18. Rafe
RAFE
Low key was the plan. Jenna and I agreed on it in the loft the morning after, both of us practical about it in a way that felt like good sense at the time.
No announcements, no hand holding in front of the twins until we're sure, nothing for this town to grab onto and run with before we've even figured out what we're running toward ourselves.
The plan survives exactly one day.
"You're different," Gunny says, setting a crate of empty growlers down on the bar with more attention than the task requires, studying me the way he studies a fermentation tank that's running a little warm.
"Different how?"
"Lighter. You hummed something at the kegs this morning. I've worked here six years and never once heard you hum." He crosses his arms, settling in like a man who's got all day and intends to use it. "Something happen?"
"Nothing happened."
"Sure." He says it the way he always says it, easy and completely unconvinced, and goes back to the growlers with the specific satisfaction of a man who already knows the answer and is only asking to watch me squirm.
"For the record," he adds, halfway to the door, "I'm not upset about it. Took you long enough."
"Took me long enough for what?"
"To let something good happen to you without finding a way to sabotage it first." He says it lightly, but there's nothing light underneath it, and he's gone before I can figure out how to respond to that, boots echoing down toward the taproom like he didn't just land something that's going to sit with me for the rest of the day.
I don't hum again for the rest of the morning, which does nothing to fix the actual problem, because apparently the damage announced itself the second I walked in.
I check the brew schedule twice, more out of habit than necessity, and catch myself smiling at nothing in particular somewhere around the second read-through.
Gunny doesn't say another word about it.
He doesn't have to. His whole face is doing the talking for him every time I glance up and find him watching me with the barely restrained satisfaction of a man who called this months ago and is finally getting to collect.
By midmorning I need to run into town for a part the compressor guy special ordered, and Jenna offers to walk over with me on her break, which is exactly the kind of small, ordinary thing two people who are trying to be careful shouldn't do in a town this size. I know it. I do it anyway.
The Busy Bean's got its usual midweek crowd when we walk in, half the counter stools full, steam fogging the front windows the way it always does this time of year.
Maggie's behind the register, and she gives me a look over Jenna's shoulder that says she's already filed this moment away for later commentary.
I order two coffees, black for me, cream and no sugar for Jenna, and I don't think anything of it until I turn around and find Dot Higgins three feet away, blow dryer still faintly audible from wherever she left the salon unattended, staring at the two cups in my hands like they're physical evidence in a case she's been building for weeks.
"Two coffees," Dot says, in the tone of a woman delivering a verdict.
"It's cold out."
"Two coffees, ordered together, by two people who walked in together.
" She's already got her phone half out of her purse, thumb hovering with the readiness of someone who's done this before.
"I'm just saying, the corner booth at the diner seats forty for a reception, and Pastor Dan's calendar opens up fast if you ask nice. "
"Nobody's getting married, Dot."
"Nobody's saying they are." She tucks the phone away, entirely unconvinced, already composing something behind her eyes that I can practically see forming. "I give it until spring. I'm very rarely wrong about these things."
"You were wrong about the Petersons."
"The Petersons don't count. That was a special circumstance.
" She sniffs, unbothered by the correction, the confidence of a woman who trusts her overall track record more than any one miss.
She waves a hand like the exception disproves nothing, takes her own coffee from Maggie with a satisfied nod, and heads for the door still glancing back at us twice before it swings shut behind her.
Jenna's laughing before Dot's even off the sidewalk, the kind of unguarded laugh that catches in her whole body. "We are so bad at this."
"We really are."
"How does she work that fast? We've been dating for a month."
"Small towns don't do subtlety. I should've mentioned that before you signed on for any of this.
" I hand her the coffee, and our fingers brush longer than the transfer requires, which is exactly the kind of thing that got us caught in the first place and exactly the kind of thing I have no intention of stopping.
"By lunch she'll have a guest list started. "
"By lunch she'll have a caterer."
"Give her until two. She's thorough."
"Should we be worried?" Jenna threads her arm through mine without seeming to think about it, easy in a way that undoes some of the low key resolution we made this morning.
"About Dot? No. About everyone else finding out because of Dot? Absolutely."
"Gunny already knows."
"Gunny knew before we did." I hold the door for her at the corner, more habit than chivalry at this point. "I'll give him credit. He never actually said anything until I looked happy enough to have earned an interrogation."
