I didn’t know much about her background, but I could tell by the way she carried herself that we’d lived completely different lives. I’d lived in the dark while the light seemed to follow her everywhere. Still, we had a few things in common. Even though I’d never told a single person on this ridge that I knew them, I knew the names of every flower in the meadow.
When I stepped over a cluster of glacier lilies to get to the next post, she said, without looking up, “You went around them.”
“There are flowers there.”
“There are flowers everywhere. You went around those on purpose.”
I picked up the tamping bar.
“What's the small white one with the cluster of petals? It’s the one growing out of the rock by the east trail.”
The name slipped out before I’d decided to answer. “Pearly everlasting.”
She smiled and wrote it down on the corner of her sketchbook without looking up.
I worked the rest of the fence in silence.
When I was done, it was almost six and the light was going gold on the high side of the ridge. I picked up the tamping bar and the wire, and I started back toward the shop. Biscuit got up from her feet and trotted after me, which was the first time in three days he'd bothered to follow.
She didn't say goodbye.
I made it to the shop, put the tools away, washed my hands in the utility sink, and walked back out front to whistle for Biscuit one more time before I went inside.
Something felt out of place. Her sketchbook was on my workbench.
I hadn't seen her come in. She must have come in while I was washing my hands. The sketchbook was open. Not all the way open — folded back on itself. Like she'd left it that way on purpose.
The page on top was the glacier lily from her first day. The hopeful one.
The page underneath, when I turned it, was a flower with a face I recognized.
It was scowling.
The caption under it, written in pencil in a hand I was already learning, said:The stubborn flower.
I closed the sketchbook but didn’t put it back on the workbench. Instead, I carried it into my cabin, set it on the kitchen table, and stood looking at it for a long time without opening it again.
When I went outside, Biscuit was sitting on the porch waiting for me. He looked guilty… again.
CHAPTER 4
SOLEIL
The knock cameat five forty-five in the morning. I was already awake, which was lucky for both of us.
I'd been up since five. The light had started coming up the east face of the ridge at five-thirty, and I'd been sitting in bed sketching it because I didn't have words for the way light moved across the mountains yet. I had three half-finished sketches on the comforter and a pencil behind my ear, and I was wearing the t-shirt I'd slept in, which was Boulder Marathon 2019 and had a hole in the hem.
I knew who was knocking before I got up. Nobody else on this ridge would be knocking at five forty-five. Biscuit had spent the night curled at the foot of my bed, and his ears hadn’t gone up.
I pulled on shorts, didn’t bother to check how I looked in the bathroom mirror, and opened the door.
Treyton stood on the porch with my sketchbook in his hands. He looked like he hadn't slept. Or like he'd slept and then gotten up at four and done two hours of chores before he'd worked himself up to knocking on my door. His hair was damp at the temples like he'd just washed his face, and there was sawdust on one of his sleeves.
“You left this in my shop.”
“I did.”
“You left it open.”
