16. Silas
Chapter sixteen
Silas
Ipull up outside Norah’s rowhouse ten minutes earlier than I need to and sit there with the engine idling before I shut it off.
The late morning street is quiet after everyone has already gone where they need to be. A couple pushes a stroller. A man and woman sit in rockers on a wide wooden porch while a FedEx truck makes a slow turn at the intersection.
And here I am sitting outside a human woman’s house ten minutes early, with a picnic basket on my passenger seat and a book of poetry wedged beside it that I’ve been having misgivings about from the moment I stashed it in the car.
The basket is Logan’s idea. Not the basket exactly—the observation, delivered two days ago with characteristic economy: if I was going to see her, I’d take her somewhere that has nothing to do with work.
Not a bookshop. Not a hardware store. Not a bar.
Plan a pleasant afternoon that looks intentional.
First, I noodle it out. After our last conversation, Logan was hardly on board with me seeing Norah. I can only decide that by facilitating it, he’s only hoping to push it faster to its conclusion.
I packed the basket myself, already more effort than I give most things that aren’t business-related.
Turkey and Swiss sandwiches made with a dollop of mayo and a smidgeon of brown mustard on fresh rye.
Fruit salad I cut up myself, fresh from the farmer’s market.
A bottle of lemonade because it seems right for an afternoon boating at the lake, and because I don’t drink alcohol in the middle of the day.
A soft, plaid blanket folded and tucked beneath everything else so the basket would sit level.
And the poetry book.
My gaze moves to it again, resting on the spine where it’s wedged against the side of the basket.
I picked it up off our home library bookshelf three days ago.
Not exactly on purpose, mostly because I recognized the cover.
And when I looked down at what was in my hand, it was a collection I’d been required to read for a college literature class.
I’d read it once and held onto it because I was too lazy to sell back my textbooks.
Also, the thought ran through my head: she runs a bookshop. She has opinions about everything that’s ever been written. She would either find this interesting, or she would find it amusing. But either way it would be better than showing up with nothing but sandwiches and lemonade.
That reasoning had seemed sound.
Now, sitting outside her house with a book of love poems for a leisurely row on the lake sounds pathetically cliché and cringeworthy.
I’m about to take it out.
My hand moves toward the basket. I stop and look at the front door instead.
Logan’s words have been running underneath everything for two days. Wolves don’t flirt. We don’t experiment. When instinct locks onto someone, it changes things.
He wasn’t wrong. That’s the part I keep returning to. He looked at the situation and called it correctly, and I’ve been avoiding the word ever since because naming it means I have to deal with it.
Real things require decisions. Routes, accounts, territory, negotiation; all of it has edges I can work with. This doesn’t.
My wolf has been certain about Norah since that first afternoon in her bookshop.
My method of dealing with it is by putting myself in her vicinity.
That’s not dealing with a problem. That’s following the pull without calling it what it is—what my father warned against, what Logan described as not thinking clearly.
They’re both right.
I’m also not leaving.
The front door opens.
Everything else is inconsequential.
Norah comes out onto the small stoop and pauses to shift the strap of her bag on her shoulder. Before she looks up, I take her in.
She’s in a loose white tank and faded cutoffs, already summer-tanned, a wide-brimmed hat flapping in her hand.
The freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks aren’t hidden with any makeup.
She’s totally spontaneous and carefree-looking this afternoon.
Her brown hair is piled up in a knot, allowing the sun to catch and shine upon the strands of light auburn. My breath catches slightly.
She spots the truck.
Her face does the thing I’ve noticed since the first time I saw it—the open animation of a person who has decided they won’t manage their reaction.
It lasts about a second before the brilliant smile follows.
Then she’s coming down the steps with her easy pace looking for all the world like she hasn’t given this morning a single anxious thought.
That’s the thing about her I find most disorienting.
I push the door open and step out.
“You’re early,” she says, crossing the sidewalk toward me.
“You’re ready,” I say, because explaining why I’m ten minutes early reveals more how I feel about her than I care to get into right now.
“Only because you wouldn’t tell me where we’re going.” She stops a few feet away, looking at me with the pointed amusement of someone who came prepared. “Which, for the record, is risky behavior.”
“It’s a surprise.”
“That doesn’t make it less risky. What if I’m a killjoy and hate surprises?”
