I’mbeing looked after by strangers.
I’velived twenty-fouryears in a family that loved me out of obligation and corrected me out of love, and in one morning, four people Idon’tknow have decided I belong to them.
I press my hand flat against the steering wheel. For ten inappropriate seconds at fifteen miles an hour, I let myself cry.
By the time I get back to the cabin, the sun is high enough to make everything look more forgiving.
The third porch step holds. Icheckit twice andapologizeto it for thinking ill of it. I unload the truck, properly this time, into the front room of the cabin, which has the smell of an unloved space and the bones of a beloved one. Wide pine plank flooring. Stone fireplace, working. A kitchen that is one good cleaning and a new sink away from being cute. Two small bedrooms upstairs with sloping ceilings, one of which has a clear view of the ridge above me.
Where I know without looking that there’s a man at the window.
I unpack quietly. I don’t sing. I don’t talk to the cabin. I don’t wave.
Around two, I hear footsteps on my porch. Heavy and deliberate. They stop at the door.
“Tess.”
Just my name through the wood. Not loud. No knock.
Something in my chest answers before I do.
I open the door.
Sullivan is standing on my porch, holding the empty Tupperware in one big hand, and the edges of his mouth are doing the geological-precursor thing again.
“Cinnamon roll was good.”
Relief flickers through me, quick and stupid.“Thank you.”
Handingme the Tupperware, he looks at the cabin behind me like hecanseeits bonesthe way a doctor sees a chest x-ray.“Your front window. By the stove. You get a draft when the wind turns east?”
I blink. “Yes.”
“Casement’s separated from the frame. I’ll bring caulk.”
Of course it is.
“You don’t have to?—”
“It needs caulking,” he repeats, as though thedecision’s been made andhe’swaiting for me to catch up.
I tighten my grip on the Tupperware. “Why? You don’t even know me.”
His eyes come back to mine, steady and unreadable, but not empty. “I know where you are.”
I’mnot invisible up here, no matter how hard I try.
I swallow. “That’s… not the same thing.”
“No,” he agrees.
I wait for him to say more, something that explains him.Perhaps ahint about why thisfeels like standingon a clifftop, too close to the edge.
He nods as if the conversation has reached its natural end without consulting me and steps back. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”
I open my mouthto offer coffee, another cinnamon roll, something to keep him here one minute longer,but nothing comes out.
Then Sullivan’soff my porch andheadingback up the trail.
