And up.
And up.
Because a manisstanding thirty feet from me on the slope, half hidden by a stand of pines, and Ididn’thear him arrive at all.
He’senormousin the way a mountain is enormous. Not just tall, although he is, butbuilt. Shoulders like a doorframe. Beard like he wants something between his face and the world.A flannel under a heavy wool jacket, dark canvas pants, boots that have gone way past comfortable and now look like they’re a part of him.
I should be afraid. I’m a woman alone on a ridge, with noneighborsin sight, and a stranger appearing without sound. Every instinct my mother trained into me, every soft-spoken man she’s chosen for me to confirm them with, is tells me to back up the porch and lock the door.
I’m not afraid.
Idon’tknow what to do with that, exactly.
“Oh,”I say before I can stop myself.“Hi.”
Hedoesn’tanswer. His face is like a slab of granite exposed to the elements, and whatever emotions flicker across it do so slowly. His palegrayeyesremainso steady on my face that I momentarily forget the yarn.
He looks at me the way I imagine a man looks at a coyote that has wandered into his yard, neither afraid nor friendly, just calculating what kind of problem I might pose.
“I saw you wave.”
“Oh.”My face goes hot, which is wild, given the temperature out here.
“Hi,”he says, like a man remembering a foreign word he was taught once and filed away.
I straighten up, yarn inhand, and smile. “I’mTess. Tess Carter.Ijust got here. Aunt Rosa was my aunt. The cabin. Obviously. Idon’tknow if you knew her?—”
“Didn’t.”
“Right.Yeah. Of course youdidn’t. You would have said.” I take a breath and dial myself back.“Sorry. I talk a lot whenI’mnervous. And cold. And recently fallen through a porch step.”
He glances at the porch,atthe gap in the third step,at my wet leg thathas snow up to the knee.“You good?”
Two words, but theylandin my chest as if he touched it.
I have not beengoodfor five years. I haven’t beenasked.
“I’m fine. Slightly less dignified than I started the day, but fine.”
A beat. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t move. He just looks at me like he’s reading the cover of a book he hasn’t decided whether to open.
“You’re standing in three feet of snowmelt,”he says.“The drift behind you is deeper than it looks.”
I glance over my shoulder.A fencepost pokes out of the white about four feet up that I could have sworn, three minutes ago, was at ground level.
“Right,” I say. “Got it. Thank you.”
Hedoesn’tmove. The pinesdon’tmove. The wind sighs through the boughs in a way that should be charming but is making me very aware thatI’malone on an unfamiliar ridge with a man who could pick up a Subaru.
And yet…
“You’re my neighbor,”I say with more certainty than I have any right to.“Aren’t you?”
A pause. A long one.
“I’m up the ridge.”He tips his chin sharply toward a darker stand of pines climbing up and away behind the cabin, into a fold of mountain that looks like it keeps its own weather.
“Oh, thank God.”I press a handtomy chest.“I waved. Earlier. From the porch. Iwasn’tsureanyone was up there or if I was just waving at the trees. I wave at trees sometimes.It’sa thing.It’sa whole thing I do.”
