Chapter 16
AMY
“Amy?” a voice says.
I start, looking up, realizing I’ve been daydreaming during a meeting. I glance at the other people around the table and clear my throat, tossing out some half-baked observation about the discussion so it doesn’t seem like I wasn’t listening.
Because I wasn’t.
Before I left Granite Peaks, Evan and I went to see his grandpa. We enjoyed the pizza scones and turnovers together, and when Gramps challenged me to a game of chess, I couldn’t turn him down.
It turned out to be an hours-long match, with Evan watching, bringing us drinks, making little comments that drove both of us nearly insane. In the end, it was late enough that I had to go, and Evan took a picture of the board so we could set it up next time.
Next time.
When it was time for Evan and me to say goodbye, I didn’t know how to start or end the interaction, feeling awkward.
I left that first night because I could already tell I was going to get attached to him, and there I was, doing the very thing I wanted to avoid.
When I’d turned to climb into my car, Evan had caught my wrist, pulling me back, wrapping his arms around me and tucking me into his chest, taking a deep breath like he needed the hug as much as I did.
For such a large, burly man, he’s surprisingly and refreshingly straightforward.
“Uh, we’re all done here. Did you have a question?” The lead of the legal team stares at me, her head tilted slightly as she packs papers into a folder.
“No.” I bolt up from my seat, realizing I spent that entire meeting thinking about Evan, about Granite Peaks, about the next time I’ll be able to go up there. It’s like stepping into a different world. Like I can leave everything else behind.
When I get back to my desk—not so much a cubicle as a little section of the open floor plan that belongs to me—I sit down, knowing I should start working on the deposition for another case.
Or I should glance at the list of new leads from the meeting today.
Or, at the very least, I should look at the email Don sent me before he pops up next to me today.
But I can’t focus on any of those tasks. No matter how hard I try, my brain keeps wandering back to thoughts of the cabin.
Of what it was like to have Evan touch me like that.
And the fact that I didn’t get a chance to touch him in the same way. The thought of it sends a shiver through me, and I realize after several minutes that I’m daydreaming again.
“Enough,” I whisper to myself, getting to my feet and turning, walking down the hall, using my scanner card to gain entry into the filing room.
Everything in this room is digital, but these are all the original files from before computers were the default.
Sometimes I come in here just to touch something, and now I find myself searching through the folders, thumbing through the T files.
Thatcher.
I pull it out and read through it. It’s mostly copies of what Evan showed me, up to the point when everything would have gone digital in the 2010s.
Swallowing down the bad feelings in my throat, I turn to another filing cabinet and pull out a different file, picking at random and reading about a family farm seized in 2006.
Four kids, a set of grandparents, and one haggard single mother, just doing her best.
They took the lot with the chickens. In the file, there’s a scribbled note from whoever was doing the fieldwork back then, listing out the animal’s names. Cluckie. Brains. John.
A few months ago, before meeting Evan, I would have told myself that the state was going to take the land from them anyway. That our company coming in and making an offer is just making the best of a bad situation.
But the anxiety and guilt inside me don’t convince me that that’s true anymore.
I pull out my phone and type in the address listed on the page, sucking in a breath through my teeth when I see the manufacturing site on top of where this family farm used to exist.
My stomach feels cold, queasy. I close the file and tuck it back into the drawer, heart thumping loudly when someone comes in, waving casually at me as they pass me by and look for a different cabinet.
I work here. It’s not weird that I’m in this room. But I hurry out anyway, feeling like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.
Amy: Would it please you to know I’m having a moral dilemma at work?
Kirstin: Your pain would never please me. But say more.
I get to my cubicle as I text her, being vague enough not to cross any legal lines but still describing the problem to her. How everything that used to feel satisfying to me no longer does. The guilt that’s been sloshing around in my stomach after that first time up to Granite Peaks.
Kirstin: Maybe I need to visit this place. If it’s having this effect on you, I think I’ll like it.
It’s past five, and I would normally stay longer, but I hurriedly pack up my things before Don can catch me out here, and leave, heart skipping along anxiously in my chest. I haven’t left this early since my first day at the company nearly more than a year ago.
Staying late always felt like the obvious move, a sign that I was willing to work hard. That I was the obvious candidate for the promotion to case supervisor.
But for the first time since I received my orientation packet from HR, I don’t feel that same sparkle, that same drive of motivation when I think about the position.
Instead, I see the names of those chickens in the back of my head and wonder if there’s something better I could be doing with my time.
By the time I get home, the sun is already setting over the mountains in the distance.
I’ve always loved Denver—and still do—but my apartment feels empty, dark.
I’d never considered myself a fireplace person, but now I notice how white and clinical the lighting in my space is.
Plain white Ikea furniture. A throw pillow someone gifted me when I moved in.
Sometimes modern style feels like the absence of character. And considering the fact that I’ve added almost nothing of myself to this place, it feels a lot flatter than it should.
I go through the motions, taking off my makeup, washing my face, and putting on pajamas. Walking to the kitchen to pull one of my meals from the fridge. They come in the mail once a week—organic and chef-inspired, packaged in biodegradable little trays with specific microwave instructions.
When the microwave dings, I carry the food over to the kitchen table and sit down, grabbing my tablet to pull up documents from work, like I normally do. But this time, I can’t bring myself to open the files.
Instead, I pick up my phone and thumb over to the contacts, thinking about calling Kirstin. Texting is one thing, but talking to her in person might really make me feel better.
But when my thumb hovers over her face in the contacts, I find myself tapping on someone else instead.
“Amy?” Evan’s voice is deep, a little bewildered, and it makes me smile, shifting in my chair. “Is everything okay?”
“I don’t only call you when I’m in danger, Evan,” I quip back, that growing, noxious cloud of anxiety in my chest already starting to shrink at the sound of his voice. I peel back the cover on my food and take a bite. “What are you having for dinner?”
“Chili,” he says, sounding confused.
“Again?”
“Chili lasts a long time,” he says. “It actually tastes better the longer the flavors combine.”
“Do you want to know what I’m having?”
“Yes,” he says, instead of sure, which makes my chest flutter. I’ve already plowed past the first part of this call, past the fact that it’s weird for me to call him right now, or maybe at all.
So I tell him about the organic orzo and broccoli. I tell him about lemon pepper chicken and my probiotic drink, which makes him sound even more puzzled.
We stay on the phone when I get up and throw the tray away, and when I go to brush my teeth.
“What time is it there?” I ask him when I climb into bed, which makes him laugh.
“We’re one hour apart,” he says. “Please tell me you have a firmer grasp on time zones than that.”
“Oh, I thought elevation had something to do with it.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“Can you blame me? It’s a lot of fun.”
The line goes silent for a moment, and I realize I’m lying in bed, staying on the phone with him like a teenager.
“Where are you right now?” I ask.
“My cabin,” he says.
“But, like, specifically.”
“I’m in bed,” he admits, and a flare of heat rises up inside me. For a second, I play with the idea of starting something. Would I have phone sex with Evan?
It only takes a second of thinking. Yes, yes, I would.
“Good night, Amy,” he says, as though he can hear what I’m thinking. “I’ll see you this weekend?”
“Yes,” I say, closing my eyes, distraught by the fact that it’s only Monday. “See you then.”