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She nods. One degree less frost. It’s a victory.
Taya’s quiet in the truck for the first ten minutes.
“I’m drunk,” she announces.
“I know.”
“Not embarrassingly drunk.”
“No.”
“Just—” she looks out of the window into the dark—”sad drunk.”
I don’t say anything.
She leans back and hums some song I don’t catch. After a while, she muses. “Do you know what the worst part is?”
“Tell me.”
“I knew.” She says it to the window. “Not the specifics or the decree or the photographs. But I knew something was wrong. Since almost the beginning.” She pauses. “I’m a lawyer. I cross-examine people for a living. I know what it looks like when someone is…ah…managing information. I chose to not know.” Another pause. “Because I wanted—” She stops.
“What did you want?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment.
“You,” she declares.
Flat and honest and devastating.
“I wanted you. So I compartmentalized the things that didn’t add up under ask him later, and eventually I just…stopped doing even that.” She turns from the window and holds my gaze, which is more than I expected her to give me tonight. “That’s not your fault. That’s mine. I know that. I fell in love. I stopped asking the questions I should have been asking.”
“Taya—”
“I’m not done,” she snaps.
I fall silent
“What you did—” She pauses. “I have been in love twice in my life. Once with a man who was weak and used me to feel stronger. Once with a man who was strong and—” She stops to take a breath. “And who looked at me like I was the most real thing he’d encountered in a very long time, and who danced with me at the Bear Dance and held me in Wíitsin’s kitchen.” Her voice has gone very precise, which I know means she’s sad, really, really sad. “And who photographed my files while I trusted him.”
The creek runs alongside the road.
“Both of those are the same man,” she continues. “And I don’t—I can’t make them into a version of the same man that makes sense.”
“They are the same man.” I take the risk and put my hand on hers for a moment, squeeze, and then let go. “I was doing both at the same time. Dancing with you, falling in love, and planning to betray you. And that doesn’t make sense because it’s not a sensible thing to be.”
She lets out a long breath. “I know it happened.”
“What happened?”
“The Bear Dance was real, and the decree was real, and neither of those things cancels the other out.”
She falls quiet, and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. I glance at her, see her eyes are open, and say, “But I’m here. I’m here, and I’m not leaving, and I don’t know what else to give you except that.”
She stares at the road for a long time.
Then she closes her eyes and leans her head against the window.
By the time I turn up the switchback to her cottage, she’s asleep.
