40 #2
He has made me learn how to fish – sort of – as well as dress a wound and read every type of track outdoors.
He tests me on which berries and roots can or cannot be eaten, and how long the range will hold heat if the chimney blocks.
One forgotten jar of honey, it seems, can become the difference between hunger and survival when winter closes the roads.
I know he means well. But believing doesn’t stop the wild and restless part that still wants to run from this place.
Much to his dismay, I promised to stay only until the Crane matter was resolved before going to see my sister. The problem is that Elias and Conall keep redefining what resolved means without ever actually resolving it.
I huff out a breath as I check the last frame on my camera and zoom in. There is only so much detail I can drag out of something before all I’m left with is distortion.
My eyes lift to the mountains again.
The Irishman is tracing whatever Cromwell buried inside the company, but neither man will discuss details over the landline. Whatever information does travel through, I receive even smaller fragments of it: altered records and frightened people.
After so much time, though, ‘it’s being handled’ is no longer enough.
My commitment to stay is one thing. Swallowing roots and memorising emergency plans in case he breaks a leg in a storm? That’s something else.
I look down at the camera and realise I haven’t taken a photograph in several minutes. The same patch of thawing ground has been sitting inside the viewfinder while my mind wanders everywhere else.
I’ve been thinking too much. That’s the real problem.
I hate idling. Hate being still long enough for my mind to echo back.
A shimmer beneath the thinning ice catches my eye. Something silver winds through the dark water, vanishing between two ragged shelves of melt.
Fishing.
By definition, it’s exactly that – forced stillness. I dislike it on principle at this stage and possess no measurable talent for it.
I furrow my nose and look towards the cabin.
For the past week, when he’s not making me hold the fishing rod or spread traps, Elias has been working with Anders and his son, Markus, in what I still call the chain room. He insists he doesn’t know what he’s making it into yet, just that he’ll figure it out along the way.
Bollocks. There’s too much focus in the way he handles those tools, too much deliberation in the clank of iron and the grind of saws. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want me to know yet.
My thoughts disperse as the cabin door creaks open and bootfalls thud across the deck. Low and gruff voices spill out in Norwegian. I don’t catch the words, only their rhythm.
Rising from where I’m crouching by the lake, I let the camera rest against my front and dust the cold from my thighs before tugging my coat tighter.
As I make my way towards the cabin, Markus spots me first – his hair nearly white in the daylight, like the antlers bolted on the inside of the cabin.
He gives me the easy smile of a twenty-year-old, with dimples too deep to fake, and offers a single nod.
English isn’t his strong suit, so we mostly communicate in – nods.
I return the gesture.
Anders’ beard stretches with his own smile – wider, fuller than when I met him. The children in town call him Nisse. Took me a while to realise they don’t quite mean Santa Claus. It’s supposedly the old farm Nisse from their stories – bearded, barn-dwelling and considerably rougher.
Elias comes last, brushing sawdust from his shoulders, though it still clings stubbornly to his hair. His eyes find mine and stay there. He never looked at me that way in prison. Not even during those first nights here, when everything between us was still brittle.
His eyes have softened, but not completely. There’s a weariness to them now. A sadness that sits so naturally across his brow, I’m starting to think it’s genetic. Like those cheekbones.
‘Dyktig,’ I say. A word I’ve come to understand as skilled and capable all in one.
Elias smiles. He winds an arm around my waist, reminding me how hard his biceps are under that thin black cotton. And how the ink over them ripples when those muscles tense beneath me in the evening.
Just for a moment, with woodsmoke drifting from the open door and the scent of cedar clinging to his long-sleeved top, I let myself pretend this is the fragrance of home.
‘Well, glad to see you’ve finally resolved your differences,’ Anders remarks out of nowhere as he begins to settle tools into his pick-up. ‘You seem more at ease, the two of you.’
Elias and I both turn to him sharply, caught off guard, like schoolchildren who’ve been caught doing something naughty.
The bearded man throws us a wink with mischief stitched into the lines of his weathered face.
I sigh inwardly. The only sensible response I can muster.
‘Communication is everything,’ Anders concludes, brushing a curl of wood from his sleeve. ‘By that I mean: your woman talks and you nod, get it?’ He chuckles aloud.
Elias and I share a glance, a crooked smile lifting on his face.
We lift our hands in a wave and plaster on polite smiles one would give to well-meaning people who ask the wrong questions.
For now, nobody knows the truth. We let them believe the story began with love rather than tears and threats. They see slow mornings and warm dinners, their cousin steadier than he used to be, healing beside a woman he’s chosen to keep close.
Perhaps they are not entirely wrong about the healing part.
We are not exactly repairing each other. Some hurt cannot be fitted neatly back into its original shape. But among the jagged pieces, we may be building something that did not exist before, after all.
It’s strange – almost embarrassing – how foreign this feeling is at nearly thirty-four. I’ve lived long enough to convince myself I understood love. I’ve known love. Felt it. I thought Ron had been it.
After all this time I thought I clung to him because he felt safe. He was not merely safe. I loved him – or… loved the people we had once been together. Safety became habit, habit became silence, and neither of us admitted how far apart we had drifted until he chose betrayal over honesty.
I am no longer consumed by anger, but forgiveness still remains beyond me.
What does survive is a reluctant gratitude for the years that were real – even if their ending was not – and for the chain of foolish decisions that brought me here – to Elias, who nuzzles into my hair as though he can breathe me into himself.