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“How long has all of this been here?” I asked, eyeing up the boxes of spaghetti. I’d never checked a spaghetti expiration date in my life. I was sure at some point, I’d eaten pasta that was five or more years old. So I was willing to chance it.
“It gets filled every third month in case of emergencies. If I don’t need to be here, the food gets donated before it goes bad,” Bellamy told me as I looked at the pastas and rice, the canned soups, fruits, and vegetables, the macaroni & cheese, even a couple bags of stuffing mix.
“Mac & cheese?” I asked, grabbing a box and waving it at him.
I was having a hard time picturing Bellamy eating any of the shelf-stable foods I was surrounded by, even though it had pretty much been the only type of food I had known until I was practically an adult.
“Sounds good,” Bellamy agreed. “What?” he asked, making me realize I’d let the smile slip out.
“I just can’t picture you eating boxed macaroni and cheese,” I told him. “Maybe some fancy baked stuff or something, but not this. This isn’t even a name brand,” I said, shaking the box that was shells instead of the more expensive elbow brand.
“There’s a first time for everything, love,” he said, following me into the kitchen as I searched for a pot and filled it with water. “Now, this is the pasta,” he said, jiggling the box. “What is this?” he asked, picking up the silver foil packet.
“That’s the cheese,” I told him, shaking my head.
“Cheese,” he repeated, brows pinched, dubious about my declaration as he started to knead the packet between his fingers.
“Well, it is probably more chemical than cheese, but that is what makes it taste good,” I told him, shrugging.
I turned the heat on under the pot then turned to look at him, brow quirked up.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t see a coffee machine. Please don’t tell me you have stranded me in the woods of Montana with wolverines and no coffee maker.”
To that, Bellamy let out a chuckle as he moved away from the island, coming into the small kitchen, and reaching above me into the cabinet, producing a glass pitcher.
“French Press,” he told me. At my blank look because, admittedly, I’d heard the term but had never used one of them myself, he went on, “You put the grinds in while you boil water. You pour the water in, give it a mix, let it sit, then press the plunger down,” he told me, showing me. “It traps the grinds in the bottom, and you drink the coffee. What?”
“Okay. Let me get this straight. You take a process that includes almost no cleaning—using a normal coffee maker—and no real work, and you instead create multiple steps for making and then cleaning up the coffee. Why?”
“Because, this way, you can make coffee even when the power goes out.”
“Oh,” I said, mulling that over. “Okay. That makes sense then. But you’re cleaning the damn thing out when I make coffee.”
“So I might as well bring a chair to the sink since I will be there all day and night,” Bellamy said.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “So how do you get this place stocked, being out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Bob.”
“Bob,” I repeated.
“Technically, Bob owns the land. And the house. On paper. He paid for it in cash I gave him and maintains it with cash I send him, but it is his if you look it up. He comes out here to make sure the pipes don’t freeze and nothing has decided the place is vacant and decided to move in.”
“And where does Bob live then?”
“He’s on the land too. About a half an hour hike that way,” Bellamy said, waving out the front windows to some unseen place on the other side of the river that cut through the property.”
“Does he know we’re here?”
“Unless he saw the plane, no. The whole point is no one knowing where I am when I am here. Judging by the expiration dates here,” he said, pointing toward the box, “I’d say he was here a month ago or so. And won’t be back for a while. We should be long gone by then.”
I swear, at that moment, two voices in my head spoke at once.
One said Thank God.
The other mumbled some nonsense about how I would be perfectly fine staying in this cabin in the middle of nowhere with him for any length of time.
That was ridiculous on multiple levels. Not the least of them being that I was not what anyone would call an outdoorsy person. I liked TV and take-out and good internet connections.
“What’s that look for?” Bellamy asked, head tipping to the side a bit as I poured the pasta into the pot.
“I was just thinking about the internet.”
