by Rebecca Ryan
On the way home, Claire needs to stop for supplies for both humans and animals. First, there's the big feed store, where I wait until she comes out with grain, which she throws in the back of my truck. Then we stop at the Hannaford's in Rockland and I decide, despite her wagging finger, to join her on a minor mission. The store is packed with people post-storm and though all we pick up is coffee, maple syrup, rice, goat cheese, root vegetables, and a roasting chicken, it takes forever to check out.
She frowns at me when I toss blueberries from Chile in the cart.
"Sacrilege," is all she says.
Apparently, buying blueberries from anywhere else is a social crime.
I point out that the self-checkout is free, but she stubbornly refuses to move from our place in line.
"I am not doing their job for them," she offers by way of explanation. "People need jobs."
Though the pain killers are starting to wear off, I have to smile at her.
She's oddly quiet on the last ten-mile stretch back to Echo Bay. Despite the thaw that launched us on the road this afternoon, there are patches of black ice everywhere and the narrow margins of the shoulder are encrusted with sheets of ice eroded by sand into dirty, lacey patterns. The wind has kicked up again, and dark clouds form and curl high against a blue sky that only offers a short reprieve.
Claire turns on the radio for a minute to try and catch the weather at the top of the hour, but it's three after four and we've missed it already.
Even though the road demands most of my attention, I keep stealing glances at her. She's got one arm crooked against the armrest near the door and she's cupping her chin in her hand, gazing out her window. Her other hand sits in her lap like a schoolgirl. Her left leg rests on the seat, her heel tucked under her. She's kicked her boots off—a habit she tells me, left over from when she interned two years ago with a vet from Portland who only had a car with heating vents in the floor.
Her feet would get too hot.
I want to take her hand, take that hand and hold it, kiss it, taste her fingers. Her skin is so beautiful, as if lit from within. As her hair moves with each jumble of the truck, and she reaches to tuck a wily strand behind her left ear, I shift in my seat because I start to get hard again.
I have to think of something else.
The truck fishtails for a second and she grabs the door, her leg coming down, but it's over before it starts and she glances at me and bites her lip. Her face is pale, the few freckles across her nose stand out and I want to kiss her right here, now, and crush her to me. Feel her press her face to me with her small strength and then melt into me. I want to hold her and make all that pain ebb away, all that loss, all those have-to-do’s, and just let me take her somewhere she doesn't have to worry about anything. Where she can't think, and can only feel.
Feel me.
What the fuck.
I keep my hand on the steering wheel. We're coming to the last few miles and this is where she decides to come clean.
"You should've filled that prescription for pain meds," she says.
"Is that what's got you so miffed?" I ask.
"'Miffed?’ Did you grow up with your grandma?"
"Miffed is a great word. So is 'snit.'"
"Equally disturbing as this is past the twentieth century," she says. Her silence after that makes me press on.
"As in, she is in a ‘snit’ because the dog ate her stethoscope." I manage another glance and see her smile.
Turning to me, she tilts her chin high at an angle. "Well, thank God it wasn't a pie. I revoke traditional gender roles. Though," she pauses, "I do love romcoms. And perfume." And she laughs.
Her laugh is high, silvery, and makes a tingle run down my spine. To see her happy leaves a lightness in my chest I haven’t felt in a really long time.
I have to shift my glance back to the road as it narrows, carrying us to the tip of the little peninsula and Echo Bay.
When I flip the windshield wipers on, the glass streaks, fogs with mist; streaks, fogs with mist.
"It happened right back there," she says.
I stiffen and grip the wheel.
"It was a head-on collision. I never learned the exact spot. I don’t want to know." She turns to me, her blue eyes wide with tears and grief. She wipes them. "Sorry. Sometimes I just get weepy. I think it's my fault."
I grip even harder. "Why? Why would you think that?"
"Because I’m the one who started the fight with Devon and Laurel. I’m the one who ruined that afternoon. I'm the reason they wanted to go out to the movies, to get away and be by themselves. We were fighting over who was going to be the grandma in the play we were doing. It was stupid."
"You were a kid," I offer.
"Still."
"No. The judge caused the accident. He's an asshole who never paid for what he did."
Claire looks startled. "You heard about the—him?"
"That piece of shit who got off? Yeah."
"He doesn't deserve the same," she says. "But he should have been disbarred and imprisoned, or something. He painted the picture that it was partially their fault because a headlight was burned out." She sighs. "And then, suddenly, he was the victim. Poor him and the guilt he'd have to live with for the rest of his life."
The whole story left me clenching my jaw. “How did you cope with all that?”
"I didn’t really know about it until later." Her knee comes up and she wraps an arm around it. "Much later, actually. It was bad."
"But you got through school."
"Because of Geo. Because of him. He made me go back to finish and then he helped me get into vet school," she says.
"And Devon and Laurel tried to run The Inn?"
"Yes, with Travis, but he actually liked helping Geo in the clinic more. I'd come back one weekend a month. Then, when I was in vet school, I'd come back every weekend to make sure Travis stayed on track. But we couldn't keep The Inn. By the time I was nearly done with vet school, Devon and Laurel had closed it up and Travis was finishing high school."
