Page 8 of Kept By the Devoted Mountain Man
"We're having pesto," Nora says. "Uncle Beckett made it. He puts pine nuts in."
I take the bread bag. Our fingers are close but don't touch and I'm aware of that distance with a specificity I have no business feeling.
"Thanks for coming," I say.
She looks at me — quick, warm, direct. "Thanks for asking."
She's easy in the space.
She sits down at the table where Nora has placed her and that's it. She's here. She fits.
Nora shows her every drawing on the refrigerator. There are eleven of them. Tessa looks at each one with the focused attention of a person who is genuinely interested in what a five-year-old draws, asks specific questions — "What's that in the corner?" "Is that the fox?" — and doesn't rush any of it. Nora blooms. She gets louder and more animated with each drawing, standing on her tiptoes to point at details, and by the time I put the pasta on the table she's got Tessa by the arm and is explaining the plot of the fox book in full.
I set the food down. Tessa helps Nora into her chair without looking like she's helping, just steadying, and then sits and picks up her fork.
"This smells incredible," she says.
"It's just pasta," I say.
"Pine nuts," Nora adds, authoritatively.
Tessa catches my eye across the table.
We eat. Nora talks. The light through the kitchen window goes amber and then deep gold and the birds are loud outside and it's the most normal dinner I've had in two years, which is not a comfortable thing to notice. It's a good thing. The discomfort is because it's good and good things have been in short supply and I don't quite know what to do with the abundance of this — this woman, this table, this small person between us acting like the three of us have always eaten dinner together.
At some point I stop tracking time. Nora eats her pasta and at eight o'clock hits the exhaustion wall, the energy draining out of her mid-sentence like a plug pulled. I carry her to bed while she's still telling me about something that happens at the birthday party, and by the time I've got her in pyjamas she's half asleep, and I sit on the edge of her bed and put my hand on her hair and she's gone in under a minute.
I sit there in the quiet for a moment. The familiar weight of safety. I look at the hockey trophies on Jace's shelf, the photo on the dresser, and I think:he would have liked Tessa.The thought arrives whole and certain and I set it down carefully, because I can feel what it means, and go back out to the kitchen.
Tessa is rinsing dishes.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know." She doesn't stop. "Is she down?"
"Yeah. Fast."
"Long day." She stacks the last dish, dries her hands, looks at me.
I get some decaf coffee going. It's something to do with my hands, which need something to do. She leans against the counter and watches, not filling the silence for once, and the kitchen is small and warm and there are maybe eighteen inches between us and I am aware of every one of them.
"Come outside," I say.
The porch faces west. The mountains catch the last light in layers — indigo at the top, warm grey below, the tree line black and solid. The river is audible if it's quiet enough and tonight it's quiet enough. I bring two mugs and we sit in the old cedar chairs, and she holds her mug in both hands and looks at the mountains and doesn't say anything and I find I don't need her to.
After a while she says: "Tell me about Jace."
Nobody asks me that. Everyone in town knew Jace; when they want to talk about him it's to tell me what he was like, not to find out. She's asking because she wants to know through me, which is different.
"Younger by three years," I say. "Funnier. Better with people. He could walk into a room and be someone's best friend inside ten minutes." I look at the tree line. "I took years."
"I believe that."
"Nora has his eyes. The way she sizes you up before she decides you're worth talking to." A beat. "He would've figured you out in about thirty seconds."
"What would he have figured out?"
"That you mean it. That you're not performing it. A lot of people perform it around kids. You don't."
