9. Chapter 9
Mara
That evening, I can tell the weather is wrong just by the light in the kitchen.
Not dark. Barely past three. But everything has gone flat and greenish, the kind of light that makes the white tile look sick. The hand-crank weather radio on the counter mutters about pressure systems in a voice designed to sound calm about things that aren't.
I wipe down the counter for the second time and tell myself I'm not listening for Cole's footsteps.
Owen brought him a drawing for his desk earlier today, and after that the two of them walked the fence line, clicker and all, the way Cole promised.
Then he disappeared into his office and closed the door.
I know the shape of what's coming. He hasn't told me yet, which means he's still figuring out how.
So. Counters.
The door creaks and Owen appears sideways in the kitchen, the way he always does. Like he's not sure if he's allowed yet.
He's got a stack of comics pressed to his chest, edges bent from a hundred readings. He looks at me. At the counter. Back at me.
"What are you doing?"
"Cleaning."
"It's already clean."
"I know."
He thinks about this. "Do you want to read?"
I look at the stack in his arms. The top one has a guy in a red suit on the cover, mid-air. "Sure."
He crosses the kitchen at once, like I might change my mind, and climbs onto the chair before I've even put the cloth down.
The thing about reading comics with Owen is that I'm doing it wrong and he has strong opinions about that.
"That's not his voice," he says, within thirty seconds.
"That's my Titan voice."
"He doesn't sound like that."
"What does he sound like?"
Owen takes the comic, clears his throat, and delivers four words in a voice so gravelly it's basically gravel. He hands it back. I stare at the panel.
"He sounds like he has a cold."
"He sounds serious." Owen is very patient with me. "Try again."
I try. He winces. I try lower, and he tips his head. Not approval. Tolerance. We get through two pages before I mispronounce a character name and he takes the comic back entirely.
"I'll do it," he says.
"Please."
He does the voices. Titan sounds like gravel. The villain sounds like gravel but angrier. The love interest sounds like gravel but thoughtful.
"Owen. Does everyone in this comic sound the same?"
He looks at me sideways. "It's Titan's story. They all sound how he hears them."
I sit with that. It's an eight-year-old's logic and also completely airtight.
"Okay," I say. "Keep going."
He does. Four pages without stopping, one hand on the comic, the other jabbing at panels.
"Titan has a code," he says.
"What's the code?"
"Three rules." He doesn't look up. "Rule one is you don't hit first. Rule two is you don't lie to people, the ones that trust you." He turns the page. "And rule three—"
He stops. Thinks about it.
"Rule three is you don't leave anybody. Even if it's bad for you. That one's the most important." He shrugs, eyes still on the panel. "Anyone can be strong. That's not the thing."
There's no irony in his voice. No performance. He just means it, the way kids mean things before they learn to hedge.
He turns to the next panel and keeps going. Explaining the illustration. Titan's hand stretched toward someone below him. The way the artist drew his face, mouth set, no hesitation.
I look at my hands in my lap.
My left thumb is pressed flat against my right palm. I didn't put it there. I'm holding my own hand without deciding to, the way you reach for something when a room goes unsteady. I make myself stop. I set both hands on my knees.
He's talking about a comic.
He is eight years old and he has been thinking about this rule, this specific rule, not the other two, in the quiet of a house where one of the people who should be here isn't. He has thought about it enough to fumble for it the way he did.
To land on it like it was already decided, a long time ago, before he had the words.
I don't say anything.
I don't trust what would come out.
He reads three more pages. His voice slows somewhere in the middle of page eleven. By the last panel it's barely above a murmur. Titan grabs the ledge and the crowd is watching and...
He stops.
His head tips sideways and lands on my arm.
I go still.
He's out. Completely out, the comic still open on the counter in front of him, his breathing gone slow and even. The way only kids can do it. One minute here, the next gone.
I don't move.
This is the part I'm not supposed to let happen. Getting used to the weight of him. The fact that he picked my arm without thinking about it.
I know I'm in trouble. I've known for a while.
I'm still sitting there when I feel it. The particular quality of being watched.
I look up.
Cole is in the doorway. One shoulder against the frame, looking at Owen. Then at me. Then at Owen again. His face goes through the almost. The expression I've started to recognize, the one that opens and shuts before it commits.
