Page 20 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Guy Next Door

“You absolute idiot,” she says.

That's not what I was expecting.

“I told my publisher yesterday.” She's laughing and crying at once and hitting my chest with the flat of her hand, once, not hard. “Alina wants me in the office for a day. One day, Harris. I told her I'm illustrating from Snowflake Falls, not the cityfrom now on. She said fine, half her artists are in the middle of nowhere.”

I stare at her with my mouth open.

“I gave up my place yesterday. I've been sitting in that cabin trying to work out how to tell a man who told me I should go that I wasn't going, and you're standing there apologizing to me.”

“You gave up your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Before I?…”

“Look, I stayed because I've done the best work of my life here and I've laughed more this month than in the two years before it, and because for the first time since I got here I stopped planning when I could leave.” Her voice goes husky. “And also for you. Mostly for you. I love you too.”

I put my hands on either side of her face and kiss her while the band muddles throughPurple Rain.

We come out onto the green for the rest of the night. Megan leans back against me and I put my chin on top of her head.

At the far edge of the green, a rust-colored fox comes out of the treeline, sits down at a sensible distance from everyone, and watches the sky turn orange and gold with its one good eye.

EPILOGUE - MEGAN

Three months later

The proof copy arrives in November, and I make Harris open the envelope because my hands are shaking. He's at my kitchen table, in my cabin, with a broad smile on his face.

The Little Lost Fox.My name on the front in a font I fought about for a week and a fox on the cover coming out from under a fallen trunk with a curious expression on his face.

He goes through it without saying anything, one page at a time, and takes so long examining the pictures that I go put the kettle on to stop myself asking if it’s any good.

Then he turns back to the dedication at the front.

For Harris, who taught me to see the wild things properly.

He puts his hand flat on the page for a second, like he’s soaking up the words with his skin. Then he closes the book and pulls me down into his lap and holds me, telling me how good it is, and we stay like that until the kettle clicks off.

His show opened the first Saturday of October.

Bettina Hollis got a hundred and forty people through the door on the first day, which she tells me is unheard of out here. Delphine wore a caftan that competed with the artwork for attention. Gram told everybody who came within range that she'd known about the photographs for years, which is amagnificent lie. Russell stood in front of the moose for a long time and said “Wow!” which is his highest form of praise.

And at some point in the afternoon there were nine or ten people standing in front of the photo of the owl coming off the fence post. Harris was over by the door with his hands in his pockets, watching them look at it.

All of them sold. He's got a woman from a magazine in Portland emailing him now, and interest from a museum in the city.

Winnie came up for the opening and stayed in Snowflake Falls. She’s been weird ever since; vague about her weekends, starting sentences and not finishing them. I've decided to let her tell me in her own time. She'll crack by Christmas.

The morning it happens, the frost is thick enough to see every blade of grass in the yard. I'm at the kitchen window with my coffee when something moves at the treeline.

Kit, sitting where he always sits, with his brush curled over his feet and his one eye on the house.

Behind him, back in the bracken where the shadow is, there's a second fox.

She's smaller than him and darker, and she’s way more cautious. She stands with one foot up and her ears going, checking the yard, then the porch and then the yard again, ready to be gone.

And then, out of the bracken past the pair of them, come the cubs.