I walk around to the passenger side and open the door before she can continue.
“Get in the truck.”
She leans toward the seat and her attention drops immediately, going straight to where I knew it would.
The basket.
Her eyebrows lift in a slow arc. “Is that a picnic basket?”
“It might be.”
She straightens and looks at me, amused and warmer underneath it.
“You packed a picnic,” she says.
“You’re getting in the truck.”
She laughs, the real one, unguarded and easy, and climbs into the seat. I close the door and circle back around, and by the time I’m behind the wheel, she’s already eyeing the basket with the interest of someone who has decided it’s going to yield its secrets eventually.
“Can I open it?” she asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not there yet.”
She leans back with her arms folded, performing patience with theatrical commitment. “Not a reason.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
“You’re very protective of this basket.”
“You’re very interested in it.”
“That’s because you won’t let me look. Withholding is a strategy that works on exactly no one.”
She lifts the lid and peeks inside, side-eyeing me, daring me to stop her.
“Fruit salad.” A pause. “Are those grapes?”
“Yes.”
She peers closer, the look on her face suggests I have made a significant error in judgment. “Grapes have no business in a fruit salad. Grapes are a snack fruit. They’re best eaten out of hand.”
“Noted,” I say.
“I’m being persecuted.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
She elbows me. I jerk away in mock pain and when she looks extremely satisfied with herself, I start the truck and pull away from the curb.
The drive takes us out of Larkin’s working edge and onto the stretch of road where the buildings give way to trees. The canopy thickens until sunlight breaks across the windshield. Norah watches without talking. She doesn’t fill every silence, and I like that about her.
After forty minutes, the lake comes into view through the trees, and she leans forward slightly.
“Oh.”
Only that. Soft, the soft sound of someone pleasantly surprised by what I’ve brought.
The road curves, and the lake opens fully; wide under the mid-morning sun, the water catching the light in long moving sheets.
A narrow wooden dock extends from the shore, and a small rental shack sits half in the shade of an old oak.
The shack is quintessential, the kind of place that has been renting boats on this lake for fifty years and has no interest in modernizing.
“You rented a boat,” she says.
“I did.”
She turns toward me with a smile that has a warning in it. “This is either incredibly charming or a terrible idea.”
“Why would it be a terrible idea?”
“Because if you tip us over,” she says, “I’m going to blame you for the rest of your natural life. That’s not an idle threat. I will bring it up at every available opportunity for as long as either of us is breathing.”
I pull into a spot under a maple tree and cut the engine.
“Have a little faith.”
“That depends,” she says, stepping out of the truck. “On how recently you have rowed a boat.”
I hesitate.
She catches it instantly.
“Oh no,” she says.
“It’s been a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Define long.”
She laughs as we head toward the dock, shaking her head with the energy of someone who has accepted the situation and intends to enjoy it nevertheless.
The dock boards squeak under our weight and the blue lake laps against the pilings, the sound clean and rhythmic.
“I know for a fact you’re the only one bothered I haven’t rowed a boat since Kit Scouts.”
Her eyes widen. “Seriously? Is that like Cub Scouts, but for wolves?”
I look at her expression, filled with open-faced wonder that almost has me wishing like crazy there had been Kit Scouts to join when I was young.
I bury my face in my hands, feigning apology, then laugh. “No. I made that up. But it has been twenty years since I’ve rowed a boat. Happy now?”
“You’re incorrigible,” she says, shaking her head.
I step into the boat first. It rocks considerably more than I expect.
Norah stops at the dock and looks down at it. “I knew it,” she says.
“It’s fine.”
“That didn’t look fine. That boat looked like it was giving us a warning.”
I take the picnic basket, nestle it on the floor, and hold out my hand.
She takes it, her grip tightening as she steps down, and the boat rocks again with her weight. She grabs the side with her free hand.
“Silas.” It’s said more as a warning.
“We’re not falling in,” I tell her.
“I think that’s up to the boat.”
I push us away from the dock with one foot and take up the oars. The first pull is uneven, the second worse, sending us at an angle that has no navigational logic. Norah watches for approximately ten seconds before she laughs hard, her head thrown back as the boat drifts sideways.
“You’re fighting it,” she says.
“I’m not fighting anything.”