Chapter 24 #2
"When you told me to take the slot, I had a choice.
I could override you the way Brett overrode you for six years, or I could let you make the call with half the story in front of you.
I let you make the call with half the story.
I thought respecting you meant not pushing back.
I drove down on that. I packed the boxes I hadn't packed in eighteen months, and I drove down on that, and I told myself the whole way that I was honoring you. "
He scrubbed a hand down his face.
"Shane sat me down at the island this morning and told me that wasn't honoring you. Telling you the truth was honoring you. I'd skipped the part where I told you the truth, and I'd called what I'd done respect."
His eyes didn't leave my face.
"I don't want the slot. I never wanted it the way I told myself I wanted it. I wanted to be the man who wanted it, because that man had somewhere to go after his grandmother died, and I didn't. I was holding on to the idea of him because the idea of him was the only place I had to put myself."
He stopped.
I hadn't said anything for the whole of it.
"I'm asking you to choose again, Astrid. With the whole story this time. Not the version I handed you on this bank."
The woods were quiet.
Moose was sitting at his hip with the patient look of a dog who had decided the humans were having a moment he was going to wait out.
I let it land.
I'd been turning the lake over in my head for three weeks. Turning over the version of myself who handed him three doors on a bank and told him to walk through the one with the slot behind it. Telling myself I did it for him. Telling myself that not being ready was the truth.
I'd been lying to myself for three weeks about which door had been the lie.
He told me. On the bank. One of 'em is the truth. The other one is the door you brought to close it with.
He knew.
He let me close it anyway.
I drew a breath.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"I wasn't protecting you."
I let it sit.
"I was protecting myself."
His face did something I didn't have a word for.
"I told you I wasn't ready because being ready would mean I could lose you. I'd lost everything once, and I wasn't going to set myself up to lose it again. I used Brett because Brett was the door I knew would lock. I knew it when I said it. I've known it every morning since."
I let my hand come off Moose's back and onto Easton's knee in the dirt.
"The truest thing I said all week was the lie."
He closed his eyes for a count.
He opened them.
"Astrid."
"I'm choosing again."
"Yeah?"
"With the whole story."
He lifted his hand off Moose.
He brought it up to the side of my face, his thumb at the corner of my mouth. His other hand came to the back of my neck.
He leaned in across the dog between us.
He kissed me.
His mouth was cold from the wood. His stubble caught at the side of my mouth. I got both hands in the front of his jacket and held on.
Moose pressed against our legs.
Duke came through the brush thirty seconds later.
He had Moose's name in his mouth already, and he stopped when he came through the tree line and saw the three of us in the clearing. He took it in. Easton in his jacket. Me with my hands still in the front of it. Moose at our knees.
His face split.
"Ford."
Easton lifted his head from mine.
"Rhodes."
"You took your time."
"Yeah."
Duke keyed his radio.
"Lou. Got him. Got the dog. South end of the clearing. Call 'em in."
The radio crackled back. Lou's voice was dry. "Copy. Calling 'em in."
Duke clipped it back to his hip. He looked at the two of us. He looked at Moose. He shook his head once at the ground.
"I'm gonna give you a minute. You take it. I'll meet you at the road."
He turned and went back through the brush.
Easton stood first.
He brushed the dirt off the knees of his jeans, slowly and carefully, after being on his knees for a while. He held a hand down to me. I took it. He pulled me up and didn't let go.
Moose got up between us and shook the leaves off his coat.
We walked down the trail to the road with Moose ahead of us.
Easton's hand was in mine. His thumb was moving on the back of my hand, the slow circle his thumb made when he was thinking.
I came back to Hartsdale to be no one's.
I told myself that on the drive up. I told myself that on the bank when I handed him three doors. I told myself that for three weeks in a kitchen that was the wrong shape.
I wasn't telling myself that anymore.
The relief was bigger than I'd been ready for.
It was the relief of a woman who'd been carrying a thing without knowing its weight, and who had set it down on a trail behind her house with a dog at her hip and a man's hand in hers, and who had found out, in the moment of setting it down, what the weight had been.
I let my shoulder bump his.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't have to.
Up ahead through the trees, I could hear the voices coming back in toward the road. Halsey. Mendoza. The Bishops. Audrey's voice cut clean through the others. They were going to be at the road when we got there. They were going to see us coming down the trail together with the dog ahead of us.
The town was about to find us already found.