the calendar two weeks out.
I was working through the supply order one line at a time because someone had to, and I was the only someone there was.
The kettle had been on long enough that the water stopped sounding interested. I got up to turn the burner off.
That was when I heard the knock.
It was softer than Brett's. My body knew it before my head did. I was standing at the stove with my hand still on the knob, shoulders up around my ears, and I had to remind myself I was in Hartsdale and I hadn't answered a door for Brett in eight months.
I crossed the hallway, made myself uncurl my shoulders before I touched the door, and looked through the peephole.
The man on my porch was in his late sixties.
Silver hair. Fleece vest. Khakis. Hands clasped at the front of his waist. No car at the curb.
He must've walked here. He looked like everyone's grandfather, which I noted with the part of my brain that had spent six years learning to read men who wanted something while looking like they didn't.
I opened the door.
"Astrid?"
"Yes."
"Joe Caldwell. From the practice on Elm."
I knew the name. I let a beat go by where I could have said so. I didn't.
"Hello, Dr. Caldwell."
"Joe is fine."
"Would you like to come in? I just put the kettle on."
"That's kind. I won't keep you. Just wanted to come by and say hello. Welcome you back."
I stayed in the doorway. He didn't take a step toward it. We had agreed on the geometry without saying so.
"I knew your folks," he said. "Your dad did some work for me back in the day. Saw your mother at the grocery store when you were—" he held a hand at the height of a small child "—about so high. Pigtails, both of you."
"That sounds like her."
"It's good to have you home."
"Thank you."
He looked out at the porch railing for a beat, then back at me. The smile was still in place, and so was the warmth, but something underneath had finished arranging itself.
"I've been thinking about you, actually. I heard you were filing for permits."
"I am."
"I have to be honest with you, Astrid." He used my first name the way some men used it: as a small claim, not a familiarity. "The town can't really support two practices. I'd hate to see a young woman put everything she has into something that wasn't going to take."
"I'm sure there's room."
"Mhm."
He nodded and considered the porch railing again, tucking his hands into the vest pockets.
"Well, I'll let you get back to your afternoon."
"Thank you for stopping by."
"You take care, Astrid."
I shut the door.
The kettle had gone cold. The permits were still on the table where I'd left them, and none of them had moved.
My pulse was in my ears, and my shoulders were up around them. I didn't register crossing the room until I already had both hands flat on the counter, standing there breathing through my nose like a woman on the back end of a flight of stairs she hadn't meant to climb.
I knew this body. I'd had it for six years.
I sat back down at the table.
The supply order was open. I picked up the pen and looked at the line I'd been working on before the kettle, trying to remember which version of the surgical scissors I'd been considering.
I couldn't.
I set the pen down.
It wasn't what he said. It was the way he said it. Brett's mother had been running a softer version of it on me for six years. Same script. Different man.
The script followed me here.
I got up, walked to the sink, and stood there with both hands on the counter, looking at nothing.
The white of the porcelain was the same white it always was.
The light through the kitchen window was the same light.
The script followed me here, and the room around me hadn't shifted one degree to acknowledge it.
The knock came at the front door.
Softer than Caldwell's. Softer than Brett's. The kind of knock a man uses when he's not in a hurry to be let in.
I crossed the hallway and looked through the peephole. Easton was on the porch with Penny beside him. A paper bag in his other hand. Uniform on.
I opened the door.
Penny walked in like she'd walked in many times before, which she hadn't, and headed for the kitchen at her own pace. Moose came off the rug to meet her. She let him sniff her shoulder and kept moving.
Easton lifted the bag.
"Got takeout for both of us."
I smiled before I meant to.
He caught it.
"Something wrong?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
It probably was nothing.