Chapter 2
two
. . .
Jace
She’s in my cabin.
I’m three miles up the mountain, dropping a dead ponderosa. The chainsaw screams through the trunk. Sawdust hits my face. The tree cracks, leans, then falls where I aimed.
Clean. Predictable. Not like the woman sleeping in my spare room.
I cut the saw. The quiet returns, but it’s not the silence I crave.
Wind in the aspens. A scrub jay from a pine. A part of my brain that hasn’t shut up since eleven o’clock last night.
I made her coffee this morning. My hands had filled a second mug, set cream beside it, and turned the handle toward the spot where she’d stood last night, looking at the kitchen.
What was I doing?
Four years of my own quiet. Grocery runs. Gas. A nod to Ghost at the pump when I see him. That’s how I like it. Nobody in the spare room...
Mae called at ten-thirty last night. I shouldn’t have answered, but I did.
“There’s a girl sleeping in her car at the trailhead, Jace. In a leaking hatchback. She’s Evelyn’s new consultant. Be a human being for once.”
I should have said no.
I didn’t. I’d already seen her.
I’d needed a quart of bar oil for the saw. Coming back through town, I drove along Main Street, and she was on the sidewalk. Auburn hair frizzing in the mountain air. Wearing an oversized cardigan that didn’t hide her curves with a binder under her arm.
She tucked the binder tighter and adjusted the wool across her chest. But that wasn’t the worst part.
When the afternoon light hit her face, my foot came off the gas before I could think.
Green eyes behind wire-frame glasses. Freckles across her nose. A shape I had no business cataloging.
She’d looked up. Caught me looking.
A muscle ticked in my cheek. I drove the logging road home at fifteen miles an hour above what I should have. Told myself I would not think about her again.
Then Mae called me.
I drove down the mountain in a rainstorm at eleven o’clock at night for a woman I’d told myself I wouldn’t think about.
She opened her car door. Rain on her face. Fogged glasses. Auburn hair plastered to her neck. Her shape was still too much. I had to look away before I could get a sentence out.
I dug my nails into my palm.
Don’t.
But I did.
I drove her to the cabin. Didn’t speak. Showed her the guest room. Closed my door. When was the last time a woman had been in this house?
Not since before my accident.
My grandfather built the cabin. My father lived here after I finished school. I’ve lived here since the accident.
No woman has ever stood in that hallway with a wet cardigan clinging to her body and Spool pressed against her leg as if she had arrived just for him.
My dog.
One sniff and he was gone. Two years of loyalty disappeared in thirty seconds.
I don’t blame him.
I start the saw again. Drop another section. Stack the rounds. The physical work helps. Swing the axe, haul the timber, and load the truck. My body knows what to do.
She’s a guest. The road is out. She’ll be gone when they clear the pass.
I say it to myself three times between trees. It doesn’t help.
My mother left on a Tuesday morning in November when I was nine.
I came home from school, and the house was the same, except for one fewer person in it. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold. He said Your mother isn’t coming back, and then he got up and put another log in the stove.
Dad never said her name again. He fed me, kept the roof patched, and taught me to swing an axe. It wasn’t until after he was dead that I understood the lesson he lived: Need no one and their leaving can’t leave a mark. I’d built my life on it.
After my accident, the woman I’d been seeing stopped returning calls. Friends at the tavern looked past my face, then looked past me. The world got smaller, and I let it.
It worked until last night.
The pass opens. She leaves. That’s how it’ll go. How it always goes.
I work until dusk. Drive home with the bed loaded, my shoulders rigid, and my face tight.
That word stops me. Home. I haven’t used that in four years for the place I sleep and keep my books.
The cabin light is on.
I sit in the truck for ten seconds. Remind myself this is only temporary.
I get out.
When I open the door, it’s warm. The stove is lit. She’s been feeding logs. The cabin smells like woodsmoke and dinner: onions, garlic, and basil.
