“I can teach you about star charts.” Lucy scoots her camp chair closer to the fire. “And I can teach you how to journal and write poetry in notebooks you carry everywhere like all the greats.”
“See, peanut?” Luke says. “We’ve got you covered.”
She snuggles deeper into the fleece throw blanket she’s got wrapped around herself like a tortilla. “Yeah. I love my family.”
Same, nugget. Same.
We talk around the fire for a couple of hours, the kind of conversation that’s everything and nothing. Graham’s latest gaming project. Luke’s hopes for the raised beds he and Jovie planted. Lucy telling us about funny videos on Irwin Outdoors’s social media account. My parents reminisce about long-ago visits to the cabin. Through it all, Rose listens like every story is better than the last. The sky turns black, the stars come out, and one by one, my family members say their goodnights and go inside.
“You’ll put out the fire?” Nathan confirms when he and Lucy, the last holdouts, finally call it a night.
“Of course.”
“Goodnight, you two.” He lightly slaps me on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
When they’re gone, I dip my face closer to Rose’s cheek.
“Are you ready to go to bed?” I’ve had her cuddled in my arms all evening. Yes, I got some amused looks from my family, but what was I supposed to do?Nothold her? Impossible.
“I can stay a while longer.” She pulls the blanket my mom left her so it covers us more fully.
We won’t stay too long. Even with the blanket, a deeper chill’s settling in that we’re not prepared for. But most of the time we’ve spent together these last few weeks have been at work with one audience or another. I won’t refuse some alone time with her.
“You’re different out here.” She wraps her hands under mine beneath the blanket. “You’re happier. More relaxed.”
“Probably. It’s like I said at the river, this is my element.” Always has been.
“Almost like you should have been a park ranger.”
Those dreams have faded enough they don’t sting anymore. “Almost.”
“Why did you stop? Was it because of Brooke?” This last she asks softly, as if it might hurt me if she mentions my ex at a normal volume.
“No. The coffee shop. I’d planned to apply for a seasonal job again, but a lawyer contacted me. She let me know Harry had died and left me everything he had. It’s, uh…he gave me a lot of money, too.” I don’t like bringing it up. Owning an entire business I didn’t do anything to earn is hard enough, but the pile of money in my accounts makes me feel like an impostor.
She tilts her head on my shoulder, angling her face toward me. Her skin glows golden in the dying firelight. “Enough you could quit the coffee shop?”
“Yeah.” A couple times over. “I guess he invested well in the eighties. I don’t really know. We never talked about that.”
Just one more thing on a list of conversations we didn’t have.
“In the beginning, the coffee shop had a manager. Harry suredidn’t work there. Don’t ask me why he bought it or what he planned to do with it. But when she moved to California, it seemed like a sign I should step up. I figured that’s what he was trying to get me to do.”
At least working there gave me a sense of contribution. Not meaning, exactly, but I didn’t feel useless. I couldn’t just live off of what he gave me, doing nothing.
“You think he wanted you to work there?”
“Must have.”
The fire snaps and crackles, burning down to glowing logs. The air is full of pine and wood smoke and the sweet scent of marshmallows.
She runs her fingers over the backs of my hands. “You don’t like it, though.”
In typical Rose fashion, she’s not casting blame or judgment. Just making an observation. I don’t know if I’d say I don’t like it. Or rather, I have said that, but I don’t know if it’s exactly true.
“I’m not comfortable there, is what I’ll say. But it never felt right to get rid of it. Even if I’ve considered it.”
She hums softly like she’s got me all figured out. “You keep going for your friend.”
