Chapter 3
three
. . .
Rosalind
I need something to do. Anything. The cabin’s quiet feels heavy. Jace is up the mountain, and I have Spool, who doesn’t seem to mind my endless ramblings. I clean the cabin, my mind percolating on Evelyn’s inventory lists.
That evening, Jace takes a seat at the table without being asked. I place the plates, then sit across from him. We eat in silence.
I’ve logged forty-one words today. Thirty of the words were functional: Coffee’s there. Towels in the hall closet. Weather’s supposed to clear by Thursday. Road’s still out. The other eleven were single-syllable answers.
If only tracking his words were enough, but his hands have become my new obsession. Wide palms. Long fingers. Knuckles scraped from today’s work. His right thumb has a faded scar across the pad.
Jace Redmond also holds the fork like a tool and eats with a stillness that pulls me in. He stares at the plate, fixed, as if held there.
I look at my plate. My stomach clenches.
Hell. This is more than an observation. This is... dangerous.
The next day, while Jace is up the mountain, I work at the kitchen table. Evelyn’s inventory lists consume me as I build a lending catalog on index cards and match titles to households I haven’t visited yet, using her notes. I love losing myself in what people read.
The delivery issue, which has stumped Evelyn, prompts a deep dive. An hour passes, and then another, until a pattern emerges. Why didn’t I see that before? Clustering twelve cabins into one loop negates the need for four separate trips.
As I design the batching system and write it up, my hand cramps, but I don’t stop. This is too important. Once I’m finished, I call Evelyn from the porch.
“Ros,” she marvels, “you just saved me six months and a second driver.”
After we hang up, I settle on the porch, enjoying the fresh mountain air. Success warms me, even if the cabin I’m working in belongs to a man of few words who has barely met my gaze since I arrived. Spool’s paws click on the porch. He sits at my knee.
I scratch behind his good ear. “Don’t tell anyone, but your owner piques my… interest.”
Spool sighs and lies on my foot.
In the afternoon, I study his books for real.
That first night, I was too wet and exhausted to see more than the shelves and the stacks. The second, everything was still too new. Now the books have a hold on me.
The living room shelves are packed three deep in places. Paperback westerns with cracked spines, the paper so soft it gives under my thumb. Thrillers aren’t organized. Literary fiction is shoved in between two volumes of WWII history. A whole shelf of poetry hides behind larger books.
A copy of Lonesome Dove with worn pages held together with a rubber band captures my attention. I get down onto the rug and pull books out one at a time.
The poetry is the surprise. Wendell Berry. Mary Oliver. James Wright. A first-edition Kenyon on a top shelf.
I’d filed Jace Redmond under grumpy mountain man, possibly unsafe, and waited for data to confirm or refute. Now I’m not sure what to think.
The front door opens. Boots. Sawdust. Pine and the faint scent of saw oil. He stops in the doorway, my cross-legged form on the floor, holding the McMurtry paperback. The air jams.
I swallow. “You have incredible taste.”
His lips thin. “I read.”
“What are you reading now?”
He pulls off his work gloves one finger at a time, his gaze flicking to me, wary. “Cormac McCarthy.”
“Which one?”
“Blood Meridian.”
“God, that book wrecked me.” My skin prickles. “Two days, and then I couldn’t read anything for a week. Nothing felt big enough to follow it.”
His eyes find mine. Not angled. Straight on, for the first time. Dark eyes, recalculating. Surprise breaks through as if I speak a language he thought was forgotten. Three seconds. Maybe four.
Then he drops his gaze, hangs his gloves on the hook, and walks to the kitchen.
I sit on the rug, and my lungs are tight. I have a feeling I’ll carry those three seconds like a stone in my pocket.
By six-thirty in the morning the next day, the coffee system has become my new skill. The dented percolator. The grounds in the tin above the stove. The burner that runs hot.
As I pour myself a cup, Jace’s boots sound in the hallway. Then he stands in the doorway, silent as usual.
“Morning,” I say.
“You figured out the percolator.” His voice rasps with sleep, then his eyebrows lift, a flash of surprise before his expression snaps back to its usual guard. “Move.”
The kitchen is tight, but I stay by the counter. “I’m almost done.”
My words don’t stop him. He reaches past me for his mug on the shelf. His chest presses against my shoulder. Solid and warm through his flannel shirt. A jolt goes through me.
Worse?
His scent. Pine. Cedar. Man.
My breath hitches. We both freeze.
Jace steps back, mug in hand. His gaze is on the floor.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he says to the mug before heading out of the kitchen.
Spool follows him. The screen door opens and closes.
My shoulder burns from his absence, and I grip the counter.
Men have touched me like they were settling. Careful and generous for wanting me at all. Jace Redmond touched me for a second and a half to reach a mug, and his touch was far from deliberate. When he froze, the paralysis spoke a truth his limited words couldn’t.
Up until now, my record for being wrong about men has been perfect. Still, I cross my fingers.
Mid-day, Jace is on the mountain somewhere. Spool naps on the porch. I’m supposed to finish the catalog cards for Evelyn. Instead, I reorganize his bookshelf.
I pull every book off. Dust the shelves. Rebuild the collection from scratch.
Forget organizing them alphabetically or by genre. I go by instinct.
Westerns by the window where the afternoon light falls. History at eye level, where a tall man might look first. Thrillers on the bottom for easy grabbing. Literary fiction beside the armchair, where he reads the challenging books. Poetry near the bedroom door, Berry at his bedside.
Lonesome Dove gets a spot on the shelf closest to his armchair. Spine out. Rubber band and all.
I step back.
I have reorganized a man’s bookshelf without permission. A recluse whose cabin defines his world and whose books are his core.
Waiting for Jace to come home, I brace myself for what I’ve done, something that can’t be undone. My heart thrums, the good idea long gone. What remains is the girl who tries to make herself indispensable.
Mother’s heirloom silver, her meticulous arrangements, and her explanations are all a performance of competence, earning her the right to be there. That performance is wired into me.
More so here. I want to belong, like McMurtry and Berry, not as a guest but as a person meant to be here.
Spool sits in the doorway. His one ear is forward as if he has opinions.
I wag my index finger at him. “Don’t judge me.”
He licks his nose. And all I can do is… wait.