32. Norah
Chapter thirty-two
Norah
He says it so softly that for a second I think I misheard him.
Paxton.
I turn the word over in my mind—feeling the weight of it, the shape, what it promises, and what it might actually deliver.
Outside the kitchen window, the last of the daylight has given up entirely, and the hanging lamp over the table has taken over, casting its warm, contained circle of light between us.
It catches in the loose strands of my hair where they’ve escaped whatever I attempted this morning, turning them almost copper where the light hits.
“Three hundred miles,” he says. “Give or take twenty.”
I look at him across the table—his jaw, his eyes, hands resting flat on the wood. He’s not selling this. He’s not dressing it up in anything. He’s telling me that the truth is sufficient and doesn’t need decoration.
It’s extremely inconvenient that I find that attractive.
“And the wolves there—live openly?” I ask.
“More openly than the packs that live in Larkin,” he says. “They still keep pack structure. Territory, hierarchy, all of it. But they’re integrated into the human community. The city made a decision years ago that it was better for everyone if wolves were part of the social and economic structure.”
“That must have taken a long time.”
“It did.”
“And a lot of goodwill.”
“And a few decades of keeping livestock predators from the surrounding farms,” he says. “It turns out to be an extremely effective way of making friends with people who have livestock.”
I consider this. “So, wolves are basically very large, very efficient guard dogs.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“I’m going to use that at parties.”
He tries not to smile. “You don’t go to parties.”
“I go to trivia nights,” I say. “It’s the same principle.”
He looks at me, amused, trying not to show it. I’ve become very familiar with this look. I’m still not immune to it.
“Pack etiquette,” he continues, “is built around territory. If a wolf from outside enters another pack’s region, the respectful thing is to present yourself to the pack leadership. Explain who you’re, what you’re asking for.”
“And if they don’t like the answer?”
“Then you leave.”
“And if they do?”
“Then you don’t.”
I trace the rim of my mug with my fingertip. “So, wolves have a guest policy.”
“In a way.”
“Very civilized,” I say. “We have Yelp reviews.”
He gives a sorta smile.
I look past him, through the open doorway into the living room, where the bookshelves run along the far wall in the familiar order I’ve been rearranging and tinkering with for three years.
Currently, biography bleeds into literary fiction because I ran out of shelf space in March and made a pragmatic decision I’ve been second-guessing ever since.
“You didn’t come here tonight just to tell me about another town,” I say.
I know what he’s not saying yet. I’ve known since he sat down. He’s a man who has already decided to leave Larkin and is simply working up to the words. Paxton is not a casual word. He didn’t come here to tell me about a pleasant small town three hundred miles away.
“What aren’t you saying?”
He draws a slow breath. “We could go there.”
The words arrive without drama, making them heavier, coming without announcement.
I blink once.
“You mean leave.”
“Yes.”
“Like—move there.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Whenever you want.” He paused. “Honestly, the sooner the better.”
“You mean, tonight?”
“If you want.”
“You’d leave your pack,” I say.
“Yes.”
I sit back in my chair and look at him, eyes wide. I keep my expression neutral, so it doesn’t say yes before he finishes the sentence.
“Yes? What about the family business? Your job?”
He pauses. “Yes.”
“And Logan and Henry?”
He absorbs that. The acknowledgment of the cost crosses his face and stays. “Yes.”
I hold his gaze. “That’s a lot to walk away from.”
“It is.”
“And you’ve thought about this.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, “since my father gave me an order.”
There it is. He was given an ultimatum. The message was clear enough. Ditch the human woman. Step back in line. Don’t continue to be a problem. I can’t look at him now. I’m afraid he’ll see the sympathy in my eyes, and I can’t do that to him.
“So, the situation has become dire, your father is non-negotiable to a solution, and leaving Larkin is the only logical outcome.”
He doesn’t speak, only nods.
That hits differently than anything else he’s said.
Because it means this isn’t impulse. It’s the opposite of impulse.
Sitting before me is a man who has been thinking through pack meetings, stilted dinners with his father and brothers, expectations that don’t include me.
This is a conclusion he’s arrived at slowly, the only one that makes sense to him.
I push back from the table and stand, because I need to be on my feet for this, and I cross into the living room and stop in front of the bookshelves.
My fingers find the spines. The navigation of a person who has touched these books so many times that her hands know them by feel rather than by sight.
Toni Morrison. Willa Cather. Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, slightly battered, which I keep meaning to replace and don’t because the battered copy is the one I’ve actually read.
The Virginia Woolf with the broken spine from the summer I read three times in a row.
The first edition Wind in the Willows I bought at an estate sale outside the city and still feel slightly giddy about owning.
Three years of this.
Three years of building a life, predictable and sound.
Of building a scrappy business, book by book.
I stand there with my hand on the Woolf, and I think about Penny, who told me to be careful.
I think about Jewell, who has patiently listened to me for three years, at all hours of the day and night.
I think about The Last Chapter, only half mine on paper, and the Mr. Clancys of the world.
And then I think about two guys in an alley who told me to step back, and a city that keeps tightening, and the men outside a Coulter Cleaners who saw the wolf the same time I did.
I think about all of it.
But most of all, I think about my life as I had imagined when I moved to Larkin. A life with a fulfilling job and a man I love passionately. I think about what’s been desperately missing from my life.
