Sullivan climbs down off the ladder as snow comes in sideways from the ridge. His face is gray with effort, and his lips are colorless from the cold.
“Go inside,” I order.
“Go inside?”
“Yes. Go inside. Right now.You’renot going back up that trail in the dark in this.”
“It’s not a trail. It’s a hundred yards.”
“It’sa hundred yards in horizontal snow, Mercer.Sit by my fire. Eat. Then go.”
“Tess.”
“Mercer, this is nothing other than what it is, which is a grown woman feeding a grown man dinner because he just spent four hours saving her bedroom from collapse.”
He looks at methe way he looked at me on the porch step yesterdayafterthe four-count, and his eyes do something Ican’tput a name to.
“All right,” he says.
I nod. “Stew?”
“Stew.”
We go inside as the snow comes down and the wind takes a hard, meanturnaround the side of the cabin.
Somewhere up the ridge, a tree I do not yet know about is bending under a weight it will not be able to hold.
Chapter 7
Sullivan
The storm hits like a hand slapping the side of the cabin.
I’vebeen in worse.I’vebeen in cold that took fingers off men I was carrying.Wind that turned a tent inside out at four a.m. on a hill in anothercountry. This is not the worst stormI’vestood inside.
Butit’sthe first one in a long time I’msharing with anyone.
We eat stew at Tess’s kitchen table.She’s littwo candles and a kerosene lamp because, in her words, the cabin’s wiring is“vibes,”and the vibes do not include any breaker she trusts in a wind like this.
She’swearing a thick cream cardigan over the daffodilsweaterand a pair of woolen socks pulled up to her knees, telling me a story about her brother teaching her to drive in a parking lot in Rhode Island when she was fourteen.I laugh in the right placeswhilethe stormdoes whatstormsdo, and somewhere deep in my chest,something settles.
A crack.
Sharp.Different.Not a hawk. Not a branch. The kind of crack that has a treeonthe end of it.
I’m up before the second crack. “Tess.”
“What was that?”
“Tess, get to the front of the cabin. Now.”
She doesn’t argue. She moves, my hand at the small of her back without remembering putting it there. We’re out at the front door when the second crack comes—a long, slow, sickening shudder.
Then a third sound, the one I knew was coming. The cabin lurches as a sixty-foot pine crashes into it.
Tess yelps, but she doesn’t scream or panic asIbundleher under my arm like a sack of grainand sprintoff the porch, down the steps. The snow isfalling sideways, andthe wind isicy andmeanas we make our wayto my cabin on foot, hand in hand, up the slope I know so well I could walk it in the dark.
A hundred yards.The longest hundred yards of my life.
