Chapter 6 #2
I watch her set a paper bag on the counter.
She does not look at me while she does this.
She takes things out of the bag in order, the way you take things out of a bag when you do not want to drop any of them.
A container of soup. A small roasted chicken in foil.
A loaf of bread. A small jar of jam. Milk.
A carton of eggs. A packet of tea. She lines them up on the counter in the order she took them out.
"Town," she says. "I stopped."
"Okay."
"You eat?"
"I had the stew."
"All right."
She opens the fridge. She puts the milk in. She puts the eggs in. She stands with the fridge open a second longer than she needs to and she closes it.
"Long day," I say.
She looks at me.
Her eyes in this light are blue, and I noted them as blue yesterday morning with the cataloging flatness of a woman who has been surrounded all her life by other women who notice eye color, and noted them and set it aside.
In the kitchen light, angry and tired, her eyes are the color I didn't see yesterday.
I sit at the table with my hands around my mug and I look at her and I realize I am looking at her and she is handsome.
Gorgeous, really. Even when she is angry. Or especially when she is angry.
"Long day," she says.
"What happened."
"Nothing I want to bring into this kitchen."
"All right."
"I'm going to eat," she says. "And I'm going to sit down."
"All right."
She pulls out the chicken. She slices half of it onto a plate.
She cuts bread. She stands at the counter and eats the first two bites over the counter without sitting down, the way you eat when you have forgotten to eat earlier, and then she remembers me and brings the plate to the table and sits across from me.
I don't know what to do with my hands.
I sat across from her yesterday at breakfast and I was half a person yesterday and my hands knew what to do because my hands were wrapped in gauze and around a mug.
Tonight I am a whole person and my hands are a thing.
I set them in my lap. I move them back to the mug.
I take them off the mug. I put them in my lap.
She makes me nervous. Something about her makes me nervous.
She sees it.
"You don't have to do anything," she says. "Sit."
"Okay."
“Did you read?” she asks, her eyes moving to her bookshelf.
"Some."
"Which book?” she asks.
"The one by the sofa."
"That one's good." Then, "Slow start."
"I liked the slow start."
She nods. She eats.
I watch her eat.
I have never, in my life, watched a woman eat a meal alone at a table and felt what I am feeling watching it.
I do not have a word for what I am feeling.
I have never thought about a woman this way before.
I have thought about women the way a woman thinks about other women in rooms full of women, which is always partly about measuring.
This is not measuring. This is a thing without a word yet.
Her hands are broad. Her forearms are bare and strong.
The scar is turned away from me but I know it is there, on the far side of her left arm.
She eats with a fork in her right hand and no knife, cutting chicken against the plate with the edge of the fork, the way a woman who has eaten a lot of meals alone in a kitchen eats.
Her jaw works. Her collarbone under the henley moves when she swallows.
Her hair is damp and curls a little at her ear. I am watching the curl at her ear.
She is attractive. I find her attractive. I look at the table.
She looks up.
"You all right?”
"Yes."
"You sure?”
"Yes."
"Did something happen today at the cabin."
"No."
"You look like something happened."
"I looked for the truck keys."
She sets her fork down. Not hard. She sets it down and she puts both hands flat on the table and she looks at me.
"I took them," she says.
"Okay."
"I meant to tell you this morning. I didn't want to wake you."
"Okay."
"I took them because I didn't want you to feel like you had to decide what to do with your whole life at six in the morning with no breakfast and a driver's license that's in the rubble of a house in Redwater.
I took them because if a reporter finds this cabin this week, I want to be the first person you talk to about what happens next.
Not because I wanted you not to be able to leave. "
"Okay."
"That's the truth."
"All right."
"You don't believe me?”
"I believe part of it."
She nods. "Fair."
She picks up her fork.
She eats three more bites without saying anything. I sit with my hands in my lap.
"I don't have a phone," I say.
"Your phone was in the house."
"Yes."
"I'll get you a phone."
"When?”
"This week."
"Not tonight?”
"Not tonight. I'd have to drive into the city. I can't tonight."
"Why can't you tonight?”
