Page 31 of Run Rabbit Run

I read the water, the grade, and the way the ridges fold.

Some cold professional part of me is already working, already building the ground into a plan.

Then we reach the gate.

It's iron, black and high and old, set into a stone wall that runs off into the trees in both directions until the forest takes it.

There's no call box, no code, no one to wave us through.

It simply opens as we come, swinging in on hinges that make no sound.

I understand without being told that someone somewhere watched us approach and decided to let us in, and that the same someone can decide, just as easily, to never let us out.

We pass through, and in the mirror I watch the gate swing shut behind the car, iron closing on iron.

The sound of it is the first thing on this mountain that hasn't been silent.

It clangs, and the noise rolls out and echoes off the stone and the trees and comes back changed.

I face front again and don't let the driver see me do it.

But the fear finally puts its full weight down on me, low and cold and total.

A person can tell herself a lot of stories on a long drive up a stranger's mountain, and every last one of them died against the sound of that gate.

Beneath the fear, quieter and worse, is a truth I can't shove down no matter how hard I try.

This is his. All of it.

Every tree that blots the sky and every creek I clocked off the map is his, has been his for a hundred years.

He's walked it since before I knew his name, while I've had exactly none of it.

The arrogance it took me to think a week and a half of studying could close that gap sits in my gut like swallowed stone.

The road climbs on. Then the house.

It comes up out of the trees all at once, the way something that's been waiting comes up, and my breath goes shallow at the sight of it before my brain catches up to why.

Gray stone gone black-green at every joint.

Steep gables like hands pressed together.

Windows tall and narrow, giving back nothing but the flat white sky, so that the face of the place looks blind and looks like it's watching, both at once.

It's beautiful the way a blade is beautiful, all function and cold, and it doesn’t look like anywhere a person lives.

It looks like somewhere things are kept.

The car stops. The door beside me opens, the driver's hand on it, and the cold comes in smelling of rain and rot and woodsmoke.

I make myself get out on my own two feet with my spine straight, because I decided on the long drive up that he will not see me arrive afraid.

He's on the steps.

Of course he's on the steps.

He's been standing there the whole time, I'd put money on it, patient the way the house is patient, waiting for the exact moment I'd look up and find him already looking at me.