Chapter 3 #2
"Here." Betty sets a bowl of soup in front of me. "On the house. Don't argue."
She refills my mug, then moves down the counter to where Gerald perches on the last stool, a slice of pie half-eaten on the plate in front of him and a newspaper folded to the crossword. He reaches for the sugar.
Betty swats his hand. "Doctor said no sugar, Gerald."
"The doc's not the boss of me."
"No, but I am."
Gerald mutters and picks up his fork. Betty tops off his cup, no sugar, and the look they exchange carries years in it. Two people who've been having this same argument since before I got here, and neither one wants to win because winning would mean the argument stops.
Gerald catches me watching. His eyebrows go up under the brim of his hat.
I smile and eat my soup.
The afternoon passes in a blur of charts and vitals.
Jess runs the supply cabinet like she's running a combat triage tent.
Dr. Bryce answers every question in five words or fewer.
I like the work. I like that the building smells like antiseptic and the faint sweetness of whatever the fae nurse does to the air when she thinks nobody's paying attention.
Magic, I'm guessing, though I haven't asked because I've learned not to ask about things people aren't offering.
At five-thirty, Nora finds me at the front desk. She's tall, sharp-featured, her skin carrying the faint luminescence that marks the fae the same way tusks mark orcs and horns mark minotaurs. Her scrubs have tiny mushrooms printed on them. I've been trying not to love them all day.
"You're settling in well." She perches on the edge of the desk. "Dr. Bryce said Hector's reduction went well."
"Clean reduction. No complications."
"You fit here." She says it like an observation, not a compliment. "The last traveling nurse didn't."
I pull my best deflection smile. "I fit everywhere. That's the job."
Nora tips her head. The fae luminescence shifts across her cheekbones, and for a second I think she's going to push, but she doesn't. She slides off the desk and drifts back toward the exam rooms.
Jess drives. She always drives—she picked me up at Garrett's cabin at six-fifteen this morning and will do the same tomorrow, and the day after that, until Finn tracks down a replacement car from some contact in Boston who deals in secondhand vehicles.
A week, he said on Thursday when he and Knox showed up with the tow truck and confirmed what the crumpled hood already told me.
The rental died in the ditch. My security deposit died with it.
Finn scrolled through his phone, made two calls, dropped phrases like clean title and reasonable miles like he'd been buying junkers since he was twelve.
The clinic had a furnished studio waiting for me above the pharmacy on Main Street.
Roof leak from a fall storm turned into black mold behind the drywall, and the contractor pulled half the ceiling out the week before I was meant to arrive.
Uninhabitable for two months, minimum. By the time Knox and Finn hauled in with the tow truck on Thursday, the brothers had already worked it out.
Jess offered her spare room. Knox offered the clubhouse.
Garrett stood at the window through the whole negotiation, and when the clubhouse came up for the third time he turned and said one word. Cabin. That was that.
Now I sit in Jess's passenger seat and watch the forest scroll past, Douglas firs capped with snow, the road narrow and winding through trees so thick the headlights barely reach the underbrush.
Jess doesn't talk when she drives. She hums along to the radio—something country, turned low—and lets the silence sit.
Nine weeks left on the contract. By the second week of February I'll be gone. The Houston lease will be waiting. The business plan will be waiting. The dream I've been building for two years will be waiting. That's the plan. That's the reason I don't stay.
The cabin appears through the trees, porch light glowing against the snow that's been falling since noon. I grab my bag, thank Jess, close the truck door behind me. Her taillights shrink between the firs.
The front door isn't locked. It never is. Garrett told me this on Thursday morning—told, in his way, which meant standing at the door while I hunted for a key and shaking his head once, and I understood. He doesn't talk much.
Inside, the cabin holds heat the way old log buildings do, the woodstove radiating a steady warmth that meets me at the threshold.
A single plate sits at the end of the kitchen counter where I always eat.
A cloth covers the food. When I lift it, steam rises—roasted root vegetables, turnips and carrots and something dark that might be beets, glazed with honey and scattered with herbs I recognize from the bundles drying above his stove.
Rosemary and thyme and something savory I can't name.
He's already eaten. His plate sits clean on the drying rack.
Through the kitchen window I find him in the clearing at the back of the cabin.
The axe rises, hangs at the top of its arc, and falls.
Wood splits with a sound that carries through the glass, muffled and rhythmic.
He stacks the halves without pausing, reaches for the next log, sets it on the block.
The axe rises again. He works in the dark, his breath fogging in the cold, his silhouette enormous against the snow.
I sit down. The food, when I take the first bite, lands on my tongue with a depth of flavor that has no right existing in a cabin in the middle of the Oregon woods, cooked by a man who doesn't speak and has never once asked me what I like to eat, and yet every meal he's cooked this week has been the best thing I've tasted since Abuela's kitchen.
The axe falls outside. Steady. Rhythmic. I eat slowly. Someone made this for me. Left it covered so it'd stay hot. Went outside so I could eat in peace.
I set my fork down.
Don't get comfortable. Don't do this to yourself again.
I wash the plate, dry it, put it on the rack. Then I pull out my phone, open the email from the staffing agency, and scroll to the contract dates. February 14. I read it twice.