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Had I always been so suspicious when he did that? Hell, had I even noticed that he’d done it?
The last thing made very clear in the passage of our first week living with Ian was that he was doing everything in his power to stay the hell out of our way, and I didn’t know whether it was because he thought we wanted that, or if it was because he wanted that.
He was out the door before sunrise most mornings, whether he was at the shop or on a jobsite. The shop, where he apparently built all the amazing tables and chairs, was next door on his mom’s property.
Tim and Sheila Wilder owned fifteen acres of gorgeous Oregon wooded land, and it had been well-used by that entire family. The main cabin sat nestled in a clearing of fir trees, along with a barn and the shop used as the headquarters for Wilder Homes. Cameron Wilder and his girlfriend, Ivy, had a home tucked a few acres away from where Sheila still lived, and there was a small guesthouse where Ian’s siblings stayed when they cycled in and out of town.
For my entire childhood, the Wilder family felt like a fairy tale. Watching from the edges of Ian’s life, I couldn’t imagine anything better than what they’d created out of a second chance for both Tim and Sheila.
Being a Wilder, to me, meant acceptance and welcome. It meant love and a landing place. Maybe Ian had always taken that a little bit for granted simply because he had it. When your landing place came tied up with strings and disappointment and I told you so, it didn’t feel like such a soft, friendly place to settle.
But Ian’s house had that same quality for Sage and me that his family’s home had always had for everyone else.
My bedroom set—a sturdy wooden thing with the yellowish stain heralding it a product of the ‘90s—came courtesy of Sheila Wilder, who’d cleaned out one of the home’s bedrooms to make a craft room, and the white-framed twin bed Sage was sleeping in was from Ian’s sister Greer—an old bed frame that her stepdaughter Olive wasn’t using anymore.
During the day, when Ian was at work and Sage was at school, I did whatever I could to make our spaces look like a home. And with Ian’s permission, I’d found some fuzzy blankets and a few throw pillows for the couch, and some large prints to hang on the blank spots on the walls.
My favorite was a painting done by a local artist—a big, bold, colorful rendering of the Three Sisters mountain range. Instead of browns and blacks and greens and whites to keep it realistic, it looked like the mountain peaks were on fire with bold oranges and reds and pinks and blues, the puffy clouds edged with vivid sunset colors. I always texted him before I purchased anything, and he always said yes. Thank goodness, because the man’s decorating skills were sparse.
Slowly, it was feeling more like a home.
My word count? Zero.
But holy shit, were our closets organized, and that was still being productive, no matter what anyone said.
Every once in a while, I’d get a thread of a story idea, pause in whatever I was doing and try to tug on it to see what unraveled, but the moment I sat down at my computer, it was like a giant iron wall slammed shut between my brain and my fingers.
I tried dictating into a stupid little speaker while I wandered Ian’s property, and only managed to feel like a tool when I realized audio narration was nowhere in my future. My last attempt went a little something like, “The night sky was ink black and thick with silence umm, when she … uh … oh shit, where did that branch come from, ouch.”
A bit of heavy breathing punctuated the silence, a painful reminder that I should spend some more time on the treadmill when a walk on flat ground had me out of breath. Then I tripped on a rock, said a couple more curse words, and scraped my hand on the tree that caught my fall.
Dictation, as it turned out, wasn’t for me.
I binged a couple of true crime documentaries, hoping that would jar something loose, to no avail.
Bea, the author coach, emailed me to check in, and I accidentally on purpose forgot to reply to her, because it only served as a reminder of my continued failure. Somewhere in the middle of that, I stopped at my parents’ one day when I was out running errands, and from his favorite threadbare recliner in the family room, my dad told me he could still get me in at the mill with a single phone call.
He meant well, and maybe that was the hardest part of all. As far back as I could remember, my dad came home smelling like fresh-cut wood and sawdust, his back aching and his hands sore. There was a stoic strength to him that was intimidating as a little girl because even though he probably could’ve worked his way up to management or found a different, less physically taxing job somewhere else, he was the guy who stayed and did the hard thing because it’s what he knew and it was what he was good at.
He didn’t smile much, and he was never the dad who held us when we cried, but he’d worked himself to the bone—sometimes literally—to keep a roof over our head and food on the table, even if there wasn’t much extra.
The day that happened, the not-so-subtle reminder that I should be doing something else, I had one overwhelming thought—I can’t wait to talk to Ian about this when he gets home. Except he’d already started not being home very much. And when we did cross paths, it was in the kitchen or he’d walk into the house just as Sage and I were getting ready for bed.
For a few days after the paint conversation, I paid attention to his patterns with increasing interest. Not alarm yet, I knew the man well enough to know that he wanted us there. He never would’ve asked us if he didn’t. No, there was something else.
He rarely ate breakfast, just a cup of black coffee in the morning before he left for work.
After our first night, Ian hadn’t been home for dinner the rest of the week. But the fridge stayed stocked, and it was like a food fairy dropped off some loot because I’d never actually seen him walk in the door with groceries.
He showered in the evenings because the house was old enough that the sound of his shower turning on echoed upstairs. Sage and I both liked to shower in the mornings, and I wondered if he could hear the water running in his room too, and if he noticed the difference in our routines.
He wore approximately four colors, and four colors only. Black, white, dark brown and gray. Honestly, the man was allergic to color and pattern. Solid T-shirts, solid sweatshirts, and solid Henleys.
Sage hardly ever saw him, and if she noticed, she hadn’t mentioned it.
But I was noticing. And because I noticed, I couldn’t help but press. Just a little. This was one of the times to push, I could feel it screaming in my gut. And since words weren’t magically pouring from my head, I closed my laptop and grabbed my phone.
Me: I could’ve sworn you also lived here.
