Chapter 26. Lenore
Lenore
Thunder booms, too close for comfort, an aftershock shuddering through the rock beneath us.
I snatch my jacket and vest from the ground and march into the trees.
Heavy rain spatters against the leaves, pools between jagged rocks, drenching everything in slick, dark color.
It’s that brand of New England thunderstorm that hits all at once, like the sky has overturned a bucket of water on our heads.
I shove my arms into my sodden jacket and HiVis to free my hands for the descent.
“Lenore, wait.” Cal is right behind me, scrambling down the wet rock. “Slow down.”
I don’t look back, shouting over the rain, “I want to go home.” I don’t know whether I mean the farmhouse, or the city, or somewhere else entirely. All I know is that I don’t want to be here.
I reach the bottom of the rock and plod down the steep hill, reaching for a tree trunk to keep my footing. Cal falls silent as he focuses on inching down the hill, several yards behind me.
I strain to touch the next tree, but it’s too far, so I grab an overhead branch instead, shifting beneath it. Wet leaves slither out from under my hiking boots, but the branch holds, creaking beneath my weight.
Callan skates over wet leaves to reach my side, pressing a hand against my lower back. “Be as mad at me as you want,” he says, “but we’re not getting separated in this kind of storm. It’s dangerous.”
I squint up at him, haloed by falling rain. His hair is inky, slicked across his forehead. Droplets cling to his thick lashes. I swallow. “Fine,” I shout over the storm.
Cal shifts down the hill, getting ahead of me, and stops at the next tree to wait for me to make my way down to him.
I slide right into his chest with a solid thud.
The sky blinks white, thunder crashing on its heels.
“I think maybe you’ve been in the city too long,” he says, the warm rasp in his voice shuddering through me.
We’re halfway down the hill when lightning flashes again, throwing the forest into sharp silhouette.
Behind me, Cal swears loudly. I don’t think anything of it until he trips past me, the ground slipping out from under him. I’m frozen in horror as he tumbles cartoonishly over the side of the trail, rolling until he knocks into a tree with a queasy crack.
“Oh my God,” I shriek.
I move carefully down the hill, dropping onto my bottom and scooting until I reach his side. A miserable groan greets me. Small relief that he wasn’t knocked out cold. “Please tell me you’re all right.”
“Yeah,” he grunts, then hisses through his teeth as he shifts into a sitting position. “Might’ve sprained my ankle.”
“Shit,” I breathe, trying to think. I twist over my shoulder, looking back at the trail we left behind.
It’s so steep, there’s no way we can climb up there with his ankle compromised.
I tug my phone from the side pocket of my leggings.
Rain splatters onto the screen. I tap and it lights up, but it’s too wet to react when I swipe to unlock it, and there’s no service anyway.
“Do you know how to get to the road from here?”
Cal dips his chin, the muscles in his jaw drawn tight. “Northeast-ish.”
“How am I supposed to know which way is northeast?”
“Compass. Front pocket in my backpack.”
I crawl around to the other side of him and unzip the backpack. The pocket is packed with Clif Bars and a headlamp. Rain plasters my hair to the back of my neck, molding my clothes against shivering skin.
At last, I find the green plastic compass. I attempt to swipe water from my eyes and squint at the needle, which points more or less parallel to the trail. “Do you think you can stand?”
Cal nods and repositions. I loop his arm around my shoulder to help him get to his feet. As much as he tries to help, he’s not exactly light. I sway slightly beneath him. He plants a hand on the tree trunk to steady us.
“All right,” I say, consulting the compass in my free hand, “we need to head this way.”
We hobble through the undergrowth, splashing through ferns, twigs snapping beneath our feet. The muscles in my shoulders burn from supporting his weight. Temple Stream is gushing, the water level high with rainfall, and we follow the current until the forest spits us out onto the two-lane highway.
Wet asphalt shimmers in the headlights of a passing car, spraying water. “We parked east of here,” Callan says, nodding up the road.
We limp a few yards west along the shoulder to take refuge beneath the old covered bridge. I lean him against the wall and double over to catch my breath. Rain hammers into the tin roof.
A laugh wheezes out of him. “You know what they say about New England.” He winces as his back slides down the wall, lowering himself to the ground. “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”
I look at him, soaked and a little bit pathetic, and a laugh bubbles up my throat. “We are,” I say, panting, “so fucking stupid.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. We share a long look that seems to acknowledge that we’re talking about so much more than the hike.
I unzip his backpack and fish out the keys. “Wait here while I go get the truck.”
I go to leave and he catches me by the wrist, dragging me down to him.
His fingers tangle in my wet hair, angling my head, and he kisses me with an aching tenderness that wrecks any idea of leaving the other night in the past. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.
It’s the one thing in my life that makes any sense.
We still need to talk through everything, but first, we need to get out of the rain. I pull away. His eyes flick over my face like he’s trying to memorize it. “I’ll be right back,” I say gently, and my arm slides from his grasp.
I jog along the shoulder until the truck appears around the bend. I unlock the door and climb into the driver’s seat. The cab is dry, my leggings slick against the leather seats. Rain pings against the hood. I turn the key in the ignition and blast the heater.
Outside of the short drive through the orchard the other night, it’s been years since I’ve driven stick, but my foot moves to the clutch out of pure muscle memory.
I check both ways for cars before whipping a U-turn on the empty road.
The wipers whine across the windshield. I lean into the steering wheel and squint through the rain.
I slow to a stop beneath the covered bridge. Callan limps to the passenger side, climbing inside.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.” I wipe my phone against my leggings, but it only streaks the screen with moisture. I can’t open the map.
“No,” he says. “Let’s go back to my place.”
