“I’m okay.”
He reaches across the table and places his huge, calloused hand over mine, very carefully.“I’m not asking if you’re okay.”
We don’t move.
The moment is a small,containedthing—two adults who have shared the names of the people who saved them, holding hands across a kitchen table while their coffee cools.
Outside, the wind comes east.
“Sullivan,”I whisper,“why are you telling me this?”
“Because”—his thumb moves slowly across my knuckle—“I sat with myself last night and asked what kind of man does not, at minimum, return the courtesy.”
A laugh hiccups out of me.“The courtesy?”
“I don’t have a better word.”
After a long time, Iclearmy throat.“Do you want another piece of toast?”
He smiles, the first real smileI’veseen on his face.“I’ll take another piece.”
We work on the cabin together that afternoon.
The roof needs a better pass than what Aunt Rosa’s neighbor had been doing.There’sa soft spot above the back bedroom that, when Sullivan stands at the eaves and presses upward with the heel of his hand, gives a sound that even I, the woman who travels with everything but a moisture meter, can identify as a problem.
“How bad?”I ask from below.
“Not bad yet. Bad next snow.”
“And the next snow is?—”
“Forecast for tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He climbsdown offthe ladder.He’sback in his workjacket,the clean flannel from this morning replaced with a worn denim button-up,sleeves rolled to the elbow.His forearmsarea study in scars and ropy muscle thatI’mtrying to be a grown adult about.
“I’ll patch it,”he says.“Tonight, before the storm.It’snot a fix;it’sa stall. The whole roof needs to come off in May.”
“In May,” I repeat. “Sullivan?—”
“It’sa tarp, three sheets of pressure-treated plywood, anda fewhoursof my time, Tess. Don’t argue.”
“I wasn’t going to argue. I was going to thank you.”
“Don’t.”
“Then I’ll just think it at you. Loudly.”
He drops his head and laughs, a real one,a full, rough laugh that shakes his shoulders.The laugh is better than I had imagined it would be.
I lean against the side of my cabin and watchhim,and I think,oh. Oh, no.
I’mgoing to be a problem to myself.
By dusk, the patch is on. Three sheets of plywood, a tarp like a sail, the whole back corner of my cabin reinforced with the overkill of a manwho’sspent aportionof his life building things to hold against gunfire would consider proportionate.
