Chapter 18 #2
Friday afternoon, Jasper finds me in the workshop. He’s been spending nights with Gabby, or at least I assume he has because I haven’t been tracking his movements carefully. He’s got that look in his eyes like he’s disappointed in me. Dogs are good at expressing disapproval.
“I know,” I tell him. “I’m being a coward. I’m just trying to do the right thing here.” This is what I say to a dog. This is the level of emotional articulation I’ve achieved after thirty-one years: I’m confessing my cowardice to an animal who once ate an entire boot and showed no remorse.
Jasper nudges his nose against my hand. He doesn’t leave. He stays there like he’s keeping watch, like he’s not going to let me disappear completely into the silence.
By Saturday, Marco is eating lunch at Dotty’s café, and Dotty is absolutely not serving him. She’s standing behind the counter with her arms crossed and she’s saying, very calmly, to everyone in the café, that the kitchen is having equipment issues and they’re not serving food until further notice.
The kitchen has no equipment issues.
What the kitchen has is a proprietor who’s decided that Marco is a problem and she’s going to solve it by making his stay in Ashwood Falls as uncomfortable as possible.
He goes to the bakery to find Gabby.
I don’t see this directly, but Birdie texts Piper who texts me. Marco is there. He’s brought flowers. He’s brought the brand of charm that works in cities, on people who don’t know him. He’s trying to convince her.
And Gabby is doing what Gabby does when she’s overwhelmed and scared—she’s talking.
She’s telling him that she’s building something here.
She’s telling him about the bakery, about the community, about the man who builds furniture.
She’s telling him everything except the part where she doesn’t want to go back to Austin or to him because she’s finally found a place where staying makes sense.
That’s what Birdie reports.
And then Birdie told Piper who told me—and this is the part that makes my chest tight for reasons that have nothing to do with fear and everything to do with knowing I deserve this—Jasper walks into the bakery and he growls at Marco.
Jasper has never growled at anyone. Jasper greets everyone with the enthusiasm of a dog who believes the world is good and people are great. Except Marco. Jasper takes one look at him and he growls like he’s protecting something precious and he’s decided he’s a threat.
Gabby kneels down next to the dog and she looks at Marco over Jasper’s head and she says, very calmly, “I think you should go.”
“Is it the furniture maker?” Marco says.
He’s still being charming. He’s still not understanding that charm doesn’t work in a place where silence speaks louder than words and actions matter more than intentions.
“Is that why you don’t want to come back to Austin?
Because of some mountain guy in Alaska?”
“It’s not about Jace,” Gabby says. But her voice says otherwise. Her voice says: it’s exactly about Jace, and also about me, and also about what I’ve built here, and also about the fact that you never made me feel the way he does.
“I can make you happy,” Marco continues.
“You already didn’t,” she says. “You cheated on me with my best friend. You stole my business. You made me feel worthless. That’s why I came to Alaska. That’s why I’m staying.”
According to Birdie who told Piper who told me, she says it like it’s decided.
Like the decision has been made and she’s announcing it.
She says it while holding a dog who’s growling like he’s never growled before.
She says it like she’s not waiting to see if I’m going to come back from the silence and fight for her.
Because I’m not. I’m in my workshop, avoiding the very man she told to leave. I’m sanding wood like it’s going to fix anything. I’m choosing safety over presence and I’m calling it protection when it’s abandonment.
Marco leaves on Sunday.
Morris moves out of the way—I don’t know why or how, but he decides he’s done blocking the car and he wanders back into the forest like he was never there.
The rental car drives away with a man who flew to Alaska wearing loafers and left understanding that some places don’t want what he has to offer.
And I still haven’t spoken to Gabby.
The silence has won. It’s colonized my entire life. It’s made me safe and isolated and completely incapable of being the person she needs, which is a person who shows up and uses words and doesn’t retreat into the comfortable distance of not-feeling.
I am the silence. The withdrawal. The thing I told myself I wouldn’t become.
The workshop is quiet. Jasper is gone. Gabby’s at home.
Probably realizing she was right to keep moving.
Probably understanding that the man she loves is the same as the man she was running from—someone incapable of staying, someone incapable of presence, someone whose silence is a form of abandonment.
I destroyed it. With the silence. With the fear I thought I was done carrying. I’ve used fear as an excuse for cruelty. I’ve used safety as a shield against love.
And now she’s gone.
Not gone from Ashwood Falls—she’s not going back to Austin. I believe her when she said that. But gone from me. Gone from the possibility of us. Gone from the place where I was building something that might have lasted.
The silence is loud now.
It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.