25. Shepherd
Shepherd
The thaw came the way thaws always came on this ridge. Not gradually. All at once, on the first morning after the second storm finally fully passed, like the mountain had been holding its breath and finally decided to let it out.
The sound of it woke me before anyone else.
I lay in the bed in the main room with Noa tucked against my chest and listened.
Outside, the gutters were running. Actually running.
Water moving for the first time in weeks, dripping off the edges of the roof in steady irregular rhythms, the kind of sound I’d forgotten I missed.
The snow on the porch had started to shift, releasing the boards back to themselves.
Somewhere down the slope a branch I’d been worried about cracked and dropped its load with a soft heavy whump.
The world was unfreezing.
I lay very still for a long time and let myself notice things.
Noa’s breath on my collarbone. Calder’s arm across her waist, his hand resting on my chest, the way it had come to rest there sometime in the night.
Bo curled at the foot of the bed, his hand loosely around her ankle, his face peaceful in a way I’d only seen on him since the bonding.
The bond hummed between us. Quiet. Steady. Four threads sounding the same low chord.
I didn’t want to move.
I wanted to lie here forever, listening to the roof drip and feel my pack breathing around me and not have to think about anything that came next.
Which was, of course, exactly the impulse I’d spent my life giving in to.
The studied-from-a-distance one. The one where I let the world happen at me instead of going out to meet it.
Noa had told me, in her firm Noa way, that I wasn’t allowed to be the more loving one in secret anymore.
I was beginning to understand that we’d been spending a lot of our time doing things in secret.
Or rather holding back our reasons and preferring to stay in the shadows.
Including the part where I’d spent fourteen years refusing to plan a future on the grounds that planning was a kind of vulnerability I couldn’t afford.
I made myself sit up.
Bo’s eyes opened. He didn’t move. He just registered me sitting up and then went back to his peaceful face when he realized nothing was wrong.
“What?” he murmured.
“The thaw’s here.”
He listened for a moment. Then he nodded once. “Yeah.”
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
I disentangled myself carefully and got up. I tucked the blanket back around Noa, and couldn’t help but smile as I crossed the cabin to the stove and started the kettle and the kindling I’d laid last night for the fire. The small ritual ground me the way it always did.
Calder was awake by the time the kettle was singing. He met my eyes across the room and gave me one of his small nods.
“Hear it,” he said quietly. “We’re finally coming out the other side.”
“Yes.”
“Means the road’s going to start clearing. We should start talking.”
It was a talk we all knew needed to happen and none of us wanted to be the one to start.
Calder didn’t say anything right away. He just slid carefully out of the bed without waking Noa, pulled on the flannel that was draped over the chair, came to the stove and poured himself coffee from the pot I’d just filled.
The cabin was quiet around us. The drip of the gutters. The pop of the new fire. Noa’s slow even breath from the bed.
“She’s going to want to talk about town,” I said.
“I know.”
“Are we ready for that?”
Calder considered the question. He wasn’t the man he’d been a week ago. The thing in his chest that had been wound tight for seven years had eased, and his thinking had room around it now that it hadn’t had before.
“We’re ready,” he said. “We just have to do the work.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to be the one who runs the planning?”
I looked at him. There had been a time, not even very long ago, when that question would have been an order dressed up as a question. Today it was an actual question. The disagreement we’d have a few days ago had shifted something for him too.
“Yes,” I said. “If everyone wants me to. I’m good at it.”
“You are.”
“And I want to.”
“I’ll back you.”
“Thanks, Calder.”
He nodded once, took his coffee to the table, and sat down to wait for the others to wake up.
I needed something to do with my hands while my head started to try and tempt my into the breakfast. The easiest thing was to turn back to the kitchen and make breakfast.
Eggs. The last of the bacon. Bread that Calder had baked the day before, sliced and toasted in the iron pan.
I was halfway through the eggs when Noa stirred, that small particular shift in the bond that meant she was coming up out of sleep.
I felt her register the warmth of the bed without me in it.
I felt her decide to be all right with that. I felt her open her eyes.
“Shepherd?”
“Mm.”
“Are you cooking?”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s morning and we need to eat. But also because the thaw is here and we need to talk.”
