one
Sloane
Thehotelroomisnicer than I expected.
Maple checks me in with a warm smile and a room key and a recommendation for the diner down the street. The room has a white duvet and a window that looks out over a mountain and a small jar of wildflowers on the dresser. I drop my bag, kick off my shoes, and lie flat on the bed and stare at the ceiling. I feel, for the first time in two years, absolutely nothing I have to do about.
It's a Saturday. I have no meetings. No deliverables. No one texting me from across the office about dinner. I quit on Thursday, ended my relationship on Thursday — same conversation, more or less, once it became clear those two things couldn't exist separately anymore.
Then, I packed a bag on Friday and booked this hotel because I'd read about Silver Ridge once in something and the name stuck and I needed to go somewhere that wasn't Vancouver and this was the first name I trusted.
I don't have a plan. I've always had a plan. I had a five-year plan at twenty-three, which I hit in four years, and then built another one. I'm twenty-eight and I just blew up every structure I'd built and drove six hours into the mountains with one bag and no return ticket and…honestly?
Honestly I feel a little electric.
Not fine. I'm not fine.
My ex, Matthew, was two years of my life and some of that was real, but the ending was ugly and I'll feel that later. My job mattered and walking away from it felt like leaving a limb somewhere.
I unzip my bag. I hang a few things up. I stand at the window and look at the mountain for a while.
Then I go find coffee.
The farmer's market is open on Saturday mornings, according to a big a-frame sign.
Maybe a dozen stalls in a town square with a wooden bandstand at one end and a mountain at every other. Produce, honey, baked goods, dried herbs in brown paper bags.
I walk slowly. I have nowhere to be. That's still new enough that I notice it.
Then I reach the last stall in the row and stop.
The produce alone would have stopped me — tomatoes in four varieties with small handwritten stakes, bundles of chard with stems so red they look painted, a flat of strawberries that smell sweet and amazing. But I'm not really looking at the produce.
The man behind the table is the size of a small building.
Six-three at least, broad through the shoulders, dark hair going silver at the temples. A jaw that looks like it was cut from stone, and underneath it a mouth that is, for no reason I can explain, immediately distracting. His hands are resting on the table as he makes change for a customer — enormous hands, dark with soil along every crease, the kind that have done real work for a long time and look entirely at home doing it.
He's not looking at me. He's looking at the customer. He gives her change and says, "Those Sungolds are best today. Quarter hour in the sun before you eat them," and she takes her bag and goes. He still doesn't look at me, but I am aware that I have stopped walking because of a man.
I redirect my attention to the table.
On his right, there's a cardboard box. In the box, a scrap of dark flannel folded into a nest. And in the nest. Something small. Something that moves.
I step sideways to see better.
A rabbit. Wild, brown-grey, white flash on the tail, barely the size of my fist. One back leg wrapped in what looks like a toothpick-and-tape splint, the smallest splint I have ever seen, and it's sitting very still in the flannel with its nose twitching.
The man turns to the rabbit and as he does, without breaking stride, picks up a small eyedropper from beside the box, fills it from a little bottle, and offers it to the rabbit. She drinks. He watches until she's done, sets the eyedropper back, turns to a newly arrived customer.
I stand there.
When the customer leaves he looks at me. Up close, his eyes are a quiet brown, and there are deep lines at the corners from squinting into weather, and he waits with the ease of someone who has made peace with silence.
"The rabbit," I say finally.
"Found her in the field this morning. Leg's hurt."
"You brought her to the farmer's market?"
