Page 12 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Lumberjack

I follow Walden Kirby into his shop with a dead car on the highway, a blister on my heel, and the absolute certainty that I am in enormous trouble.

CHAPTER THREE

WALDEN

She talks while I cook.

Sits on my kitchen counter with her knees pulled up, bare feet dangling because I made her take off the ballet flats that gave her blisters, and she tells me about the letter Q lesson that went sideways when a five year old named Marcus asked if Q was a boy letter or a girl letter and the whole class devolved into a philosophical debate about letter gender that lasted forty minutes.

"Marcus is going to be a lawyer," she says, accepting the plate of eggs and toast I hand her. "Or a cult leader. It could go either way."

Her name is Hattie. Hattie Bloom. She told me in the truck on the drive from the mill to my house, offered it up like an apology. Like knowing each other's names after three months of texts is something she should feel guilty about.

Hattie suits her. Warm, a little old fashioned, unexpected.

She's shorter than I pictured. Rounder. Full hips, full chest, soft arms, a body that's built for comfort and designed to ruin me specifically, apparently. Her hair is brown with gold running through it, pulled into a ponytail that's been losing thefight since she walked three miles uphill in August. Green eyes. Freckles across her nose. Dimples in both cheeks when she smiles, which is often. Pink mouth that moves when she chews, when she talks, when she's thinking.

She's thinking now. Fork paused halfway to her mouth, studying me across the kitchen.

"You're staring," she says.

"I stare. You text. We all have things."

The dimples appear. "You're funnier in person."

"I'm the same in person."

"No, you're not." She eats a bite of eggs. "In texts you're grumpy and efficient. In person you're grumpy and efficient but also you cook eggs for strangers and give them your spare room without being asked twice."

"You're not a stranger."

The flush that crawls up her neck is visible even in the dim kitchen light. She's been doing that since the mill. Blushing when she looks at me, then looking away, then looking back.

I know the feeling.

"Wal," she says carefully. "The texts were. I mean, I said things. Personal things. At 2 AM sometimes."

"I know. I was there."

"And you never told me you were three hours away. That you lived in a town my GPS might route me through."

"No."

"Why?"

Because the texts were the first thing in two years that made my chest feel like more than a storage unit for grief. Because knowing you were out there, this funny, warm, ridiculous woman sending me paragraphs about the injustice of the letter Q, kept me going back to the phone every morning. Because telling you any of that would've made it real, and I wasn't ready for real.

"Wasn't sure I was allowed to want something like that again," I say.

Her fork lowers to the plate. She sets it on the counter beside her hip. Swallows.

"Your wife," she says softly.

"Cora."

"You mentioned her once. Not by name. Just that you'd lost someone."

"Two years ago. Pancreatic cancer. She was thirty six."