17. Liam #2
Was she resting, or had she already buried herself in work again?
Had she remembered to eat something? The image of her limping slightly when she walked slammed into me.
I’d noticed it when she got out of the car yesterday.
She had brushed it off with that familiar shrug of hers, the same way she brushed off most things that mattered.
Zoey pretended a lot of things were nothing.
Was she pushing herself too hard again? Was she hunched over that laptop right now while Markie shouted obscenities in the background? Had she remembered to take the pain medication, or had she decided she didn’t need it the way she didn’t like needing help?
There was nothing I could do about any of that from here.
Work usually solved that kind of restless energy. If my hands stayed busy, my thoughts tended to follow. Except, it wasn’t working so well today.
Mr. Harlan was glowering at me. It took me a moment to realize he had been speaking again, and I had missed most of it.
I spoke before he could gather enough momentum to start over.
“Mr. Harlan,” I said quietly, “do you have anything better to do this morning than come over here and yell at people drinking coffee?”
Pete made a small choking sound behind me and I heard him turn away, probably hiding a smile.
Mr. Harlan’s mouth opened again, but no sound came out.
His shoulders dropped a fraction and the anger drained from his face so quickly it caught me off guard.
The reaction stirred the same surprise inside my chest. I hadn’t meant to snap at him.
Frustration had slipped through the edges of my control without permission—that almost never happened.
I ran a hand over the back of my neck and forced myself to slow down.
This was not about Mr. Harlan.
The tension sitting under my ribs had a different source entirely, one that had followed me across the property.
I was worrying about someone who didn’t belong to me, someone who had made it very clear she preferred handling things on her own.
The realization settled heavily in my gut.
I was not behaving like my normal self, and the cause of that problem was currently sitting in a kitchen an hour away with blue hair and a stubborn refusal to let anyone take care of her.
Mr. Harlan looked down at the gravel. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t.”
The answer grabbed my attention immediately.
Wind moved through the trees behind us while Mr. Harlan studied the ground for several seconds, his shoulders slumping as though something had drained out of him.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Darlene used to keep me busy.”
The name settled between us. Pete straightened slowly behind me and the shift in his posture told me he recognized it too. Mr. Harlan continued staring at the gravel as he spoke.
“She died two years ago.”
The words came out flat, but they still carried weight.
“I keep thinking I’ll find something to do,” he continued. “Somewhere to go. Something to fix.” He gave a small shrug. “But the house is already fixed.”
Pete shifted quietly behind me.
Mr. Harlan cleared his throat. “So now I walk around complaining about noise.” He attempted a smile that faded almost as soon as it appeared. I recognized the shape of it. Grief had a particular presence that was hard to miss once you knew it.
“Do you like venison stew?” I asked.
Mr. Harlan blinked at me. “What?”
“I’m making dinner tonight. Seven o’clock.”
He stared at me, confusion replacing the frustration that had been there earlier. I suspected the invitation surprised him as much as it surprised me. If I was honest, I needed something to occupy my thoughts this evening anyway.
Pete watched us with open approval.
Mr. Harlan frowned. “You’re inviting me to dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Because you don’t have anything better to do.”
Pete laughed.
Mr. Harlan studied me for a few seconds longer before nodding. “I guess I’ll see you at seven,” he said, then turned and walked back to his house without another word.
When he disappeared across the property, Pete looked at me, his eyebrows nearly in his hairline. “You’re collecting strays, kid.”
I picked up the axe. “He seems lonely.”
Pete studied my face while I brought the axe down. The log split cleanly in half, and I stacked the pieces beside the shed, one at a time.
“You been doing a lot of thinking today,” he said.
“Yes.”
“That usually means trouble.”
I adjusted the pile of wood. “Maybe.”
Pete nodded slowly. “Blue hair.”
I rolled my eyes and let my silence answer for me.
Dinner started quietly, which suited both of us.
Mr. Harlan sat at my small kitchen table with the bowl cradled in both hands while the stew cooled.
He leaned over it slightly, studying the contents with the careful attention of someone encountering an unfamiliar object.