"That's oddly generous of him."
"He likes being right more than he likes being nosy. It's the only thing keeping this town's gossip network from moving even faster than it already does."
We walk back toward the brewery slower than the errand requires, and for a few blocks the whole complicated math I've been running underneath the good mood quiets down enough that I almost manage to forget it's there at all.
Back at the office, the part I picked up sits on the desk unopened for exactly as long as it takes my phone to ring, an unfamiliar number with the area code from three states over, and something in my chest drops half a degree before I've even answered it, old habit recognizing the call before my conscious mind catches up.
"Rafe Montgomery."
"Afternoon, Mr. Montgomery. Denise, from the accounting office.
" Her voice is brisk and familiar in the particular way of someone who's made this same call at the same time every month for years running.
"Calling about the Castillo Fund. This month's transfer processed clean, same as always.
I wanted to confirm the amount before it goes out. "
"Same as last month. That's fine."
"It usually is." A pause, papers shuffling somewhere on her end.
"Given the season the brewery's had, I wanted to ask what I ask every year around this time.
Any interest in increasing the disbursement?
Nothing's required. Some years you say yes, some years you don't, and either way it's your call entirely. "
I think of the shelf in my loft, the frame that's sat there face down for longer than I've let myself think about, and the answer comes the same way it always does, quiet and immediate and not up for debate.
"Increase it. Same percentage as last year."
"I'll get that processed today." Denise doesn't ask why, never has, this many years into the same call and she's never once pushed past the amount and the confirmation, which is exactly why I've kept the same accounting office this long. "Anything else I can help you with?"
"That's it. Thank you, Denise."
"Take care, Mr. Montgomery."
I hang up fast, faster than the conversation actually requires, and I'm halfway through resetting my face into something ordinary when I catch movement in the doorway and realize I'm not fast enough.
Jenna's standing there with a stack of invoices in one hand, close enough that she had to have heard some part of it, and the careful blankness on her face tells me she heard more than none.
"Sorry," she says. "Didn't mean to walk in on anything."
"You didn't." It comes out too fast, clipped in a way I hear a half second after I say it, and I watch her clock the speed of it even as she doesn't say anything about it directly.
"Something about a fund. A wire." She sets the invoices down on the corner of the desk, careful not to make it look like she's fishing, though we both know exactly what she's doing. "Everything okay?"
"It's fine. Just a standing thing with the accountant.
Nothing that needs your attention." I hear how thin it sounds even as I say it, a door closing a half second too fast to read as casual, and something flickers across her face, there and gone, the specific expression of a person deciding this particular door isn't hers to force open.
"Okay." She says it simply, the same way she said it in the loft the night of the storm when I told her the photograph wasn't ready yet. No argument in it, just acceptance, and I know she'll bring it up again eventually. "I'll leave these here."
"Thanks."
She goes, and it isn't ten minutes before Gunny finds a reason to stand in the same doorway, dropping off a delivery slip that could have waited until closing.
"You look different," he says, propping a shoulder against the frame.
"I look the same as I did an hour ago."
"You don't. An hour ago you were humming.
Now you look like you're bracing for a number you already know you won't like.
" He doesn't come in any further, doesn't push, just watches me with the same steady attention he's given every piece of broken equipment in this building since the day I hired him. "Everything squared away?"
"It's fine."
"Sure." He says it softer this time, none of the teasing edge from this morning, and something about the gentleness of it is almost worse than if he'd pushed. "You know where I am if that changes."
"I know."
He leaves it there, picks the delivery slip back up like it was the actual reason he came in, and heads back toward the taproom, and I sit with the particular kind of quiet that follows a person choosing not to ask the one question that actually matters.
The compressor part sits unopened on the desk, my coffee going cold beside it.
I've spent six years keeping this particular door shut, careful and consistent, the same amount every month, the same silence around it, the same reason for both that I've never said out loud to another living person in this town.
I've gotten good at storms. I can read one coming before anyone else notices the sky changing. This isn't weather, but it feels the same, something building just past the horizon, and for once in my life I don't have a single useful preparation for what's headed my way.
Jenna let it go today. She won't let it go forever, not when she read that locked door as accurately as she did. Some part of me already knows exactly which direction this is coming from.
It just hasn't arrived yet.