Chapter 9 #3
She stayed at the edge, her back to me. The rain was blowing in against her, and she didn’t seem to notice. “Stupid. So stupid.”
“It’s just a truck. Worst-case scenario, it’s totaled and insurance pays. But either way, you couldn’t have known that storm would—”
“There is no insurance.”
“What?”
She still didn’t turn around. “I let it lapse. Just like I’ve let everything else lapse.
I haven’t had heat in my house in six weeks.
” The words came out like they’d been shoved through a crack, connected to nothing and everything at once.
“The propane is empty because propane costs money, and the money goes to feed because the animals come first. They always come first. And now my truck is sitting in a river because I was too distracted to think about where I was parking.”
“Wait. Six weeks without heat?”
She didn’t answer that. She turned around and her eyes were too bright and her hands were shaking and she wasn’t stopping.
“I went to the bank. That’s where I was the other day. I drove to Kalispell because I can’t go to the bank here because everyone in town would—” She pressed her hands against her face for a second, then pulled them away.
I couldn’t follow what she was saying, but before I could ask, she continued at the same rapid-fire pace.
“I’m three months behind. On the second mortgage. I went to beg for more time, but I don’t know if I can get it.”
My chest tightened. What the actual fuck? “How long has this been going on?”
“Months. I had grants that should have come through. Two of them. But both terminated at the last minute.” Her voice was climbing, the words tumbling out faster than she could organize them. “Just gone. Both of them. Nine months.”
“Both grants fell through?”
“Both. No explanation. No reason. Just gone.” She was shaking her head, her hands pulling at the hem of her soaked jacket.
I sat there and felt like an idiot. Three weeks on this property. I’d noticed the peeling paint and the leaning fence posts and the credit card that almost didn’t clear at the feed store. And…
“Wait. Have you been taking showers in the barn because you don’t have hot water in your house?”
I knew the answer before she gave the small shrug. “That’s the least of my problems.”
I’d missed it all. All of it had been right in front of me, and I’d filed it under she works hard and moved on. Because she’d made it easy to move on.
That was her whole trick, wasn’t it? Keep everyone focused on the animals, on the work, on anything but her, and nobody ever thought to ask what was falling apart behind her smile.
“I’ve got no money. I’ve got no more options.” She stopped. Her mouth was still open, but nothing came out. She looked at me, and her face was completely unguarded, the brightness stripped away, nothing underneath it but exhaustion and fear.
“I might lose Pawsitive.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and I watched something behind her eyes give way.
Her breathing went first. It fractured into short, shallow pulls that weren’t getting enough air, her chest heaving, her shoulders curling inward.
Then her hands came up, and her fingers clawed into her hair and gripped hard.
Her whole body started trembling, a deep, uncontrollable shaking that had nothing to do with the cold.
“I can’t—” She was trying to talk, but the words kept breaking apart. “I can’t— I built this— I can’t lose—”
“Lark. Hey. Come sit next to the fire and let’s talk.”
I don’t even think she heard me. “I can’t lose the truck. We can’t do anything without the truck. I have to—”
She lunged toward the open side of the overhang before I realized what she was going to do.
Her hands grabbed at the rock edge and her body lurched toward the rain, toward the slope, toward the floodwater below, and there was nothing rational about it.
She wasn’t trying to go somewhere. She was trying to get out of her own skin.
I caught her. Got my arms around her from behind and held on. Her back pressed against my chest, and I could feel every part of her shaking, the tremors running through her body and into mine.
She wasn’t fighting me. Her hands found my forearms and gripped hard, fingers digging in, holding on instead of pushing away.
“You can go,” I said. My mouth was near her ear, my voice as steady as I could make it. I wasn’t going to hold her back if she was determined to go. I knew what it was to face an army of demons. “But if you do, we’re going together. You want to walk out of here, I walk with you.”
She made a sound that wasn’t a word. A raw, broken noise from somewhere deep in her chest. Her knees buckled and I held her weight, and we went down to the ground together, her back against me, my arms around her, the fire behind us and the storm filling up the valley below.
I held on. I kept talking because it was all I had. I told her I was here. I told her we’d leave whenever she wanted to leave, but we’d go together. I didn’t tell her to calm down. I didn’t tell her she was okay. I didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t true.
Her fingers dug into my forearms and she shook apart against me, and I held on.