"Because if I drive into the city and buy a phone at eight at night, a woman who looks like me, at a store that knows me, that's something somebody will remember on Thursday.
Thursday is the day they are going to put your face on the news.
I don't want anybody remembering me buying a burner phone at eight at night on a Wednesday. "
I sit with that.
I sit with the fact that she is not a firefighter who happened to see the fire. Firefighters who happened to see a fire do not think about what a store clerk will remember on Thursday. How does she know they will put my face on the news on Thursday?
I do not say this.
I say, "What if I want to call someone?”
"Who?”
"A friend in London."
"You can."
"From your landline?”
"From my landline."
"You said yesterday calls from this landline go through a switching station."
"I said a lot of things yesterday. I wanted you to know there were options.
Yes. A call to London from this landline is a trace if anybody goes looking.
A trace for me, and for you if they work at it.
If you need to make the call, you make the call.
I'd rather you wait until we have an untraceable phone. "
"Who is we?”
She looks up at me.
"Me," she says. "I meant me. Sorry."
"All right."
"Evangeline?”
"Yes."
"If you want to leave," she says, "I'll drive you wherever you want me to drive you. Tonight. Right now. I'll put on my boots and I'll drive you. Say the word."
I sit at the table with my hands in my lap and I look at this woman who has lied to me at least twice in a sentence, and I think about saying the word.
I think about it the way I think about picking up a phone.
Seriously. Not as an abstraction. I think about what it would mean to put on a coat I don't have and get into a truck with her and have her drive me to a city where my face is about to be on the news, where my dead husband's name is in every paper this morning, where I do not know which of his associates would recognize me in an airport, where I do not know which of Max's people, whoever they are, would find me in a hotel.
I think about where I would go.
The list of places I would go is very short. It has my father on it, and the friend in London, and a name I cannot bring myself to write down in my own head.
"I don't want to leave tonight," I say.
"All right."
"I might want to leave tomorrow."
"Then I'll drive you tomorrow."
"Or the day after?”
"Or the day after."
"I don't have to decide right now."
"You don't have to decide."
"But I want the truck keys in the drawer."
She looks at me. She does not look away.
"Tomorrow morning," she says, "the keys to the old truck will be in the drawer. Before I leave."
"Okay."
"Tonight," she says, "the keys stay in my pocket. Because tonight I don't want you to drive down a county road in the dark in a truck you've never driven in weather you aren't dressed for after a day of thinking by yourself."
"That's fair."
"Okay."
"Okay."
She finishes the chicken. She takes the plate to the sink and washes it. I watch her wash it. Her back is to me. Her shoulders have come down further. She rinses the plate. She sets it in the drainboard next to my mug.
She turns and leans on the counter.
"I have the sofa," she says. "Same as last night. You have the bed."
"The sofa is too short for you."
Part of me wants her, suddenly. The thought shocks me. Part of her wants her strong arms around me in bed at night.
"It's been short for nine years."
"Max."
She looks at me.
It is the first time I have said her name to her. I hadn't said it yet. I had not even said it in my own head today, because in my head she has been her and the woman and she. Tonight I say it across a kitchen, and the word does something small and clean in my chest.
"Yes."
She looks at me a beat longer. There is hunger in her eyes layered with complexity. Then she looks away.
"Go to bed," she says. "Read. Sleep. I'll be on the sofa. Door's open if you need something. I don't sleep deep."
I stand up. I take my mug to the sink. I rinse it. I set it on the drainboard next to hers.
I walk past her to the hallway.
In the hallway, at the bedroom door, I stop and I turn back and I look at her in the kitchen.
She is still leaning on the counter. She has not moved.
She is watching me the way she was watching me in the chair yesterday morning, and her eyes on me do a thing to the skin of my back I have never felt a look do.
I put my hand on the doorframe. I hold it there.
"Good night," I say.
"Good night."
I go into the bedroom and I close the door and I stand with my forehead against the wood, wondering what on earth I am doing.
I want her.
She might be keeping me as some kind of prisoner and she is lying to me. That is also true.
I get into her bed.
I close my eyes and think about her strong hands on my body and I hear a quiet moan slip from my own lips.