Chapter 10
The morning is brisk and dense with a fog that hung over my Jeep the entire ride home from the hospital, blotting out the sunrise and turning it into a haze of orange rising over the trees.
The weather matches my mood. Last night’s shift was a mess from the minute I clocked in.
An elementary school kid whose oxygen had dropped so low from pneumonia that he had to be admitted.
An elderly woman who came in from the ambulance with a visibly broken arm from taking a fall alone in her house.
A man who could have been my mom’s age who didn’t make it after a terrible motorcycle accident.
That patient is the one who lingers with me the entire car ride home, the sound of his monitors flatlining echoing in my ears.
I just want to be in the cabin on the overstuffed leather couch. Out of my scrubs and in something comfier. Something stupid on the TV.
More than that, I don’t want to be alone, and that’s a new feeling.
I let out a relieved breath when I pull into the short driveway leading up to the cabin and see Stevie’s truck parked out front.
She hasn’t started back to work yet, but her schedule is still unpredictable, and I’m never quite sure if she’s going to be home when I am.
It’s what I was hoping for when she moved in.
I haven’t had a roommate in years, and I’ve been thankful for it, but I haven’t minded having Stevie around.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve even enjoyed it.
The cabin is quiet when I let myself in, an old sitcom playing softly on the TV. Stevie is asleep on the couch, her hair sprawled around her in a halo of dark brown, the sweatshirt she’s wearing riding high on her torso, exposing her tan stomach.
The weather has been too unpredictable to decide to turn on the heat yet, but the damp cold outside has dropped the temperature inside the cabin.
It’s finally chilly enough to justify the switch, but before I head for the thermostat, I pluck one of the throw blankets from the chest by the fireplace and drape it over Stevie.
She stirs, and I back up as quietly as possible, avoiding the creaky floorboard in the hallway as I make my way to my bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m showered, dressed in a threadbare hoodie and sweatpants, and letting myself out onto the back porch, a steaming mug of black coffee in one hand and my phone in the other.
I missed a video call from Evan during my shift, so I call him back now.
He’s an early riser like me, a by-product from our ranching days, so I know he will be up.
My niece answers on the second ring, her gap-toothed smile and freckled cheeks filling the entire screen.
“Good morning, Clara girl. What are you doing up so early?”
“Uncle Jack!” she screams loud enough to send the birds in a nearby tree flying off, and I have to suppress a grin. She hasn’t learned volume control yet, which drives Evan and his wife, Kate, bonkers, but I love it.
“How is my girl?”
“She woke up at five twelve this morning,” Kate yells in the background.
“Is that so?” I ask my niece and she grins wickedly, nodding.
“Yup. Mommy said a bad word.”
“Happens to the best of us,” I reply with a shrug. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s doing yoga.”
My brows lift beneath my hood. “Really?”
“He said he needs zen.”
A laugh barks out of me. “Maybe I should take up yoga.”
“It seems boring. You should do something more fun.”
“I run.”
Clara wrinkles her pert little nose, eyes the same color as my own disappearing beneath thick brows. “That’s worse.”
“Not an athlete, Clara girl?”
She shakes her head, blonde hair swishing around her pajama-clad shoulders. “I like to dance, though. I need to get good at it for when I grow up and become a singer.”
“A singer, huh?”
She nods, a proud smile curling the edges of her mouth. “I got picked to sing the lead song in our Christmas musical.”
“Really? That’s amazing,” I tell her, the stress of the long night beginning to slip away like the morning mist, evaporating beneath her sunshine.
“Can you come see it?”
As quickly as my tension was dissipating, it clings back onto me, not ready to let go. “I don’t think I can this year.” At her frown, I say, “But I’ll try my best.”
I avoid looking at Kate’s face in the distant background of the screen, unable to face the disappointment there.
“You know.” I change the subject. “Your Uncle Jack sang on stage the other night.”
“You did?” Clara asks, eyes going wide, her disappointment in me forgotten as quickly as it came on. I don’t deserve her love.
“It was karaoke.”
Evan’s face appears on the screen behind Clara’s head, a smirk plastered all over it. “Karaoke, huh?”
“I have a karaoke machine,” Clara says.
Evan nods at her. “Yes, you do. And you are an absolute superstar on it.” He looks back at me, the smirk returning. “I’m sure Uncle Jack was not.” He covers Clara’s ears with his hands and asks, “How drunk were you?”
“One shot of Malort.”
He makes a face, the exact one Clara made earlier, nose wrinkled, brows low. “God, you took a shot of Malort without being shit-faced? I didn’t know that was possible.”
“I heard that,” Clara says, and Evan releases her ears.
“You didn’t hear anything, squirt. Here, let Daddy have the phone. Say goodbye to Uncle Jack.”
“Bye, Uncle Jack. See you at Thanksgiving!”
I wince, and Evan rolls his eyes.
“You’re going to make me tell my daughter you’re skipping another holiday?” he asks once he’s stepped into another room, disapproval thick in his voice.
“I’m going to try my best to be there,” I say, but we both know I’m full of shit.
I haven’t been back to Montana except for a few short trips I couldn’t manage to wiggle my way out of since college.
