Page 107 of The Wild Beneath

When it’s over for them both, in the quiet, the dishwasher beeps.

Annie wipes her cheeks before Evan can see. He steps back, and she slides off the counter, feet meeting the floor. Buttoning her shirt in his arms, she lets him draw her close and presses her face to the hot skin of his chest.

He straightens and kisses her gently. “Come in the shower.”

“You taste like outside.” She runs her tongue along her bottom lip.

Evan smiles before walking naked toward the bathroom. The sound of the shower. The percolator sputters its last drops.

Annie doesn’t go into the shower. She makes her breakfast, cold orange slices and yogourt, and tries to focus on the coldness in her mouth instead of the two things pulling her apart.

The water is still running as she goes to the bedroom. She throws on clean underwear and scrubs and ties back her hair into its usual braid.

“I have to get to work. I’ll see you tonight,” she says into the bathroom.

Evan is still in the shower, brushing his teeth with an electric toothbrush.

She doesn’t wait for his response. She rides to the hospital and hides out in the back of the emergency department, hunched over her charting. Only half paying attention to what she types, she lets the scribe do it, lets the algorithm decide, lets the laptop hum and the machines beep and the floors squeak and the nurses ask questions and the phone on her hip buzz and the overhead speaker announcements startle her again and again and again.

Chapter 41

Evan hears the front door click behind her as she leaves.

He grabs a towel off the rack and ties it around his waist. In the bedroom, the comforter is thrown open on Annie’s side of the bed, which is otherwise untouched. She must have actually slept while he was away. But the heating blanket isn’t plugged in as it always is. It’s still folded neatly on the dresser.

She left so quickly. Evan needs her badly right now, he needs her to bring him back to himself. But at the same time, they haven’t talked in days, and he’s been lying to her, or at least omitting the truth. His chest is heavy with it.

Evan wasn’t up north for another rescue.

He paid Ed Hollingsworth a visit at the logging camp. Ed offered him a float plane, but Evan declined and took the ferry up. He wanted to make the journey on his own terms, wanted the long hours on the open water to clear his head.

It ended up doing the opposite.

Time has not eased things as much as he hoped. Evan could not travel the channel without an internal deluge. Every time he blinked, he relived an undiluted version of what happened: inhaling briny water, dead trees bashing into each other and swirling in their wake. The ever-recurring image of Walker’s face-down body, mayday calls, pumping until his arms screamed.

The accordion of time folded out and back. Opening hiseyes, he clutched the ferry railing, its peeling white paint and rust. His palms were clammy. He felt like passing out.

There was no way he could say yes to all this again.

He wouldn’t sign Gibbons’s papers. They’d have to figure out Hale Timber without him. Evan was ready to wash his hands of it all forever.

The ferry finally arrived in Hale’s at 1:30 a.m. Disembarking, he walked up Main Street toward the logging road. He was glad to arrive at night, to avoid seeing anyone or anything up close. He had to stay single-minded.

Some things, however, he was forced to see again. Fishing boats moored slip-by-slip next to Rosie’s fish shop, which had been resurrected. Likewise, the Lucky convenience store, where he used to buy freezies that stuck to his fingers. The barbershop next door advertised zero fades. Houses and offices—­more numerous than he remembered.

He was surprised by how much had been rebuilt.

As Ed promised, a truck was idling at the edge of town. Evan opened the passenger door and met Jamie Kavanagh, a Hale Timber truck driver. He smelled of Listerine mouthwash. Evan closed the door behind him and Jamie did a three-point turn. They started up the mountain over the rutted dirt.

“It’s a bumpy ride. Sorry, Mr. Hale,” Jamie said.

Evan fiddled with the knobs on the dash and fired up the heater. “Call me Evan, please.”

They drove straight for hours, further into the forest than Evan had ever been. The camp was now deeper in the interior. Probably chasing older growth, bigger trees, more money. Evan lowered the window and smelled forest. He closed his eyes for a minute, but a pothole jostled him awake. They arrived at camp with the morning sun.

Ed looked similar but was now completely bald. He’d never been one for small talk. He was wearing a Hale Timber vest over a checkered shirt, the sleeves rolled tightly over his crossedforearms. They headed to the canteen and made coffees in white ceramic mugs. There had to be two dozen people in there. Who were these men? Where were their families? Were they all from Hale’s?

“Is that you, Ev?” A familiar voice from the kitchen.