Page 62 of Fate, Interrupted

“I’ll hold the book.” She opens it to the index without hesitation.

I give her the name of a poem. She flips to the page number and holds it out across the basket, angled so I can see it, watching me with the patience of someone who is not going to back down.

I look at the page.

I look at her.

I row while craning my neck, competing with the sun’s glare on the pages. Undignified. It’s what’s happening. I read—unself-conscious about it, the words, the ones Neruda put in that order for reasons that still make sense to me every time I go back to them.

The Spanish sounds different out here on the water, quieter, the consonants softened by the open air. Norah sits across from me with her hat brim low, holding the book up for me as she listens.

When I finish, she doesn’t say anything right away.

The boat drifts.

“Why that one?” she says finally.

She sets the book down on the seat beside her.

Here is the place where I would normally redirect. Find a lighter response, one that acknowledges the question without answering it, keep the conversation more like banter where the terms are clear and my exposure is controlled.

I don’t do that.

“Because it’s about knowing something without being able to explain how you know it,” I say. “About recognition. The feeling of knowing before you can account for why.”

Norah looks at me.

The lake is like glass around us. The light has moved higher and harder since we came out, and it catches on the water and makes everything outside the boat feel slightly unreal, slightly suspended.

“There’s something about wolves I should probably tell you,” I say.

She waits. She’s good at waiting. Better than most people, and certainly better than me.

“Wolves don’t do this casually,” I say. “Any of it. The coming back. The trivia night. Today.” I look at the oars rather than at her. “When the wolf notices someone, really notices them, it isn’t something you can manage with distance and self-discipline. It doesn’t stay contained. It doesn’t stay quiet.” I stop. “I’ve been letting you think I have more control over it than I do.”

The lake makes its small, patient sounds around us.

“And that should probably concern you more than it seems to.” I use my father’s line, which I’m apparently using now because it was accurate when he says it and it’s accurate now.

She’s looking at me in a way I haven’t seen before. Not the wit or the warmth or the humor she brings to most things. Desire underneath all of that. Like she’s finally close enough to see what she’s been looking at.

She doesn’t deflect.

“Okay,” she says.

Not what does that mean or should I be worried or any of the questions that would be reasonable to ask. Only a person receiving information and deciding what to do with it, and the decision being to stay put.

The boat drifts in the silence.

I lock the oars.

“We should eat,” I say, because we should, and because both of us need a moment to sit with the words we both said.

Norah reaches for a sandwich, comfortable with where we left the conversation. She doesn’t look at me with concern or caution or any of the things I’ve been braced for.

She looks at me and says, “You’re still going to have to tell me which one you think is better, Neruda in Spanish or Neruda in English. I’m warning you that after that reading, I now have opinions.”

The thing in my chest that braced for a different outcome releases, slow like a door settling into its frame.