Page 3 of Kept By the Devoted Mountain Man
"Beckett Hale." His voice is low. The kind that you feel slightly more than you hear. "Her uncle."
"Tessa Marlowe." I manage this at a normal volume, which I'm counting as a win. "I'm visiting for the week. I used to — I teach. Back in Vancouver. I saw the volunteer sign and came in."
I'm aware I've said too much. He doesn't seem to mind. He's still just looking at me, and Nora is watching both of us.
"She read three chapters," Nora reports. "With voices."
For one second I see what's underneath the scowl: something warmer, something that looks like a man who laughs when he thinks no one's watching. "Thank you," he says. "For sitting with her."
"She's easy to sit with."
Nora beams. Beckett looks at me for one more moment and then he nods, once, and turns toward the door.
I watch him leave. I watch the door close behind him. Through the window I see him settle Nora into the truck, check her seatbelt, say something that makes her throw her head back laughing.
Kaylee appears beside me. "That's Beckett Hale," she says, unnecessarily. "He's, like, a lot."
"Yeah," I say. That is one word for it.
I gather my things. I walk out onto Main Street into the full weight of the June sun, which is golden and relentless and hits my skin like a warm hand, and I think about a voice like graveland woodsmoke and a man who looks at me like he's actually seeing me.
I need to call my sister. I need to drink some water. I need to remember that I drove nine hours to clear my head, not to complicate it.
I have a feeling it's already too late.
two
Beckett
I'mtwentyminuteslateand I know it before I check my watch.
The trail crew hits a section of blowdown past the upper fork that wasn't on the survey; six trees across the path, two of them old-growth, root systems the size of small houses. We work two hours past schedule just to clear enough for hikers to pass safely. My guys are good and they work fast but timber doesn't care about your timeline. Never has.
I wash my hands at the water tank on the truck, drive back down the logging road faster than I should, and tell myself Nora is fine. She's always fine. Kaylee is reliable. The library is two blocks from the fire hall and everyone in this town knows Nora's face.
I tell myself this. I still push the speed limit the whole way down Main Street.
The library is quiet when I pull up, which means the reading program has wrapped and most of the kids have been collected.I can see through the window — a handful of kids still on the rug, the teenager at the table, and Nora.
And the woman.
She's on the floor, cross-legged, Nora tucked close beside her, a book open across both their laps. She's doing a voice — I can see it in her face, the slight exaggeration of expression, the way she tips the book toward Nora on the good parts. Nora is leaning against her arm. Not fidgeting. Not watching the door for me.
Nora's whole face is open — head tipped back, shoulders shaking, the full-body laugh she used to do before everything got smaller and quieter. I can't hear it through the glass. I don't need to.
I sit in the truck for three seconds longer than I need to.
It's been weeks of careful. Weeks of a kid who's learned to be smaller than she used to be and doesn't know I notice. I can't remember the last time I see her laugh like that — the real one, the unguarded one, the one that used to spill out of her constantly before Jace died and now appears only in brief, precious flashes. I watch it through a window, my hands on the wheel, and the tightness in my chest is something I don't have a name for.
I get out of the truck.
Nora hears me before she sees me. She's across the library and out the door before I finish coming around the hood, and I drop because there's no other option when forty pounds of five-year-old launches at your chest at full speed. I catch her, pull her in, feel the tight clench of her arms around my neck.
"You're late," she says into my collar.
"I know. Sorry, bug."
She pulls back to look at me and checks my face, the way she always does now, reading whether I'm okay. I've never said anything about it. She starts doing it about six months after herparents died and I don't have the heart to tell her she doesn't need to. Maybe she does. Maybe we both do.