She’s at the stove with her back to me. Auburn hair in a messy knot. Glasses pushed up on her head. A dry cardigan too big for her.
Rosalind hums. It’s a melody I don’t recognize, but I enjoy the sound.
She hasn’t heard me come in.
I should say something. Move. Take off my boots.
Instead, I stand in the doorway where I can watch her from an angle. It’s my default setting. Looking at the world sideways means nobody gets to look back at you for too long. Mae called me Mr. Side-Eye. Half the town joined in. I earned the nickname.
And right now, it’s saving me. If I look at her head-on, I’ll give myself away.
She shifts her weight from one hip to the other. My gaze catches on the soft curve of her waist above her skirt. The strip of skin at the back of her neck, where her hair has fallen.
My hands fist at my sides.
She turns. Her eyes go wide. She pushes her glasses down onto her nose.
“Oh. You’re back.” Pink rises in her cheeks. Talking fast, she grips the wooden spoon like a weapon. “I made pasta. I hope that’s okay. I found stuff in your pantry. I was hungry. I made enough for two.”
“You didn’t have to.” The words come out rougher than I intend.
“I know.” She holds the spoon tighter. “I wanted to. You gave me your spare room, your coffee, and your dog. Feeding you is the least I can do.”
Spool sits at her feet. He’s made his choice and wants me to respect it. Again, I don’t blame him, but it rankles.
At the sink, I wash my hands. The kitchen is too small for the distance I need.
“Sit down,” she says. “I’ll plate dinner.”
“I’ll eat at the counter.”
“There’s a table right here, Jace.”
My name. She hasn’t said it until now. I sit at the table.
She places a plate in front of me. The pasta with whatever wilted greens she found in the back of my fridge smells better than anything I have cooked myself.
She sits across from me and watches me over her fork.
I eat. It’s good.
“The stove was burning low when I got up,” she says. “I added two logs around noon. I hope I did it right.”
“You did.”
“The draft on the left is tricky. I had to adjust the damper.”
What the fuck?
She figured out the damper. My grandfather installed it backward and never fixed it because nobody else in his life needed to know.
“You notice things.”
“Occupational hazard.” Her smile reaches her eyes.
Such an open expression hasn’t been directed at me in years.
“I’m a book consultant. I notice what people read, how they organize, and what they reach for.
Same skill with a stove, I guess. You pay attention to how something works, and it tells you about the person who built it. ”
She’s talking about my grandfather’s stove, but she’s looking at me as if reading my spine. I push back from the table and take my plate to the sink.
“Thank you,” I say to the sink. “For the food.”
“You’re welcome.”
As I wash my plate, I imagine her staring at my scar.
“Jace?” she asks.
I glance her way.
“Can I ask you something? Two things, actually.”
My hand tightens on the dish. “Depends.”
“What’s your last name? Mae mentioned it, and I forgot.”
Easy one. “Redmond.”
She nods. “So, Jace Redmond. Do you always eat standing at the counter?”
“When it’s just me.”
“But tonight you sat down.”
I don’t have an answer.
I turn. She stares at me with an expression I cannot read, and my skin feels too tight. “'Night, Rosalind.”
“Ros. Everyone calls me Ros.”
“Goodnight, Rosalind.”
Her nose scrunches.
When I reach my bedroom, I close my bedroom door and stand on the other side of it, my throat pulsing.
She learned my stove. Sat at my table. Made me sit across from her where I could smell her vanilla scent.
Familiar thoughts about her leaving surface but offer no comfort.
Footsteps sound in the hallway. She must be going to the guest room. A door closes, but I don’t feel any better. I plop onto my bed.
Spool scratches at a door. Not mine. Hers.
A door clicks open. “Hey, buddy. Come on in.”
The door closes.
My dog sleeps with her. My cabin smells like her. My table has a second plate on it for the first time in four years.
I lie down. The dark offers no escape.