Page 5 of Kept By the Devoted Mountain Man
I tell her the same thing I always tell her. That Daddy isn't coming back. That he loves her more than anything. That she has me, and I'm not going anywhere.
I turn off her light. I go out to the porch and sit in the dark with a glass of water I don't drink, and I listen to the river below the tree line and the last birds calling in the long June dusk.
three
Tessa
Thursdayisonlymysecond time at the reading program, but Kaylee moves her bag off the chair beside her and says "the little ones are already asking about the fox," and I sit down and pick up where we left off.
Nora is on the rug before I've finished settling. Close enough that her knee presses against mine inside thirty seconds. She's brought a drawing of a fox, rendered in orange crayon with an enormous tail and a slightly menacing expression — and she presents it to me with both hands.
"That's for you," she says. "Because you do his voice the best."
I accept it with appropriate solemnity. I will keep it. I already know this about myself.
We finish two chapters, do a craft that involves an alarming amount of glitter, and I help two of the younger kids sound out words in the picture book section while Kaylee manages the older group. Nora doesn't need managing. Nora sits beside mewith her elbows on the table, watching my face while I read like she's studying technique.
At two forty-five I hear the truck.
I hear it before I see it and my posture changes about half a second before my brain registers why. My spine straightens. I'm aware of the door.
He comes in with sawdust in his hair and a coffee cup from somewhere, and Nora gets up from the table in the unhurried way of a child who has decided to be dignified about it. She walks to him instead of running. He crouches anyway. Same arms. Same face going soft in the same way.
He catches my eye over her head. Nods once. I nod back.
I notice his hands carrying Nora's backpack without being asked. Fitting around a coffee cup. I notice that he scowls at most things and doesn't scowl at Nora and doesn't quite scowl at me, which is its own category that I've stopped pretending I'm not tracking.
I'm a grown woman. I drove nine hours to escape a bad breakup. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. Still…
My phone buzzes in my pocket while I'm helping Kaylee stack the craft supplies.
"How's the moping vacation?" My sister Cara asks, when I pick up.
"It's not a moping vacation. I'm at a children's library program." I wedge the phone between my ear and shoulder. "Helping with glitter crafts."
A pause. "That's — why?"
"Because there was a sign and I'm a teacher."
"Are you okay? You sound—" A longer pause. "You sound different."
"I'm fine."
"No, you sound — are you with someone?"
I glance up. Beckett is waiting by the door, Nora on his hip, looking out the window. Not listening. Politely not listening, which is different and I notice that too.
"I have to go," I say.
"Tessa?"
I hang up. Beckett looks back from the window. He has the expression of someone who has heard enough to find something faintly amusing and is being very polite about not showing it.
"Sister," I say.
"I figured."
"She wanted to know if I was moping."