We pass the last intersection that T’s into the main road and head straight to the bay.
"Geo moved out of the apartment above the clinic and did an early retirement thing the year I came back. We shared the practice," she says.
"Was there backlash about you being a woman?"
She shakes her head. "Not really. More than half the vets in Maine are women now."
"Really? All those crusty old-timers trust you?"
"Well, I think it's my age more than my sex. There are a few big animal farmers who still think I'm an idiot. Or delicate."
My side starts to quiver and then breaks into a dull, escalating throb. The waves of needling pain knock down some boundaries because even as I ask, there's a part of me wildly alert I am on thin ice. "What happened to Chloe?"
She points suddenly. "Oh, look out. The black ice is worse after the Route 42 T-off." I feel her glance at me. "You were a little out of it when we left this morning. I was going about fifteen miles an hour." She rests her chin on her knee.
We hit an icy patch and the truck fishtails for a second.
"Slow it down, mister." Her leg slides down. Both her hands are in her lap now.
I become overwhelmed with needing to share something with her. To show her a piece of me. Maybe then, that quicksand that is Chloe won't seem so treacherous to her. I try to control my voice so it doesn't quiver. "Reach under your seat."
"What?"
"Just reach under your seat," I repeat.
With that little pinched forehead, so cute and so transparent, she reaches with one hand beneath the bench seat.
"You'll need both hands," I tell her.
"I just feel paper." Keeping her gaze on the road, she reaches down and starts to remove the paper bag. "Geez, what is this thing? Heavy as hell."
"Open it."
She glances at me, her forehead still knitted and sets it in her lap.
I can't smile, but I try to reassure her. "Don'
t worry. It's not a gift."
The sound of paper being pulled mixes with a soft gasp. "Oh, Finn. Finn." Her gaze shifts from the flat piece of granite covering her lap, to me, and back to the slab of stone.
I glance quickly at the stone, to the names engraved there: "Two Hearts in Mine: Allison and Kenny."
"The garden?" she asks.
All I can do is swallow and nod.
She rubs the surface of the smooth granite with her hand. "It's beautiful."
"Most of her family won't speak to me," I explain, not to be melodramatic, but just to be truthful. "But her grandfather used to be a stone carver and he made this for me when I signed the paperwork on The Inn. He's the only one who still wants a connection." Turning left, I ease the truck over the bumpy, weather-gouged dirt road and the truck lobs to the left and right, pulling my stitches. Despite myself, a small hiss escapes.
She lays a hand on my thigh and immediately, a hot current runs straight to my groin. "Slow it down," she says. "Almost there."
I pass The Inn and pull into the clinic driveway. It's Sunday and the little parking area is empty, so I can get right up to the front door.
"I don't want to put this back under the seat. It seems wrong," she says.
I seem way too noncommittal than I feel when I shrug and say, "I don't know where to put it yet."
Still holding it in her lap, her suggestion seems at once perfect and almost clairvoyant. "There's an herb garden that comes up every year in the back between the two buildings, by that big slab I sit on. Why don’t you put it in the middle of the garden there?"
My eyes start to sting. How can she be so gentle, so right, and be sitting here, all at the same time?
I clear my throat. "Where is it?"
"Here, zip up," she says and tugs at my zipper, pulling the two halves tighter. It's an intimate move, and her touch through the fleece jacket makes me gasp a little. "Sorry. Did I hurt you?"
I shake my head.
"Let me carry it," she says. “It probably weighs thirty pounds." She lets the rest of the brown paper bag fall to the cabin floor and scoots out of the truck.
I follow her slowly, watching the wind catch on her long hair, while she hunches over, carrying my burden.
No one has ever carried my burdens—ever. I am always the protector, always the man in charge. Always the one second-guessing, looking ahead, seeing how soft the perimeter is. Which direction the threat may come from.
"It's right here," she calls out, simultaneously kicking ice and snow away from the ground.
There, twisted and pale, are the dormant remnants of sage, rosemary, caraway, tarragon, mint, thyme, oregano, and others I can't identify. Planted in a six-foot-wide circle, next to the slab of rock with the thick ribbon of rose quartz, it looks out across the grass toward the bay.
She bends over, placing the memorial on the ground. "Which way do you want it to face?"
I can hardly speak. The hot lump in my throat can't be worked out no matter how often I swallow.
“Toward the ocean, toward The Inn?" She stands there, bent over, hair streaming the words whipping from her mouth in a cold rush of wind.
I point toward the gray sea.
Out there.
Out there toward the unknown. Nic once told me that the present is all we really know, all we can only really understand: "The now is what shapes us, teaches us, and saves us."
I have never lived in the now. I have always lived in the future, anticipating danger, determining levels of threat, not really paying attention to the present. I've always been done with the present, even before it gets a chance to become the past. But here, in this moment, the present persists. It’s right there. She's right here.
Turning the stone, she shifts it until it's flat, secure, and wedged in the top of the softening mud. "Look what's here!" she cries and holds up a little piece of tumbled green sea glass. She hands it to me and says, "Look, it's shaped like a heart."