Since my mom died and our town stopped feeling like home.
Since the entire state seemed haunted with memories of her.
A muscle flickers in Evan’s jaw and I know he wants to say more.
He’s a heartbeat away from pressing when he seems to let it go.
I guess he decided it’s not worth it today, but I know that won’t last forever.
Every few months he gets it in his head to push on me like a bruise until we get into an argument about how I work too much and how he expects more of me than I can give.
We never discuss her. She’s an unspoken ghost haunting the both of us.
Evan stayed in Monanta trying to hold onto whatever piece of her she left behind, and I ran away, hoping the memories of her would fade and hurt less.
I don’t know if either of us have succeeded.
But right now, at least, Evan decides he’s too tired or too disappointed to pick at our biggest wounds. His voice is tighter than it should be when he asks, “So, karaoke? Malort? How did that happen? Please tell me you weren’t drinking that liquid dirt all by yourself.”
I glance behind me and see Stevie’s hair still draped over the arm of the couch, remembering how it looked beneath the colored lights in Matty’s when she tipped her head back and laughed at my singing.
“No,” I tell Evan, returning my attention to him. “I went with my roommate.”
He arches a brow, and when he speaks, he sounds less tense than before. “Really? You guys becoming friends?”
I think about the question for a moment.
Living with Stevie has been remarkably easier than I expected it to be.
We’re both clean and prefer the quiet. She’s started leaving a light on for me when she goes to bed and I’m at work, and I showed her how to use my moka pot so she could stop using the Keurig to make her coffee.
We’ve found an easy rhythm, one that feels like slipping into a favorite pair of jeans.
And she’s easy to talk to. Fun. Makes me laugh with her dry, blunt humor.
That night at the bar was probably one of the most fun times I’ve had in years, singing badly into a microphone covered in a red foam windscreen as she watched, laughing.
Sharing an order of soft pretzel bites and beer cheese after we finished our burgers.
Ordering more shots of Malort after we’d had several beers, Stevie only admitting it wasn’t too bad once she was too tipsy to notice the flavor.
Piling into the back of a cab after last call because we were too drunk to drive home and asking the driver to play ‘Baby Got Back’ so we could sing along from the backseat.
“Yeah, we’re friends,” I say, and realize it’s true.
I’ve been friendly with lots of coworkers over the years, had flings with girls local to whatever city I was staying in.
But I’ve never really made a friend in any of the places I’ve landed.
One I would want to keep in touch with when I leave after a few months.
But I would with Stevie. I would want to know what recipe she’s cooking in the middle of spring and what shenanigans Myra and Melissa have gotten themselves into.
“That’s new,” Evan says, eyeing me curiously.
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
Stevie is awake when I come back inside, my nose and cheeks chapped from the cold front October brought in with it. She’s standing at the stove, brewing a cup of coffee, the smell filling the entire space.
She flashes me a smile when she sees me, her hair a mess, pillow marks creasing her cheeks. “Morning. How was work?”
Strangely enough, the fog that lingered over me after my shift this morning has started to clear. “It was okay.”
She holds my gaze for a moment, and I wonder what she’s seeing in it. Then it dips to the coffee mug in my hand. “Should you really be drinking that this late?”
“It’s nine-thirty in the morning, Stevie.”
“Yes, Jerry, but isn’t it almost bedtime for you?” She leans a hip on the counter, crossing her arms over her chest. Her sweatshirt has Fontana Ridge High School Cross Country written on it in faded, peeling letters.
I tilt my head back and forth. “Kinda. But coffee was necessary.”
Her gaze softens, roaming my expression, lingering on the tightness in my shoulders and the wrinkles that have taken up permanent residence on my forehead. “Rough shift?”
I let out a breath, digging my socked toe into a lifted footboard. “Yeah, I lost a patient.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, voice tender.
My shoulder lifts in a half-hearted shrug. “It happens, but it never really gets easier.”
She’s quiet for a moment, then pulls a mug from the cabinet, pouring the stemming coffee into it. “Well, you’ll have the place to yourself to decompress for the next few days.”
“Oh?” I’m not sure why that makes disappointment sink in my stomach, heavy as lead.
She nods and blows on her coffee, her hair falling over her shoulders in a thick curtain with the movement. “I’m working on the Airstream today and have dinner at my parents’ house tonight. Then I’m heading out on a two day hike tomorrow.”
“Back at work?”
“Finally.”
“That’ll be nice.”
“Yeah,” she says, but something about it sounds hollow. “You won’t have to deal with me in your space as often.”
“It hasn’t been a bother.” It’s the truth, no matter how much it surprises me.
“No?” Stevie’s brown eyes lock on mine and hold.
“No.” I lean a hip against the counter, and we each take a sip of our coffee in the lingering silence. “I’ll be off work when you get back,” I say. “We could hang out.”
The smile she gives me is small, but her eyes are bright. Whiskey poured over ice. “That would be fun.”
“Fun,” I echo.
Her gaze holds mine for a beat longer before drifting to the clock on the stove. “I better get ready. See you in a few days, Jared.”
“See you in a few days, Stevie.”