"So you didn't."
"So I didn't." I look at her. "Took over the property. It was a long process and took about four months to wind everything down. People thought I was having a breakdown."
"Were you?"
"Opposite." I consider it. "I think I was coming out of one."
She nods slowly. "That's what it feels like," she says. "What's been happening to me, I mean. Like I've been operating on the wrong settings for so long I forgot there were other ones."
"You're young to figure that out."
She makes a face. "I feel about ninety."
"Then you look good for your age." I joke before I can stop myself.
That lands differently than I meant it to and she goes very still for just a second, and then she looks at her tea, blushing. I look at the rain and Fig stands up, turns around three times, and settles against Sloane's hip.
Shit, if that was my chance to flirt I think I blew it.
The storm peaks around five. Lightning over the valley, blue-white, illuminating everything for a second at a time. The thunder is immediate, no gap, right overhead. Sloane has migrated to the porch — she wanted to watch it, which I understood.
I bring Burl out. He goes on my lap, which is where he'll want to be, and Fig follows Sloane and sits on the rail and they're all out here together in the dry strip under the overhang while the rain comes down in sheets off the roof edge.
She's leaning on the rail. The storm is taking all the colour out of the world and replacing it with a specific silver-grey, and the smell is rain and ozone and wet pine, and she's watching the lightning come down over the eastern ridge with her arms on the rail and her face open.
It's the most still I've ever seen her.
Burl sighs on my lap.
Lightning again. She flinches slightly at the thunder and then laughs at herself.
"Okay," she says. "That one was close."
"Half mile."
"You can tell?"
"Count between flash and sound. The speed of sound is roughly a mile every five seconds."
Slowly, the rain starts to ease. Still heavy but the leading edge of the storm has moved on, the lightning tracking east now. The remaining rain is steady, drumming on the roof, running in a curtain off the overhang.
She's still looking at me. She hasn't looked away.
I put Burl down carefully, he settles on the blanket without complaint, and I stand up, and I close the distance between us, and I know I'm doing it before I decide to, the same way I offered her the farm two weeks ago without thinking it through. Shedoesn't move back. She tilts her chin up slightly, and in the rain-light her eyes are very steady.
I put my hand against her jaw. My thumb at her cheekbone. She's warm and the rain has misted her hair and she looks like something that grew here on its own and I have no right to, but I do it anyway — I kiss her.
She makes a small sound and kisses me back, her hand coming up to my wrist, not pulling me away, just holding on. The rain comes down. She tastes like tea and storm air.
When I pull back she's still holding my wrist.
five
Sloane
Igetmyhandsin his shirt and pull him in. He makes a low sound against my mouth and walks me back against the kitchen wall, one hand flat beside my head, and I feel the full solid length of him against me and think:finally.
"Bedroom?" I say, against his jaw.
