Day seven. She tells me about Matt.
We're sitting at the kitchen table after dinner. She's got her reading glasses on, working through one of Gran's old crossword books because she discovered them last week and now she's addicted. Her pencil taps the table while she thinks.
"Sully?"
"Yeah."
"What's a five-letter word for 'imprisoned'?"
"Caged."
She writes it in. Then sets the pencil down. Takes off the glasses. Folds her hands on the table in a way that tells me something's coming.
"My ex-husband's name is Matt," she says. Calm. Measured. Every word chosen with care. "We were married for two years. He was charming when other people were watching. When they weren't, he was different."
My hands go still on my coffee mug.
"He broke my wrist the first year. Told the ER doctor I fell off a ladder changing a lightbulb." She pauses. Her eyes stay on the crossword book, not on me. "The second year, he split my lip. That's when I left."
The kitchen is dead silent. My blood is moving through my veins with a pressure that makes my temples throb.
"Where is he now?" The question comes out level. Just barely.
"Calgary. Maybe. Could be anywhere. He found me in Edmonton nine months after I left. Found me again in Saskatoon six months after that. Each time, I ran farther."
She looks up now. Those brown eyes steady despite everything she just told me. Her hands aren't shaking. Her voice doesn't break. She's delivering facts, organized, stripped clean of the terror that must have lived inside them when they were happening.
"Sanctuary Match was the farthest I could go," she says. "A woman with a new name, going to a place nobody's heard of, to live with a man nobody knows I'm with."
The information settles into my chest. Naomi Jacobs, if that's even her real name, didn't come here for a fresh start. She came here to hide.
And right behind that thought, immediate, sickening: she's in danger. On my property. In my bed. And I can't protect her any more than I could protect my mother from her own choices,or my father from his own heart, or my grandmother from time itself.
"Sully?" She's watching my face. "Say something."
What I want to say: I'll kill him if he comes anywhere near this mountain. What I want to do: lock every door on this cabin, pull her against my chest, hold on until the shaking in my hands stops.
What comes out is worse.
"How long were you planning to tell me?"
Her chin lifts slightly. "I just told you."
"After a week. After we've been sleeping together. After you moved into my bed." Standing, I carry my mug to the sink because I need to move, need to do something with the adrenaline turning my muscles to concrete. "You're hiding from a man who's already tracked you twice, and you didn't think that was information I needed on day one?"
"You didn't ask."
"I didn't know I needed to."
The silence between us is ugly. Nothing like the comfortable quiet of our mornings in the pasture. This silence has teeth.
"You're angry," she says.
"I'm scared." The word comes out raw. Honest in a way I didn't intend. Turning from the sink, gripping the counter's edge behind me, I look at her. "What happens when he finds you again? What happens when somebody in this town mentions the woman living up at the Cross place? This isn't a city, Naomi. People talk. Everybody knows everybody."
Her jaw tightens. "That's why I kept it to myself."
"That's why you should've told me. So I could've decided whether I was equipped to deal with it before I..." The sentence dies. Before I started caring. Before I started waking up afraid of how much I want you here. Before Gran's ghost started winning.
