Chapter 4
Steel
The collar of this shirt pinches my neck. I bought it six years ago for a medical supply conference in Portland and haven't touched it since.
Betty stands at the back of St. Brendan's with her arm through Finn's because she asked him and he said yes before she finished the question.
The cream dress hits her ankles. She sewed it herself—I know because she told Jess over the diner counter two weeks ago that no bridal shop in Oregon carried anything designed for a woman of fifty-five who wanted to look like herself and not a magazine.
She fixed the problem the way Betty fixes everything: on her own terms, at her own table, with a sewing machine older than most of the people in this church.
Father O'Malley nods from the altar. The organ starts. The congregation turns, and Betty walks.
Gerald stands at the front with his hands laced in front of him.
Charcoal, single-breasted, a fit that hangs looser than it did the last time he wore it.
He wore this suit to his first wife's funeral.
Betty mentioned it to Sarah last month at the diner, and her voice went soft in a way that Betty's voice almost never goes, and she said He told me he wants Margaret to be part of it.
His hands shake with nerves, not age. Betty reaches the altar. She takes both his hands in hers, and the shaking stops.
Everyone in the church cheers. Full-throated, monsters and humans packed into the same pews, the sound rolling off the stone walls and the ceiling beams and the stained glass that has held a century of prayers and baptisms and funerals.
Applause and whistles and someone—Rex, from the timber of it—letting out a whoop that bounces off the nave.
Nina presses her face into Garrett's shoulder, his arm around her, his hand covering the back of her head.
Holly sits beside Rex with her camera bag between her feet, the zipper closed.
Lily grips Ellie's hand in the pew ahead of me.
Ellie leans over, whispers something, and Lily wipes her eyes with her free hand, shaking her head like she's furious at herself for crying.
Knox sits at the end of a row with Reeve on his knee and Sarah pressed against his side, and he watches Betty and Gerald like he's remembering his own vows.
Father O'Malley keeps the sermon short. No rehearsed phrases about love being patient, love being kind.
He talks about stubborn people, about the years Betty brought Gerald dinner and Gerald pretended he didn't need it and the whole town watched and waited and gave up waiting because those two would circle each other until the cove dried up.
He gets a laugh. Half the town thought they'd been married for years already, the way Betty bullied him into eating and Gerald saved her a seat at every town meeting.
When he proposed six months ago, the only surprise in the room was that he hadn't done it sooner.
The vows are simple. Gerald's voice breaks on the third word and Betty squeezes his hands and waits, then he finds it again.
Betty's vows come out the way everything comes out of Betty—steady, sure, loud enough to reach the back pew without trying.
She wants him. She has wanted him for years.
The whole town knew before either of them did.
I watch Gerald slide the ring onto her finger, and the sound in my chest stirs. Low, buried, a vibration that sits in the bone before it reaches the muscle. I press my palm flat against my chest and hold it there until it settles.
Tables are pushed together, chairs borrowed from the church basement, the diner's counter lined with food Betty cooked and froze over the past week because she refused to let anyone else handle her own wedding reception.
Finn and Jess's son sits in a high chair near the window, pulling a bread roll apart one crumb at a time.
Chain stands behind Morgan's chair with one hand on her shoulder, and Morgan works through her second plate without slowing down, one hand on her belly.
Diesel and Kim sit near the door. Kim's hand rests on her belly, and Diesel's arm stretches across the back of her chair, his fingers drumming a rhythm on the wood that matches whatever song Sal has playing through the jukebox.
Isla sits across the room in cargo pants, work boots and a flannel she borrowed from Nina after she turned down the dress offer.
Her red hair sits in a knot at the back of her neck, loose pieces falling around her ears, and the scrapes across her knuckles haven't healed from the truck tailgate four days ago.
I sit at the opposite end of the table and eat pot roast and try to follow Garrett's low commentary about the roof repairs on the east side of the compound.
Garrett talks about flashing and pitch and load-bearing walls, and I nod in the right places, and my attention keeps sliding twenty feet to the left.
Isla moves through the reception with a plate in one hand, scanning for an open chair. Sal leans back as she passes and raises her wine glass. "Hey—you're the animal lady, right?"
My mouth opens before my brain signs off. "Wildlife rehabilitation specialist. She holds a Class III federal permit for migratory bird rehabilitation and a state license for large mammal intake."
The table goes quiet. Sal looks at me. Isla looks at me. Finn, across from Garrett, looks at me with an expression that suggests he will never let this go.
I look at my plate.
Sal takes a drink of her wine and turns back to Isla. "Yeah, what he said."
Isla pulls out the empty chair to my left and sits down. She doesn't say anything. She sets her plate on the table, picks up her fork, and eats a bite of Betty's pot roast, her elbow four inches from mine.
We eat. Gerald and Betty dance in the narrow space between tables, his hand on her lower back, her head against his shoulder, swaying more than dancing.
Jess leans over to wipe her son's face. Chain refills Morgan's water glass without being asked.
The whole room paired off, settled, accounted for, and Isla sits beside me with her elbow four inches from mine and the heat of her arm crossing the gap.
I can't remember the last time someone chose the chair next to mine.
Garrett catches my eye from across the table.
His expression doesn't change. He looks at Isla beside me, then back at me, and his nostrils flare once.
He can smell it. Whatever my body has decided to broadcast, Garrett's minotaur senses have picked it up from across a table of pot roast and bread rolls and three kinds of pie.
I hold his gaze. He looks away first, smiling.
The fog rolls in off the water by eight. The reception breaks up in pairs and groups. Knox carries a sleeping Reeve against his chest, Sarah with her arm through his. Finn and Jess head inside with their son between them.
Isla and I walk behind everyone.
She reaches for my arm, and I let her take it.
We walk like that for a few steps before I cover her hand with mine. My palm settles over her fingers.
The purr starts.
This one rises through my chest and travels through my arm and into her hand, and I notice the moment she feels it. Her fingers tighten, her stride shortens, her breathing goes shallow.
We stop walking. The fog wraps the road and the trees and the streetlamp thirty feet behind us, the others have disappeared ahead, their voices fading into the gray.
She looks up. I look down. Seven feet of minotaur and the fog between us dissolving, and her face turned toward mine, scared and certain and not willing to look away.
My thumb traces her knuckles. I feel each one under the pad of my thumb, and the purr deepens until my whole chest vibrates with it, until the sound reaches the air between us.
She tilts her face up. I tilt mine down. The distance narrows to inches, close enough that my glasses fog from her breath, the left lens going opaque, her face dissolving into copper and warmth.
Headlights sweep the road.
A truck, passing on the coast highway. The beams cut through the fog and throw our shadows sideways across the gravel. I drop her hand. She steps back. The space opens between us and the purr stops.
She stands on the gravel with her arms crossed against the cold, unreadable. I stand on the opposite side of the space with my hands at my sides and my pulse in my ears.
"Goodnight, Thomas."
"Goodnight, Isla."
She turns toward the compound. I watch her walk until the fog takes her.