The seriousness of his inspection made me pause at the counter longer than necessary while I wiped down a surface that was already clean.
“You cook often?” he asked.
“Not really. This stew is the only thing I’m mildly successful with, and that’s only because it’s so simple.”
He tasted the stew with obvious caution, as though the bowl might contain something unpredictable. A second bite followed almost immediately. I watched the tension in his shoulders ease a little as he continued eating.
“Well,…it’s good,” he said.
“I’m glad.”
For several minutes, we ate without conversation.
The cabin filled with the quiet sounds that come with a simple meal: spoons touching ceramic, chairs shifting slightly against the floorboards, the low creak of the wood stove settling.
The wind outside made the tree branches slap against the windows every now and then.
Mr. Harlan eventually leaned back and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “You live out here alone?”
“Yes.”
He nodded as if confirming a fact he had already suspected. “Darlene wouldn’t have allowed that.”
I looked up from my bowl.
“She liked people,” he continued, glancing around the cabin again. “Neighbors. Guests. Hell, anyone who wandered through town long enough to sit down at the table.”
His gaze moved slowly across the room. “This place would’ve been full if it were hers.”
The cabin was orderly. Every surface served a purpose. The furniture sat where it needed to sit, the shelves were organized, and the stove warmed the room efficiently when it was cold.
It was also very quiet.
“She dragged me everywhere,” he said. “To the lake, up hiking trails. Farmers’ markets. Church picnics.” His mouth curved faintly. “I complained the whole time.” The small smile lingered for a moment before settling. “I liked it. She knew I liked it.”
“How long were you together?” I asked.
“Forty-two years.”
The number settled into the room with a weight that surprised me. Mr. Harlan lowered his gaze to the table as if the memory lived somewhere on the surface of the wood.
“Forty-two years of waking up next to the same person,” he said slowly.
“Forty-two years of knowing someone would be sitting across from you at dinner.” His thumb moved along the napkin, smoothing a fold that didn’t need smoothing.
“You don’t realize how much of yourself lives inside another person until they’re gone. ”
The words were quiet, yet the meaning inside them carried force.
Forty-two years.
I couldn’t imagine it.
For a long time, my life had been defined by movement.
It was easier to leave a place before anyone expected too much from me than to stay long enough to risk failing people who depended on me.
New towns, new work, temporary arrangements that ended before anyone looked too closely at who I was or what I carried with me.
At the time, I had told myself that suited me. Freedom sounded better than admitting I simply didn’t trust myself to stay.
Pine Hollow had changed that, even if I rarely allowed myself to think about it.
Somewhere along the way, the work here had stopped feeling temporary.
Pete and Nora had stopped feeling like coworkers, and their routines had started to matter to me.
They had started to matter to me. The lodge had become a place where I woke up each morning, already thinking about what needed to be fixed, checked, or prepared before anyone else noticed.
I had put down roots here.
The part I still kept guarded told me that letting people depend on you carried weight. The closer someone stood to the center of your life, the more damage you could do if you failed them.
That possibility had always made distance feel safer.
Mr. Harlan was describing a life built beside another person for forty-two years, a partnership steady enough to shape decades of shared direction.
That kind of closeness required a level of trust I had never fully tested.
Mr. Harlan took another bite of stew. “You ever married?”
“No.”
“Ever come close?”
I thought about the people who had crossed my path over the years.
There had been friendships and occasional relationships, connections that lasted for a while before the natural pull of different lives carried everyone in separate directions.
None of them had ever settled into the center of my world.
“No,” I said.
Mr. Harlan nodded slowly, as if that answer confirmed something he had already suspected. He focused on the stew again, turning the spoon through the broth.
“Darlene used to say people aren’t built for too much quiet,” he said after a moment.
He glanced around the cabin as he spoke, taking in the small table, the single chair, the orderly surfaces that rarely changed from one day to the next.
“She hated eating alone,” he continued. “If she knew someone in town was by themselves, she’d find a way to invite them over for dinner. Didn’t matter if they barely knew each other.”
He gave a small shake of his head.