It doesn’t approach. Smart animal.
I break off a piece of bread and step onto the porch.The dogfreezes.I toss the bread halfway between us—neither too closenor too far—andgo back inside.
When I look outside again, the bread is gone.
The wind picks up. The pine branch scrapes the wall.Once. Twice.And on the third scrape, the cabin makes a fourth sound—a low, mechanical groan from the road below, working uphill in low gear.
Idon’tmove towardthe front door. I move to the side window because the side window has the angle on the switchback, and forty-one mornings of boredom have turned this cabin into a position I read like a map.
Amid-sizedbox truck.The kind a person rents when theyhavejustenough belongings to avoid hiring movers.White. Mud-flecked. No company logo. The driver appears asa small shape behind glassasthe truckgrindsits way up the access road.
My free hand finds the windowsill and stays there.
The cabin below mine has been empty since I got here.Boardedwindows. Sagging porch. A“PRIVATE PROPERTY”sign that the elements have been chewing on for a year. I checked it twice on day one out of courtesy, found nothing inside but mouse shit and atorn-up phone book, and crossed it off the list.
The truck slows at the bend, finds the dirt drive, and turns in.
Apparently, someonehas remembered they own it.
Lord.
I take a long pull of coffee and watch the truck park crooked in front of the place. The driver’s door opens. Asmall blonde woman drops down,lands in the snow, and makes a sound I can hear from up here thatI’mpretty sureis a laugh.
A laugh. At the dilapidated cabin.
She tilts her head backandtakes the place in: the rotted porch, the splintered front step, the boarded window, the chimney that lists west like a manwho’s had too much whiskey. Gloved hands onherhips, shesays something to the empty air Ican’thear but can read in the lines of her body.
It looks suspiciously like,“Well, hello.”
She’s wearing a coat the color of butter.
Soft. Bright. Wrong against all this white and quiet.
Wrong for a place like this.Wrong fora man likeme.
I lower the coffee. The blue mug taps the windowsill.
The cabin makes its three sounds: the kettle, the stove, and the pine branch. I count them as I always do, but the count comes out wrong because she is the count now. Somewhere beneath my breastbone, something thatshouldn’tbe capable of going quiet has gone silent.
I don’t move. I am very still.
Istandat this window for a long time, watching her unload.
She’snot big.She’snot fast. She moves likeshe’spacing herself for a long day,goingin and out of the truck, haulingina kitchen chair, a basket of yarn, a houseplant,anda thing that looks suspiciously like a stand mixer wrapped in a beach towel.
A stand mixer. At a cabin without water.
My eyes do what they always do. Hands.Vehicle.Exits. The list runs without my permission, the way it runs in airports and gas stations and any room with more than one door. The list keeps coming up empty. No threat. No threat. No threat. Andstill,Ican’tstop looking.
Her boot skids on the ice.
The box in her arms tips, and she goes with it—knee, hip, a yelp that carries up the ridge clean and bright.
I take a step toward my door before I knowI’vetaken it. Boot on the floorboard. Mug still in my hand. Coffee sloshing over the rim onto my knuckles. Idon’tfeelituntil later, whenI’mtrying to remember how I got from the side window to within reach of my coat.
She’salready up. Brushing snow off her thighs and laughing at herself, the same laugh as before, only louderthis time.
My hand comes off the door.
