Chapter 10
ISLA
The morning they came to take me back smelled of pine, cold air, and wood smoke.
Clark had the truck packed before I was fully awake. I came out of the bedroom to find my suitcase by the door, a mug of coffee on the table, and Clark at the window, looking at the ridge.
"How long do I have?" I asked.
"An hour." He turned from the window. "They're meeting us at the base of the road. Renata and a federal escort."
I sat down at the table, held the coffee in both hands, and looked at the cabin in the morning light. The bookshelves. The woodstove. The two chairs. The table where we'd talked for three days with an honesty I hadn't expected from this, and still wasn't quite sure how to hold.
Clark crossed the room and sat across from me. He set something on the table.
The juniper disc.
Finished. The letter I carved clean in the face of it, the natural grain running through the stroke in the particular way of good wood, as if it had always wanted to become exactly this.
The back is smooth and convex, sized to fit a palm.
The edge finished without fuss, just the wood, just the mark.
I picked it up. It was warm — he'd been holding it, I realized. He'd been holding it since before I woke up.
I ran my thumb over the carved letter. I could feel every line of it.
"It's perfect," I said.
"The grain cooperated."
"I don't think it's just the grain."
He looked at me. "No," he agreed. "It's not just the grain."
I held the disc in both hands and looked at it and thought about the things you didn't expect to find in the places you ended up. I'd gone into hiding and found the first person in three years who'd made me feel like I wasn't doing it alone.
"I'm going to testify today," I said.
"I know."
"And then I'm going to—" I stopped. "I've been telling myself for three years that there was a plan. That there was a step after this one, and I knew what it was." I looked at him. "I don't think I've actually let myself get as far as the step after."
"What do you want it to be?"
I looked at the juniper in my hands. "Something that makes sense," I said. "Something that—" I looked up. "Bitterroot Ridge. Tell me about it."
He was quiet for a moment. "Small. Enough people to have a community. Enough mountain to have genuine problems." He looked at his hands on the table. "The kind of place where what you do matters in a specific way. Where the connection between the action and the consequence is clear."
I looked at him across the table. "How would you describe the people?"
"Honest," he said. "Sometimes inconveniently. The kind who say the true thing instead of the useful thing." He held my gaze. "You'd fit in."
I felt something loosen in my chest. Not dramatically — not the collapse of something held too long. Just the quiet release of a breath I'd been holding since before I could name it.
"I'll need somewhere to be," I said. "After."
"I know a cabin," he said. "Excellent sightlines. Good morning light on the east window."
"Sounds like it might need a couch," I said.
"It desperately needs a couch," he replied.
I stood up. He stood up. I crossed the room and put my arms around him and he held me without ceremony, his chin on top of my head and his arms around me like a fact.
"Thank you," I said. "For the three days."
"Thank you for the questions," he said. "The real ones."
I pulled back and looked up at him. He looked like a person who had built himself according to some internal standard and maintained it in the same way he maintained the cabin: without fuss, without performance, with the simple discipline of someone who knew what things were worth.
"Clark," I said.
"I know," he said. "Go testify."
He kissed me once. Then he picked up my suitcase and carried it to the truck.