Page 43 of Her Wicker Guardian

I leave it on the counter instead. Face-down, but there.

I take one slow breath and make myself loosen my jaw. “I’ll deal with it.”

Locke doesn’t understand all of that. His gaze moves between my face and the phone.

He’s gone still again. He doesn’t come closer, and for a moment neither of us moves.

Then I pick up the damp towel. “Come on.”

He follows me through the bedroom and down the stairs. At the kitchen threshold, I stop. He waits without crowding me.

I expected having him inside would feel like another responsibility.

Instead, the kitchen feels less empty.

I look at him. “Locke.”

“Yes.”

The word is simple and clear.

I point toward the kitchen door. “Porch?”

He looks toward it, then back at me. “Rachel stay?”

“Yes. Rachel stays.”

That seems to settle something in him.

I open the kitchen door, and Locke steps outside. He looks toward the screened porch, then back at me.

“Good night,” I tell him.

He watches me for another second, then walks the short distance along the cottage and lets himself through the porch door.

My hand moves through the locks by habit. One, two, three, four.

They sound exactly the same as they did yesterday.

But tonight Locke was inside because I asked him to be.

Chapter Eight

Locke

By Monday morning, I have enough words to ask about the things beyond Rachel’s yard.

Sunday gave me hundreds of them. Shannon came back and stayed for hours, using the iPad to point at pictures as I learned faster and faster. Rachel came home from work and talked to me while she hung clothes on the line and carried things between the house and the workshop. Laura came later with coffee in one hand and took over the iPad long enough to teach me the words for plate, fork, and chair. After the third repetition, she looked at Shannon. “I assume there’s a syllabus.”

Shannon gave her a look. Laura smiled.

I didn’t know what syllabus meant, but I understood that Laura was teasing her.

My laugh made all three women stare at me.

By evening, I could make sentences without building them one word at a time. Some are wrong. Rachel corrects me when the wrong part matters and lets the rest go.

This morning, she finds me standing between two trees near the edge of the gravel drive.