My heart leaps, and hope surges in my chest. I’m frightened at the hope, the irrepressible joy I feel. That this man in front of me is offering us the terrifying solution with a simple ’we could go.’
“What can you promise?” I ask, without turning around.
His voice comes from closer than I expect. He’s crossed the room, is standing a few feet behind me, the warmth of him sending shivers up my back.
“I can promise we won’t have to hide.”
I turn around. He’s right there. Close enough that I have to look up at him. No guard in his expression, nothing held back. Just him, looking at me. More certain than I’ve ever seen him.
“That’s a powerful sales pitch,” I say.
“It’s the truth.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s what makes it powerful. And if the Paxton pack says no?”
“Then we keep driving.”
I look at him for a long moment. “You’d really do that?”
“Yes.”
“Keep driving. Past Paxton. Into whatever comes next.”
“Yes.”
I exhale slowly. “That’s either the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me or a description of a road trip from hell. I genuinely can’t tell which.”
“Could be both,” he says.
“It really could be,” I agree.
I walk back toward the kitchen, past the couch with the pillows I crocheted and the coffee table I bought at the flea market and painted coral.
It’s a lived-in space, slightly eclectic and a bit disordered, but it’s a space that has had me in it long enough to know the shape of me. At the table, I pick up my phone.
I open Penny’s messages.
I type: Going out of town for a bit. I’m good. Talk soon.
I read it back. It’s not enough, and it’s not untrue. It’s all I have right now, because the full version of this conversation requires more than a text message can hold. Penny deserves the full version, and she’ll get it, just not like this.
I send it.
I put the phone in my bag. Tomorrow I’ll text Abby, Mark, and Jesse. I’ll ask them to cover for me until Abby can hire another staffer. And then I’ll text Jewell. Because out of all the people on my list, Jewell will read between the lines, and she’s the one I think I’ll miss the most.
If I stop and think about this, I’ll be arguing with myself even with this beautiful man willing to throw his life away with both hands to be with me.
Safely. Boldly. The fact is, that I have been choosing things my whole life: leaving a lucrative job, becoming self-employed, building a real business out of orneriness and a belief that everyone needs books in their life. This is only another choice.
I move through the house fast—packing up whatever I need to moving on, to start over in a new city with whatever I can carry in two hands.
A sweater Penny knitted for me. A pair of jeans.
The good boots, because wherever we’re going, I’m not showing up in the run-down Keds with the frayed canvas edges.
The toiletry bag that has been half-packed since I went to Rochester six months ago to visit college friends and never fully unpacked.
At the bookshelf I stop.
I run my hand along the spines one more time.
The Woolf. Rudyard Kipling. A Willa Cather collection.
My adored Wind in the Willows. My fingers pause on a small slim volume tucked between the collected Woolf and a paperback Didion—a poetry collection, slightly worn, one that I’ve had since college and have moved with me to every rental since, the one I reach for when I need to remember that someone else has already put words to the thing I’m trying to feel.
And then I reach for the tote hanging by the door.
I pick up a picture of Penny and me with our Mom, taken several months before her death, all of us wrapped up in a crocheted throw I keep over the back of the sofa. I put it in the tote.
Just that one.
Silas watches me carefully. “You know once we’re set up, I’ll have the guys pack all this up and send it by truck.”
“I know,” I say, zipping the bag, “but at the risk of having some random guys rifle through my underwear, this better not be a terrible mistake. I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“That seems fair,” he says.
“And you’ll owe me a new bookshop.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Not a chain,” I say, lifting the bag. “A bookshop with a soul.”
“Noted,” he says.
I sling the strap over my shoulder and look around the living room one last time. The mismatched coffee tables, the mid-century modern lamp I restored with so much care, the beaded curtain in front of the coat closet, and the shelves full of everything I’m leaving behind.
“That was faster than I expected,” he says.
“If I stop to overthink this, I’ll never leave,” I say. I say it like a joke, but I mean it as a fact.
Then I go to the kitchen and switch off the light, and I don’t look back.
Silas holds the door open, and I walk through.
Outside, the street has gone properly dark while we talked, the houses along the block lit by porch lamps and the soft glow of windows behind curtains.
The air is soft, the smell of tar pungent in the still air.
He takes the rolling suitcase and the tote and puts them in the backseat of the truck.
We get in and the engine starts with a low rumble that finds its rhythm.
There’s no great finality here. No fanfare. We might as well be going out to dinner. Instead, we’re about to leave the place where we have friends and family. Where we’ve built lives. For a moment neither of us speaks.
“So,” I say.
“So,” he says.
“Three hundred miles.”
“Give or take twenty.”
I look at him. “That means we’re going to have to switch off so you get a rest. It looks like I’m finally going to get to drive your precious truck.”
“Possibly,” he says.
I laugh and lean back in the seat. Silas eases the truck away from the curb, and the street slides past. The lamp-lit block gives way to the next block and the next, until we’re on the freeway heading north, out of Larkin.
As we turn the corner and the familiar streetscape falls behind us, my chest releases.
Not doubt and not exactly fear.
It’s different from either of those. This is the certainty of a decision and the feeling of a wish coming true.
The landscape opens ahead of us, and Larkin’s lights are behind us.
The road goes on into the dark, and I let myself feel the reckless lightness of packing one bag and heading somewhere I’ve never been with someone I’ve only known for weeks.
It is either the bravest thing I’ve ever done or the most characteristic.
Probably both.
Those two things have always overlapped.