Page 2 of Kept By the Devoted Mountain Man
She fixes the book without acknowledging that it was upside down. Five years old and already committed to the bit. I respect that tremendously.
"What's your name?"
A pause. She's deciding whether I'm worth answering. "Nora," she says finally.
"I'm Tessa. Do you want me to read it to you?"
She looks at me then. Her eyes are very dark brown and very serious, the kind of eyes that see more than they let on. She's wearing a yellow shirt with a small strawberry on the pocket, and her hair is in two uneven braids that someone clearly did their best with.
"Okay," she says, and slides the book over to me.
It's a chapter book — well above her level — about a fox who learns navigation by the stars. I read the first chapter slowly, with a voice for the fox that's slightly pompous and a voice for the owl that's dry and unimpressed, and Nora sits beside me and listens with her whole body, leaning in by degrees without seeming to notice she's doing it. By the end of the chapter her knee is touching mine.
"The fox thinks he knows everything," she says, when I close the cover.
"He does," I agree. "Does that remind you of anyone?"
She thinks about it seriously. "Tommy Birch," she says. "He's in my class."
I press my lips together. "The fox gets better," I tell her.
"Does Tommy Birch get better?"
"I genuinely don't know. But in my experience, most of them do eventually."
She considers this. Then: "Can you read the next chapter?"
I'm on the third chapter when I hear the truck.
It's particular thrum of a large engine and big tires on a gravel road, pulling up to the curb outside. Nora hears it too. I know because she goes straight and still the way she goes still when I first sit down, except this time it's not caution. It's anticipation — the precise, contained excitement of a child trying not to show how much she's been waiting.
She's off the rug and across the library before I fully register the movement. I track her through the window by instinct, teacher brain, and I see the dark green truck.
Then, I see the man who gets out of it…
Big. Very big, the kind of big that reads as mountain before it reads as man. Jeans and a grey t-shirt, sawdust on both, boots that have been everywhere. He's moving fast, not quite running, with the particular walk of someone who's late and knows it and is annoyed with himself about it. The scowl on his face is set deep, like it's where his face rests when he's not paying attention.
Then Nora hits the door at full speed and he drops.
One knee, right there on the sidewalk, catching her without breaking stride. She barrels into his chest and his arms close around her and his whole face — the scowl, the tension, the late-and-annoyed — all of it disappears. He tucks his face into her hair and holds her like she's the thing he was actually rushing toward.
He stands, Nora on his hip, one hand flat on her back. He's saying something to her, head bent, and she's talking back with the full-body animation of a child who has been saving things up all afternoon. Then she points through the glass and I am a half-second too slow to look away.
His eyes find mine through the glass.
Dark. Steady. He holds the look a beat longer than he needs to, long enough that I feel it in my ribs, before he says something to Nora and turns toward the door.
Oh no.
I close the book. I'm standing by the time the door opens, which is either good instincts or a fight-or-flight response, I'm genuinely not sure. Nora comes in first, still on his hip, and points at me again with the conviction of someone introducing two people who don't yet understand how important this is.
"That's Miss Tessa. She does the voices."
He stops a few feet away. Up close he's even bigger, which I hadn't thought was possible, and he smells exactly like I'd guessed — pine resin and sawdust and something warmunderneath, like sun on wood. His jaw is dark with a few days of growth. His hands, wrapped around Nora's small back, are broad and calloused and careful.
I notice all of this in about four seconds. I'm a little horrified by myself.
He looks at me. Just looks, the way people do when they're actually paying attention rather than performing it.
