She puts the mug down. Breathes in. Breathes out.
"When do I see you again?"
I make myself look at her. "Months. Maybe longer. Depends on the trial."
"Okay."
She does not cry. She does not argue. She nods, once. Then, smaller: "Tonight, though."
"Tonight."
"And today."
"And today."
The call to Beauchamp at noon goes the way it's supposed to. I come back inside and she's on the couch with her book and she looks up at me and I can tell from her face that she's been watching the window.
I sit across from her. I'm going to tell her most of it, not all of it.
"Beauchamp confirmed the waypoint. We're set for tomorrow at ten." I set the burner on the table. "The intermediary called this morning. I told him you were heading northeast, bought us time. But Voclain has people who are better than intermediaries. He'll have burned through the false trail by tonight."
She doesn't react visibly. She closes the book on her thumb. "He knows where we are?"
"He knows I went north out of Silver Ridge. He doesn't know this road. But he'll be looking, and he has money, and money moves fast." I look at her. "Tomorrow morning we drive out early and we drive fast and we don't stop. That's the plan."
She nods once. She opens the book again but just stares blankly at it.
"Come outside with me."
"Where?"
"The woodshed. I want to show you something."
She follows me.
I teach her to split kindling.
Not because she needs to know. Because it is a thing I can do with my hands for an hour that keeps me inside the same ten feet of porch as her. Because the small satisfaction of wood coming apart along a grain under a good hatchet is something I want her to have before tomorrow.
I show her the hatchet. The block. How to set the cedar. One end on the block, the other end steady in your off hand. How to start the blade with a light tap so the split runs true, then let the weight of the hatchet do the work. I show her how to stand. Feet shoulder-width. Weight centered.
The first one she tries, the hatchet skids sideways off the cedar and buries in the block. She jumps.
"You'll hit your hand like that. Again. Slow. Tap, then swing."
She tries again. The cedar splits along the grain with a sound like tearing fabric.
She looks up at me with her mouth open. "That was so satisfying."
"Yeah."
"Can I do another one?"
"Do the whole pile."
She does six. By the fourth she has found the rhythm. By the sixth she is grinning. Her face is pink from the cold and the work. A smudge of cedar dust on her cheek. I am standing three feet from her with my arms crossed. I am absolutely gone for her, which I already was, but I am gone for her in a quieter way now. The way you are gone for a person you are going to know for a long time, if you are lucky. If nothing comes out of those woods tomorrow that you did not see coming.
She looks up from the seventh piece. "What?"