The piece of glass is less than an inch long and must have come from the curved bottom of a green beer bottle. Now it's all foamy green, and it's not a stretch to claim the shape; it’s clearly there: two narrow halves coming together in a slim heart.
"It's like a teeny gift," she says, wiping her hands on her thighs and blowing on them.
I slip the glass in my pocket. Closing the gap between us, I take her hands in mine, bringing them to my chest as I close my eyes. Cold, wet, and a little gritty, they warm instantly in mine and I try not to let her notice how my heart pounds. Rubbing her hands in mine for a moment longer, I lean down swiftly and kiss her on the cheek.
A chaste move. But I am so grateful. Claire has no way of knowing Allison was a master gardener. Herbs were her specialty.
What surprises me is the sudden flush in Claire's cheeks, how startled she looks at me as I draw back. How her lips part, slightly swollen with cold. How I so want to press her to me, hold her, feel her move against me. I start to get hard again, swiftly, my cock rubbing against my pants.
"Thank you," I say, letting go of her.
She quickly stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets as if guilty of something, glances at me, and then turns to go back to the clinic.
Chapter Thirteen
Claire
My face burns either from the kiss or the wind, and both are leaving me a little unhinged and so nervous I can’t think straight. Often, after an ice storm, there's a day of quiet and then the wind comes, straight off the sea, gusting, pounding, howling as if angry the clouds have all left. At night, the stars are so many and so brilliant, city dwellers will find fingers edging toward frostbite and, still, they won't go back inside. They can’t believe they've lived this long without seeing the naked sky.
That's how I feel.
I can’t believe it's been this long since a man has looked at me in that way. Or, this long since I've noticed a man look at me in that way.
I'm irritated by my own giddiness, hoping it doesn't leave me stupid and babbling about a cow's prolapsed uterus or something. I am just so grateful he returned to The Inn to grab some clean clothes and a razor—it gives me time to think.
When I enter through the side door, I shed my jacket and boots and climb the stairs to the apartment.
"Aunty Claire, you look wet," says Cory as I round the corner into the kitchen.
"That's because I am wet," I say, bending down to his level.
He puts a hand on my neck, but I know Laurel's been working with him to touch people who are safe to touch. That small movement of caring, because he knows he should care, leaves a small lump in my throat. Laurel's worked so hard with him to learn these manners of the heart, and yet he can't connect with his own yet.
I brush a bit of grit from his forehead. "Been down to the beach?"
"Power's out," he announces as way of an answer.
Devon and Laurel sit by the woodstove, each curled on one of two of the small sofas facing each other.
"Glad the generator works. We're still out of power," says Laurel, sliding down into the sofa and spreading her arms out. "It’s going to be two to three business days they said on the phone."
Devon's wrapped a brown hand knitted throw our mother made around her legs. "It's going to be a hell of a winter."
"And I think you should do some to warm it up."Laurel gets up and walks over to the counter to open a bottle of wine. Her eyes hold mischief. "You're all floaty for some reason right now, anyway."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, we've discussed it," says Devon.
But I'm in the dark. "Discussed what?"
"Just fuck him," says Devon, mouthing the second word.
We all hear the downstairs door open and close, then someone hanging up a coat, the thud of boots.
My face burns red again and Laurel's eyes widen. She claps a hand over her mouth.
"Who's that?" asks Cory, one of the few questions he's asked in his life, but instead of looking at the staircase like his mother and aunts, he
stares at the kitchen window.
"Who's that?" answers a much deeper voice and Finn slowly comes up from the stairwell.
"Me," says Cory.
"Well, it’s me too," says Finn and smiles.
Cory suddenly wraps his arm around Finn's leg and Laurel opens her mouth slightly but closes it when Cory looks right up into Finn's face and says, "But you're a different me."
"Yes, because we like different things and you look different," Finn says.
This is good enough for Cory. He waits for a second or two, releases Finn's leg, and plops himself down with his box of Legos and mat on the floor.
My sisters are uncharacteristically silent, just staring at him. And then I realize they’ve never seen a gorgeous man—almost a stranger—in my kitchen.
Finn's just standing there in a heavy navy-blue crew sweater, faded jeans. His torso is visible underneath his clothes, the cotton folding deftly, accommodating every inch of that body of his. It was different when there was a mess of people up here, but now it’s just him.
Well, him and a duffle bag.
"What's that?" Devon asks, eyeing the bag.
"The Inn's freezing," I offer.
"You can tell them," he says, wincing slightly as he settles on a barstool. "I have no pride."
"You should be proud of everything you do," says Cory as he flies a boxy airplane around the small sky above his head.
"Not this, my man." He glances at my sisters and then me.
It takes half an hour to wrap up what happened over the last two days and both Laurel and Devon rise to stare out the kitchen window at the gaping hole in the roof.
"It’s going to be tough finding someone to help you with that," Devon says. "But I can get up there fine."
"Damn it, Devon." I can’t help myself.
She just ignores me and rushes on. "But I'd have no idea what to do. You need that weather-tight."