Chapter 8
Graham
“You’re driving too fast,” Mel says.
“I’m driving the speed limit.”
“You’re driving the speed limit aggressively.”
She’s right. My hands are tight on the wheel and I’m taking the curves like the road owes me something and the four miles between my cabin and Connor’s have never felt shorter or longer depending on which part of my brain I’m listening to.
“He’s going to be fine,” Mel says. She’s got her feet on the dash and her hair is still damp from the shower we didn’t finish.
She looks completely calm. I want to study whatever part of her brain produces that calm, because mine is currently producing a detailed simulation of Connor Hayes hitting me in the face before firing me.
“He’s not going to hit you,” she says, reading my mind or my grip on the steering wheel, which is probably telling the same story.
“I didn’t say he was.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“I’m thinking about a lot of things.”
“Name one that isn’t Connor hitting you. Or firing you.”
I take the last curve. Connor’s cabin comes into view through the pines. Smoke from the chimney. Connor’s truck in the drive. Sadie’s car beside it. Ember on the porch, tail going.
“We should have called first,” I say.
“If we call, he’ll know something’s up. If we just show up, it’s normal. We show up all the time.”
“We don’t show up together.”
“We do now.”
I park. I sit for three seconds. Mel reaches over and puts her hand on mine, the one that’s still gripping the wheel, and her touch is warm and steady and I look at her and she looks at me and she’s not worried.
She’s not worried because she knows her brother and she knows me and she knows this is going to be fine.
I’m not sure she’s right. But I’m sure about her, and that’s going to have to be enough.
We get out. Ember meets us at the steps, sniffing my hand, wagging, doing the full-body greeting that only dogs can pull off without looking desperate. Mel scratches her ears and says “hey, sweet girl” and the door opens and Sadie is there with a mug in her hand and a smile that’s warm and easy.
“Hey, you two. Come in. Coffee’s on.”
“Thanks, Sadie,” Mel says, and walks in like this is any other morning, and I follow her because I’ve been following this woman since July even when I was pretending I wasn’t.
Connor is at the kitchen table with paperwork and a half-eaten plate of toast. He looks up. Sees Mel. Sees me. Does the quick scan that every crew boss does when two people show up unannounced: who’s hurt, what’s broken, how much is it going to cost.
“Everything okay?” he says.
“Everything’s fine,” Mel says. “We need to talk to you about something.”
Connor leans back in his chair. Looks at Mel, then at me, then at Mel again. “Okay.”
Sadie hovers near the counter. Mel sits down across from Connor.
I remain standing, because sitting feels too casual for what I’m about to say, and then I sit anyway because standing feels like I’m delivering a verdict.
There is no correct posture for telling your boss you’re in love with his sister.
“Connor,” I say.
“Graham.”
“Mel and I are together.”
I say it clean. No preamble, no explanation, no list of qualifications or caveats. I’ve spent these months managing the distance between me and this woman and I’m done managing and I’m done with distance. The words come out the way clean cuts come: one pass, no hesitation.
Connor looks at me. His face is unreadable for about two seconds, which are the longest two seconds of my life, longer than the seconds I counted with my arm around Mel in a bar, longer than the seconds on the porch in July, longer than every second I’ve spent on this mountain not saying this.
Then he exhales.
“Jesus,” he says. “I thought you were gonna tell me you were quitting.”
The relief hits me so fast I almost laugh. Almost. Mel does laugh, short and bright, and Sadie makes a sound from the counter that might be a gasp or might be a laugh or might be both.
“I’m not quitting,” I say.
“Good. Because I’d have a harder time replacing you than accepting this.” He looks at Mel. “You happy?”
“Very,” she says.
“He treating you right?”
“Connor.”
“I’m asking.”
“Yes. He’s treating me right.”
Connor nods. Looks at me again. Studies me the way he studies a cut line, reading the terrain, calculating the angles. Then his mouth does something I don’t expect. It curves.
“Tell me something I don’t know, Graham.”
I stare at him. “You knew.”