She processed that for a second. Then she sat up. Bo was already moving to help her, his hand at her back, the gesture so automatic I didn’t think either of them noticed it anymore.
“Right,” she said. “OK. Let me get my brain together.”
“Take your time. Coffee’s ready when you are.”
She came to the table eventually, blanket-wrapped, her hair a wreck, her face still flushed with sleep.
Bo helped her into the chair. Calder slid her coffee across to her without needing to be asked.
I plated the eggs. We were the picture of a domestic scene, and I was anxious to find out if that was going to change somehow.
But not right now. Right now, I just wanted to enjoy this perfectly simple moment.
So we ate.
The four of us at the table, the way we’d been eating for weeks now, except today felt different. Today felt like something was about to start.
“Talk to me,” Noa said. To me. The bond carried her noticing that I was the one running this. She didn’t question it.
“The thaw’s here,” I said. “Hear the gutters.”
She listened. Her eyes went wide a little. “Oh.”
“It’s going to keep warming. The road won’t be clear today or tomorrow but probably within the week if the pattern holds. The county’s going to start plowing the lower stretches first. Then they’ll work up.”
“OK.”
“Which means we have time. But we don’t have unlimited time. The bubble is going to pop, and I’d rather we be the ones who pop it on our own terms.”
“Right.”
“So I want to talk about what comes next. Not in a heavy way. I want to make a list. Of things we need to think about. Of things you need to think about. And then we’ll work through them together over the next few days.”
She studied me for a second. Then she smiled. Small and tired and real.
“You’ve been wanting to make this list for days.” I could hear the amusement in her voice.
“Two weeks, probably,” I admitted with a shrug. This was just who I was, there was no point in fighting it now.
“And you didn’t bring it up because you didn’t want to push me.”
“Yes.”
“Shepherd?”
“Yes.”
“You can push me. I’m a grown woman.”
“Noted.”
She laughed. The bond sparkled with it. Bo huffed at my elbow, the closest he got to a laugh, and even Calder’s mouth pulled.
I got up, and went to the shelf where I kept the notebook I’d been writing in for fourteen years, the one I used for the small projects of the cabin.
When I brought it back to the table, I opened it to a fresh page and felt the way it calmed a part of me to see the empty page and know it was the path to figuring everything out.
“OK,” I said. “Categories.”
“Categories,” Noa repeated.
“Work. Belongings. People. Logistics. Health. We’ll go in that order because that’s how the urgency tiers.”
“Health is last?”
“Your ankle is the only thing in the health category, and it’s healing fine. We could do health first if you’d prefer.”
“No. Your order is good. It’s very Shepherd.”
“Thank you.”
I wrote WORK in the margin and underlined it.
“What’s your situation?” I said. “Currently.”
She took a breath. Held it. Let it out. Then she walked us through the shape of her job the way she might have walked us through it in an interview.
Field biologist. Contracted to the regional conservation office that operated out of the ranger station Wes ran.
Ongoing project tracking and data collection for several species in the area for different institutions.
The fieldwork was seasonal. The analysis and reporting could be done from anywhere with electricity and a workable internet signal.
She’d been at it for three years. She liked it. She wanted to keep doing it.
I wrote everything down. The shape of it. The hours. The deliverables. The fact that she had a satellite phone in her field kit that was probably still at the bottom of the creek somewhere with the rest of her gear, but that the office had a replacement for just such a situation.
“Internet,” Noa said. “That’s a problem.”
“We have it. Slow. Not great. Bo wired the cabin up the second summer.”
“You did?” She turned to Bo.
“Mm.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Liked the idea of being able to, and it was something to do.”
“He built half this cabin,” Calder said. “He doesn’t talk about it.”
“OK,” I said, redirecting before Bo went any redder. “So internet is a problem we’ve solved for now but will need addressing again in the future. Slow but workable.”
“OK.”
“What about the office? Wes?”
She thought about it.
“He’ll be reasonable,” she said. “If I tell him I want to keep doing the work from up here, he’ll go for it. He’s lost two field biologists in the last year because of the commute. He’ll be glad to keep me.”
“Will he ask questions?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“The bond mark kind. The are-you-OK kind. The Wes kind.”
“And you’re ready for that?”
She thought about it. Properly thought about it. The bond carried her doing the work, not deflecting.