Page 20 of Before the Bond
The exchange could have been worse, but it soured the good mood lunch with Jake and Maureen had put me in. I was useful but not trusted.
I’d dealt with worse. I reminded myself of this the whole walk back to Jake’s room.
By late evening, I was restless.
It didn’t matter that I was exhausted. I went through Jake’s charts a second time, trying to discern a pattern in when his pain flared up the most and where, what worked, and what didn’t.
Outside, it was already dark. The trees pressed close to the glass.
I can’t focus here, I thought.
I picked up Jake’s charts, a couple of medical books, and made my way downstairs.
I considered working in the kitchen, but something about the evening made it look lonelier than it did when everyone was around working and eating.
I remembered the fireplace area from the tour.
That would work.
After making some tea in the kitchen, I headed there.
I heard the fireplace crackling. Someone else was there.
As I moved into the room, I saw Caleb.
He wasn't reading. A book sat closed on the arm of the chair, and in its place was a spread of papers across the small table — some folded into thirds like correspondence, others marked with handwriting dense enough that I could see it from the doorway. A leather-bound ledger sat open underneath everything else, anchoring the pile. He had a pen in his hand and was frowning at something on the top sheet.
He looked up when I appeared in the doorway.
I moved to leave.
"There's plenty of space," he said.
I considered the offer for a moment.
I took the other chair — the one across from his — and set Jake's charts on my knees. Caleb returned to his papers without comment, the pen moving in short, deliberate strokes.
I watched him for a moment before I could stop myself.
"Does the family business always keep you this late?" I asked.
Caleb didn't look up immediately. "It keeps me when it needs to," he said. He turned a page in the ledger. "Timber doesn't run on a schedule."
"Neither do sick people," I said.
He glanced at me then — just briefly, the corner of his mouth shifting slightly. He went back to his papers.
We didn’t talk at first. The fire was the kind that settled rather than crackled — steady and low and oddly comforting. I expected the silence to be awkward in the way that silences between strangers usually were. But it wasn’t.
Finally, Caleb tidied up his documents and went for the closed book on his chair.
“Donovan talked to you,” he said, as if reading the book out loud.
“He did.”
“He’s protective,” Caleb reassured me. “He doesn’t mean to be harsh. I know how it comes across.”
Caleb turned a page in his book, though I was fairly sure he hadn’t finished reading it.
