I sit up.
My palm is stiff under the gauze but not worse. My throat is softer. My lungs when I take a long breath catch only once.
I put my feet on the floor.
The henley I slept in is hers, the gray one. The sweats are hers. The flannel shirt is on the chair where I left it last night. On the dresser in the white dish is the ring, and the light coming through the window catches it the same way it caught it yesterday, and the look of the ring in the dish is the look of a thing that has been put somewhere on purpose. I do not pick it up.
I go into the kitchen.
A mug is rinsed and set on the drainboard next to mine from yesterday. There is a note under the french press.
Stew in the fridge, heat it slow. Bread in the bread box. I'll be in by seven.
No signature.
The number of the station is on the fridge is written in the same flat hand on a piece of masking tape stuck to the metal.
I stand at the counter with my hand flat on the note.
I'll be in by seven.NotI'll be home.She chose the word. She is a woman who chooses words. I watched her do it yesterday at the kitchen table, settingall rightdown between us three times in a row to mean the same thing three slightly different ways.
I make coffee. I eat bread. I do not heat the stew. I wash my mug and the spoon and dry them on the towel at the rack. I stand at the kitchen window and I drink coffee and I look at the wet gravel drive out through the pines, and at the place where the drive bends and disappears, and I think.
I do not have a phone.
I had one. It was on the nightstand in my bedroom in the house. I don't know if I threw it down when I went to the window. I don't know if it was on the nightstand when the ceiling came in. I know that wherever it was, it is nothing now. Whatever was on it, whatever was backed up from it, is a thing somebody else has access to. Not me.
I do not have a phone and I do not have a way to get one.
I think about this with the mug in my hand. I think about it plainly. Yesterday I was too tired to think about it and Max's voice was very steady telling me I didn't have to decide anything today, and I slept. Today I am not too tired. Today I have slept.
I set the mug down. I walk to the front door.
The key is on the hook by the door. Brass, small, old. I pick it up and hold it in my palm. I put it back on the hook. I turn the knob. The knob turns. The door opens. Rain smell, pine smell, wet gravel smell. I stand in the doorway in bare feet and Max's sweats, and I look out at the drive, and I step one foot onto the porch. The porch is cold under my bare foot. I take the foot back. I close the door.
Not locked.
I walk back into the kitchen and I open the drawer where Max told me the truck keys were. The spoons are in it. The chef's knife. A pair of scissors. A roll of twine. A small wrench.
The truck keys are not in it.
I open the drawer below it. Tea towels. The drawer below that. Place mats. The drawer to the left. Flatware. The drawer to the right. Paper. Batteries. A small notebook.
No truck keys anywhere in the kitchen.
I stand very still with my hands on the edge of the counter.
The story I am telling myself about this woman, which I built in nine hours yesterday off an oatmeal breakfast and a set of kind sentences, has a small hole in it now. The hole is the size of a key ring. She told me yesterday there was a key to the door on a hook. There is a key to the door on a hook. She told me yesterday the truck keys were in the drawer with the spoons. They are not in the drawer with the spoons. I can tell myself she took them with her, because it's her truck, and she has the one working set and she needed them to drive. I can tell myself that. I can also tell myself that she told me yesterday, with her face, that the truck keys were in that drawer as an option for me, and that this morning on her way out she moved them. Both stories fit what I can see.
I pick one story and I put it to the side.
I go through the cabin.
Not the way a person searches. The way a person looks. I do not open a drawer I do not have a reason to open. I do not pull a door I do not have a reason to pull. That is my line. I will look at what is on display, and I will not search.
No truck keys anywhere in the cabin. Nowhere obvious.
I go back to the living room. I sit on the sofa.