“I’m not blind. You left The Burning Tree three minutes after she walked in. You’ve been cutting the same sections twice since she started doing the books. You said ‘sure’ to the fuel receipts like a man agreeing to his own execution.” He picks up his toast. Takes a bite. “Works for me.”
The room goes quiet. Mel’s mouth is open. My mouth might be open. Connor is eating toast with the calm satisfaction of a man who has been running an operation and the operation worked.
“And you’re okay with this?” Mel asks. “How’d you figure it out?”
“Mel, you showed up on this mountain and the most solid man on my crew forgot how to cut timber. I didn’t need a spreadsheet to figure that out.” He looks at me. “Though she probably made one.”
“I did not make a spreadsheet,” Mel says.
I look at her.
“I made a list. It’s different.”
Sadie is beaming. She’s crossed the kitchen and is standing behind Connor with her hand on his shoulder and her face is doing the thing that Sadie’s face does when she’s happy, which is everything at once.
“I’m so happy for you two,” she says, and she means it with her whole self, the way Sadie means everything. “Graham, welcome to the family. Officially. Though you’ve basically been family since the day Connor hired you.”
“Thanks, Sadie,” I say, and my voice does something I didn’t authorize, a catch, small, barely there, because the word “family” landed somewhere I wasn’t expecting.
Connor stands. Extends his hand. I take it. His grip is firm and steady, the grip of a man who’s shaking your hand because the situation calls for it and because he wants to, and the handshake says everything the conversation hasn’t: I trust you. Don’t make me regret it. Welcome.
Mel rolls her eyes. “Are you two going to hug, or is the handshake the whole thing?”
“The handshake is the whole thing,” Connor says.
“The handshake is the whole thing,” I confirm.
“Men are ridiculous,” Mel says to Sadie.
“They really are,” Sadie says. “More coffee?”
We stay for an hour. Sadie makes a second pot of coffee and Connor asks questions that are practical and real (how long, how serious, what’s the plan) and I answer them because Connor deserves answers and because the answers are easy: five months of thinking about her, as serious as I’ve ever been about anything, and the plan is to be the man she deserves, which is a tall order but I’ve been measuring up to tall orders my whole life.
Mel tells the story of the bar in July. The arm around her shoulders.
“Hey, babe.” Connor’s face goes through something when he hears that part, a flicker of the protective brother, but it passes, because the story ends with me driving her home and saying goodnight and walking away, and Connor knows what that costs a man because Connor is a man who understands what it means to do the right thing when the wrong thing is easier.
Ember falls asleep on my foot. I don’t move it.
Sadie refills my mug without asking and Mel is laughing at something Connor said and the kitchen is warm and full and I’m sitting at a table with people who are glad I’m here, and I think about my cabin on the ridge, the clean lines and the quiet mornings, the single mug and the single plate and the shelves I built for a life that fit a man alone.
It still fits. It just fits more now.
We leave. Connor walks us to the porch. Ember follows, tail going.
“Graham,” Connor says, as I’m stepping off the porch.
I turn.
“You’re still the best man on my crew. That doesn’t change.”
“Copy that.”
“And if you hurt her, I’ll drop a tree on your truck.”
“Noted.”
“That’s not a metaphor. I’ll literally drop a tree on your truck.”
“Understood.”
Mel grabs my hand. Pulls me toward the truck. “We’re leaving before you two start comparing chainsaws.”
I drive us back up the ridge. The road climbs.
The pines thicken. The December air is cool and clean through the cracked window, the warm front finally gone, the mountain remembering itself.
Mel’s hand is on my thigh and the silence in the cab is the good kind, the kind that hums, and somewhere on this mountain Koda is telling Boone, who’s telling Nadia, who’s telling Poppy, and by Friday the whole crew will know and the whole crew will have opinions and none of those opinions matter because the only two people whose opinions matter are in this truck.
I pull onto the ridge. The cabin is there. Same as it’s been for three years, except now there’s a truck in the drive that isn’t mine and a mug on the counter that’s hers and a woman beside me who came back to this mountain for reasons she was honest about from the start.
I turn off the engine. The mountain is quiet. The woman beside me is not going anywhere.
“We’re home,” I say.