"Get some sleep."
The walk back to the main house takes forty seconds. I spend every one of them thinking about the flush on her neck when our eyes met. About the way her fingers curled around that bread like it was the first kind thing anyone had given her in weeks.
My phone lights up on the kitchen counter.
Mabel:
Heard you've got a guest. Pretty thing drove up in a Honda. Hank saw her at the gas station in town.
Me:
Mabel. Did you post my profile on Mountain Match.
Mabel:
I would never.
How's she settling in?
Me:
Mabel.
Mabel:
Goodnight sweetheart. Don't forget to check the pilot light on cabin 6. It sticks.
Tossing the phone on the counter, I stand at the sink looking out toward the row of cabins. One window glows at the far end. Cabin six.
Carmen Reyes came here to disappear into quiet work. That's what I'm gonna give her. One month of clean mountain air, honest labor, no complications.
The pilot light sticks on cabin six.
Grabbing my jacket, I head back out into the cold. Because that's who I am. The man who makes sure the heat works, the doors lock, the guests are comfortable. The man everyone depends on. The man who keeps showing up.
Halfway down the path, I catch vanilla on the wind. Faint. Coming from her direction.
One month. No complications.
My hands are already reaching for her door before I remind myself to knock.
Chapter Three
CARMEN
Aweek in, and Owen McCall has left soup on my porch three times.
The first was a mason jar of chicken tortilla, still warm, sitting on the railing when I came back from scrubbing cabin two's bathroom. No note. No knock. Just soup, a spoon wrapped in a paper towel, and the faint impression of his boot print on the step where he'd stood.
The second was minestrone. Thick, loaded with vegetables, the kind of soup that takes hours. That time he left a biscuit wrapped in foil beside it. From Mabel's, according to the napkin tucked underneath with the Ridgeline Diner logo.
The third, this morning, was pozole.
Pozole. Like he looked up what a woman named Carmen Reyes might want to eat on a cold mountain morning and went to the trouble of making it from scratch. The hominy was tender. The broth was rich with chiles. My abuela would've given it a seven out of ten, which from her was basically a standing ovation.
My hands didn't shake when I ate it.
That's the thing that scares me. The quiet up here is doing something. My body is remembering how to be still. For the first few days, every sound jolted me awake. A branch cracking outside the cabin. Wind against the roof. An owl at two in the morning. My nervous system was still running ER protocol, scanning for emergencies that weren't coming.
