Page 103 of Snowed In with Benefits

Hunter nods. “Let me know if you need help. I’ll just be cleaning today.”

I want to tell him not to clean too thoroughly. That I can’t bear it if he scrubs her scent out of the furniture, out of the walls. That if he so much as touches the Christmas tree I’ll put him on his head. But I fight the words, hiding them behind my teeth, swallowing their meanings with a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

I do the dishes after breakfast, and it takes all three plates before I stop handing them to the ghost of Josie for a beat before sticking them in the dish drainer. I don’t know if the other two notice, but I don’t think they do. But I notice. I’ve never noticed the absence of someone so damn sharply, not even Davey.

I need to get her off my mind. I head to the mudroom to suit up, shoving my feet into boots that she wore. I get an image of her slipping and sliding in them across the snow and squeeze my eyes shut as if that will make the memory go away. Cursing myself, I shrug into my coat and head out onto the property. I grab a bag of birdseed from the porch and sling it over my shoulder.

I’ve got three bird feeders on this property, one on each side of the back yard. I spot a cardinal in a tree. She’d be taking a picture of it. She loves cardinals. Swearing out loud, I fill the bird feeder on the west side of the property, then head to the one on the back fence. The fence where she helped me free the deer.

“Damn it, Beau, get it together,” I mutter to myself. I pass the spot where we fell into the creek together and the memory of the bath, that first moment of intimacy, rises in my head unbidden. I hate this. I hate everything about this. I need something more to keep my mind off her. I’ve been taking on project after project around here, trying to keep my hands busy and my brain quiet, and it’s just not working. Everything reminds me of her.

I head to the last bird feeder. I’m crunching through the snow, making too much noise, but not enough to keep my head quiet. I pass the barn and see her up there, in her oversized clothes, wielding a circular saw. Clenching my jaw, I march past it without stopping.

I fill the bird feeder and immediately notice that part of the fence is coming apart. Something must have torn through it at some point, maybe a bear, maybe a deer. I take the birdseed back to the porch and swap it out for tools. I’m almost back to the fence when I freeze solid, holding my breath.

The foxes are back. The same ones Josie called me to the window to look at. They’re chasing each other through the snow near the tree line, and as I watch them, I feel a grin spread across my face for the first time in days. I stand here longer than I need to, hands in my pockets, just watching them play. They’re using the break in the fence to play hide-and-seek with each other.

I can wait another day to fix that. They’re enjoying themselves. I turn to head back toward the cabin and the heaviness returns to my chest. My grin fades. The cabin is empty without her, even though it’s full of us.

I spend the day doing other things. Sanding this. Stitching that. Doing anything to keep my hands busy, but by the time the afternoon starts to turn into evening, I’m out of things to do. I try to read, but the words just blur on the pages. I can’t sit still. My body is full of anxious energy and I have nowhere to put it. I glance at the Christmas tree and it gives me an idea.

“Hey, guys,” I holler from the living room.

Emmett pokes his head out of the workshop. Hunter comes out of the bathroom.

“What’s up?” Hunter asks.

I stand up. “We should clean out the attic.”

They give each other a look like I’ve lost my mind.

“Look, we’ve been putting it off for months,” I argue. “There’s a bunch of shit up there that we don’t need to be holding on to. Let’s just get it done.” If I don’t do something, anything, I’m going to crawl out of my skin, and this is a big enough project to take all of my attention. Besides, she was never up there, not once. It’s a space away from her memory.

Emmett shrugs.

“Okay,” Hunter says. “I guess we’re cleaning out the attic.”

I think they’re as anxious to be busy as I am. I was expecting a lot more pushback. This isn’t the kind of chore any of us are usually eager to do. We head upstairs together, down to the end of the hall, and up the narrow staircase that leads to the attic. It sits behind a closet door. I doubt she even knew it was here, let alone climbed it.

Dust greets us as we reach the attic. Motes float through the weak sunlight filtering through the little windows. I flick on the overhead light and look around. There are boxes piled high on shelves, boxes stacked up on the floor, and a bunch of broken furniture filling the spaces between.

“Emmett. Your call on the furniture. Fix, repurpose, or toss?”

He examines each piece closely before making his decision. Most of it goes in a “repurpose” pile. One rocking chair goes in the “fix” pile. The particle board bullshit all gets tossed. Hunter opens up a box full of crusty overalls. We don’t even talk about it before he tosses them. We have more, we don’t need those. He breaks down the box, making more room for us to sort through things. Box after box, memory after dusty memory, none of them touched by Josie.

I open a box and my heart stops. My watch is sitting there on top of a denim jacket, its face busted and broken. I pull the watch out with shaky fingers. I hold it, turning it over in my hands. It’s full of feelings from that time in my life. The hopelessness. The desperation. The loss of myself and the denial of everything I could be. I hold the watch, remembering how deeply I once believed that I had no potential.

“I was wearing this watch the night I got arrested,” I say quietly.

Emmett and Hunter immediately pay attention and I realize it’s the first thing anyone has said for a long time. Emmett looks at the watch.

“It’s broken.”

I nod. “I’m a big guy. They were pretty forceful about putting the cuffs on. I don’t really blame them, after walking onto that scene.”

“Forceful enough to break the damn thing?” Hunter looks heated. “Fuckers.”

I shrug. I get it. The guy was bleeding out from his head on the sidewalk. It looked bad. Real bad. They wanted me contained as fast as possible.