“You can hardly walk,” I say. “You need to see a doctor.”
He shakes his head with his jaw set. “It’s a sprain. It’s happened before. I’ll be fine.”
I hesitate. “Cal—”
“Please,” he says firmly.
I don’t argue, instead focusing on the road.
We’re quiet until we reach town, at which point he has to give me directions to his house.
It’s on a crowded side street threaded with power lines.
A flatbed trailer sits on wheel chocks in the short driveway outside a shingled, rustic Cape with twin dormer windows.
A wave of unexpected nerves slams into me. “Is your dad going to be home?”
“Probably,” he says, popping open the side door. I hop out and walk around to the passenger side to make sure he’s able to get out all right. He slides to the ground with a grunt. “I’m fine, Lenore. Really.”
“Sorry,” I say, wringing my hands. We cross the lawn and huddle in the shade of the porch while he unlocks the front door.
We trail water inside even after wiping our shoes on the welcome mat.
The living room is quaint, the walls peppered with a few photographs.
Thomas Bradford dozes in a recliner with his legs beneath a throw, looking smaller and grayer than the stout groundskeeper I remember.
His scarred hand, absent the three fingers he lost to a log splitter on the farm, hangs limp over the arm of the chair.
Paws click on the vinyl flooring and a golden retriever appears in the threshold to the kitchen.
His fur has turned white around his pinkish, snow-bleached nose.
At the sight of us, he descends into clumsy full-bodied wiggles, his collar jangling and tail thwacking against furniture.
I squat down to greet him while Cal tries desperately to shush him. “Good boy,” he hisses. “Go lie down.” I scrunch my face against Duke’s frantic licking. Cal snaps his fingers and points. “Go, Duke.”
Reluctantly, Duke retreats to a large dog bed in the corner and rests his head between his paws, giving us the eyes. “Good boy,” Cal whispers again, and waves for me to follow. We creep up the narrow stairs to the second floor.
A short hall opens to a single sparsely decorated bedroom with an unmade bed.
Diffused gray light washes in through a dormer window.
“It used to be my parents’ room,” Cal explains behind me.
My gaze settles on the bluebill duck decoy, sitting on the nightstand with a tatty paperback and a bottle of Tylenol.
“Dad and I traded rooms a few years back when he got tired of dealing with the stairs.”
Light leaks through a cracked door, and I peer behind it into a cramped bathroom, the counter littered with various attachments to an electric shaver.
I turn to find Callan sitting at the foot of the bed, watching me. Damp hair curls across his brow. “Sorry it’s not cleaner,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“It’s all right.”
He gets to his feet, flinching when he puts weight on his ankle. “Let me find you something to change into.” He shuffles over to the dresser. “Here,” he says, tossing dry clothes at me. “You take the bathroom. I’ll get changed out here.” He rifles through the drawers.
“Do you need me to help?” I ask uncertainly.
“I’ll manage. Go get comfortable.”
I slip into the bathroom and the door snicks shut behind me.
My reflection above the sink resembles a drowned rat.
I strip out of my sopping clothes, including my bra and underwear, and hang them over the shower rod to dry.
I change into his roomy Boulder Beach State Park T-shirt with peeling letters and a pair of flannel pajama pants, cinching the drawstring tight so that they don’t slide down my hips.
I emerge a moment later and find him sitting with his back against the headboard in a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, his uninjured leg crooked at the knee. His other leg is stretched out with his sweatpants pushed up his calf, a dusky bruise blooming around the ankle.
I set my phone beside the duck decoy on the nightstand. “You really should’ve let me take you to the hospital,” I say, sitting down on the edge of the mattress.
His shoulders hunch in a stubborn shrug. “I’ll go to urgent care tomorrow.” I give him a skeptical look, and he tacks on an earnest “Promise.”
I draw my legs up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged to face him. “I want to talk,” I say, “about us.”
A quiet laughs slips out of him and he lets his head tip back against the headboard. “Words every guy wants to hear.”
“You were never just a distraction for me, Cal,” I say softly. “Not at the wedding, and not now.”
His throat bobs and he fingers the drawstring on his sweatpants, the corner of his mouth hitching in something sadder than a smile.
“I never meant to get in the way of what you came here to do. Grief, it’s—you know, I haven’t experienced it the way you have.
I didn’t know whether you were interested in me because you were feeling alone, or vulnerable, and I was”—he lifts his shoulders in a weak shrug—“convenient.”
I crawl toward him and take his face into my hands.
“You are anything but convenient,” I say, the words throttled with emotion.
Hurt flickers uncertainly across his face.
“This is the worst possible moment for me to be falling for someone, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
We live three hundred miles apart. My entire life is in shambles. How is any of this convenient?”
His fingers curl around my wrists, not pushing me away, but holding my stare.
His skin smells like rain and the woods and him.
“It’s not just that. I’ve been selfish, because at some point, I stopped caring whether I was a convenience.
I wanted you so fucking bad.” His eyes flick back and forth between mine, subdued in the gloomy light, more gray than blue.
“I’ll be whatever you need me to be, Nore. ”
He presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist. “Promise me one thing.”
My heart stumbles over itself. “Shoot.”
“I want us to be honest with each other, even when it’s hard to hear. Even when it’s hard to admit,” he says softly. “You need space, you let me know. I want less space, I’ll let you know.”
I purse my lips in a wet, ridiculous smile. “What happens when you want more space?”
Cal shakes his head. “Won’t happen.”
“But you’ll let me know if it does. Kick me out of your house if you have to, if the mood strikes. But you’ll tell me.” I search his eyes, my fingers curling along his jaw, inching us closer until our foreheads brush together. “I’m trusting you to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you,” he mutters, and then I kiss him.