He doesn't pretend he wasn't watching.
"He does this often?" My voice comes out quieter than I meant it to.
"Yeah." His is low too. "Always fighting it. Always loses."
"Titan's code put him out on page eleven."
The corner of his mouth pulls, not quite a smile, the shape one leaves behind after it's gone. He looks at his son for another long moment, unguarded in a way he never is when Owen's awake to see it, then straightens and steps back into the hallway.
Quiet. Gone.
But not before his eyes did the thing I have started to clock. They went to Owen, and then to my arm under Owen's head, and then to the line of my throat where I had turned to look at him. Half a second of it. The kind of look a man does not know he is making.
I sit in the flat light and breathe.
We kissed earlier today. In this kitchen.
Neither of us has said a word about it since. That's its own kind of loud. The not-saying. A whole day of it, the two of us moving around each other like the floor might give.
I get Owen settled with a blanket on the sofa and move to the kitchen to figure out dinner. End of a block of parmesan, half a jar of sauce. I'm hunting through the pantry when I find it.
Top shelf. Behind the oatmeal. A bag of gummy bears, half-eaten, sealed with a clip.
Every green one picked out.
There's a little ziplock next to it, just the greens, saved. A headlight and a deck of cards.
I stand there with the bag in my hand.
A small ache lodges itself under my ribs, blunt and specific. Not soft. The way a bruise announces itself when you didn't know it was there.
He planned for a power outage and thought about what Owen would need in the dark.
Not the practical things. The specific things.
The orange and red ones, separated out, ready.
The green ones saved somewhere, for what?
In case Owen changes his mind. In case he's wrong about the green ones and wants them later.
Cole prepared for every version of the storm.
I put the bag back exactly where I found it.
I'm grating the parmesan when Cole comes in from the office.
He moves past me toward the sink and his hand grazes the small of my back.
Half a second. That's all.
But his palm doesn't just skim. It lands fully, just for that half-second, the whole flat of it through the cotton of my shirt, fingertips curving slightly at my side like they know the shape of me, the heel of his hand warm against the base of my spine.
He doesn't slow down. Doesn't pause. His hand is there and then it isn't.
The cotton is warm where he touched it. More than it should be from something that brief.
I feel it travel up my back and into my shoulders and I make a decision not to shudder that takes more effort than it should. My hand on the grater goes useless for a full second, the motion stuttering, and I start again. Slower. Even.
Across the kitchen his shoulders are set very still.
He knows exactly what he just did.
We don't look at each other.
This is the count I keep without meaning to. The inches and the almosts. A man saving green gummy bears and standing six inches away in this kitchen at one in the morning and choosing, every time, not to close it. Days now of me counting the choices and pretending I'm not.
Except a few hours ago he closed it. And now we're back to this, the not-touching, except the not-touching has a new floor under it.
"How long until the storm?" I ask.
"Sheriff's estimate was tomorrow morning." He fills a glass. "Could move faster."
"Should we do anything tonight?"
"Generator's covered. Pantry's covered." A pause. "I'll put the inside panels on the east windows tonight."
"I can help."
He looks at me. A beat. Then a nod. "Okay."
I follow him to the mudroom and that's when I see the scale of it.
The boards aren't stacked lumber. They're pre-cut. Each one labeled in marker at the corner. EAST 1, EAST 2, KITCHEN N. Sized to the exact frames they'll cover.
The big ones are for the outside, holes pre-drilled to bolt straight into the exterior trim.
A second, slimmer set is labeled the same way with an added I—KITCHEN N-I, EAST 1-I, for interior panels that drop into the window wells behind the glass. Belt and suspenders, for a storm that probably doesn't need either. Hardware bagged and clipped to each board.
A backup generator hums somewhere through the wall. He mentioned it this morning. He didn't mention it runs the whole house.
On the workbench sits the hand-crank weather radio from the kitchen, freshly wound, the kind you don't need power to run.
I clock all of it without saying anything.
Nobody up here boards windows. I asked Junie what people do when a storm comes and she said "fill the tub and find the candles."
This is not how normal people prepare for weather.
This is how someone prepares who decided, at some point in his life, that he will not be caught short again.
Who looked at a Vermont forecast and reached for a coastline's worth of plywood because it was the most he could do, and the most was the only setting he had.