Page 24 of Love Bound

I don't let him finish. "We're done. Bill me. I'll figure something else out." Why I ever confided in him, I do not know. Turning to Geo I say, "Let's take this outside."

Gilbert's mouth opens and he stops in mid-shuffle, papers in hand.

***

As we step out onto the front porch, Geo wipes his face again with a handkerchief and laughs. "Glen's a good guy. He's got a soft spot for a little Corgi named Beauty."

"That's hard to believe."

He motions for me to cross the street and I take his lead, following him to a little mom and pop convenience store with Tallouk's painted on a sign above the door. "Best fresh crab meat," he says, holding the door open for me.

"I want to thank you for taking the time to come up here and tell me all this," I say.

The store's floor is old maple hardwood and linoleum near the back by the refrigeration units. It smells of coffee and motor oil.

"Those kids are my family," says Geo, reaching for a small tub of crab meat. "And they're all good people. Different as hell, but good. And Claire, she kept them all together. After Chloe—well, that's another story—but Claire really raised those kids. I was so busy working and trying to make sure their schoolwork was done. She ran the house and, for a while, they tried to keep The Inn running too."

"Well, they don’t need me taking more away from them."

"There's another piece of land," he says, as he tries to decide if he wants another container. "An acre and a half of Christmas trees not attached to the trust or the other property. It's down at the end of the dirt road there, and there's a trail through the trees that takes you right to it. You could try to buy that from her. There's no coast view, but it's beautiful. There's a little stream running through the middle that meanders off to the beach."

But I have no appetite for any land grab. I stand there for a moment, awkwardly, ashamed that I’ve continued to be so aggressive about the land. About claiming that piece of rocky coast for my pain. About making it about Allison. As nice as Geo is, however, I’m not ready to have that conversation with him.

But I don’t have to.

He turns to me and lowers his voice. "I know you've got your own story, your own loss. And that's hard. You're a young man—to lose a wife." And that's all he says.

Geo, unlike Gilbert, understands people and must see something in my face that tells him this is all I can take.

"Buy you a beer?" he asks, opening a refrigerated glass case with bottles.

I shake my head. "No thanks."

"I'm sorry if I—"

"You’re fine," I say. "I still have bad days." Every day. Every goddam day.

Instead of offering advice or some platitude, Geo says nothing and for that, I’m so grateful.

Sometimes silence is the most compassionate response.

Chapter Seven

Claire

Over the next month and a half, the gelding continues to improve. He’s suffered a few setbacks—fluid in the left lung, an infection in a burn under his belly—but while working with him slowly, carefully, I’ve been earning his trust. Learning my routine, I've noticed he waits for me now when I come back from my swim, knowing the next step is some hay and companionship, though he seems ambivalent about both.

One morning last week, I sedated him mildly while I cleaned the infection and scooped out pus, disinfected the wound, and stitched him up, using that loopy time to trim those hideous hooves as well. The horn of the foot came off in four large, curving rinds and I felt relief seeing them fall to the ground. I'd never trimmed a horse lying down before and about wrenched my neck, but it was worth it. He'd be able to walk correctly on sharp, dark hooves. I also floated his teeth. He'd been off his grain and had lost even more weight, but last week, after I filed his teeth down to the right size, he seemed to take some interest in molasses and oats and sniffed through the grain pan as if looking for gold nuggets. I even started keeping small pieces of apples cut up in my jacket pocket. A good sign.

The bad sign was the silence from the attorney about Finn's quest to buy the land, and all the construction going on next door. Every morning I woke up and had to refocus after every phone call. Every ring could be Les calling to tell me there was some offer I couldn’t refuse.

Or worse. It could be the county calling to excavate around the building to see if we were up to code. The "granite shelf" comment had done its damage, and I felt skittish, worried, and out of control.

In the lull of not hearing from either an attorney or an official, Finn Colton and I began a kind of neighborly truce. He came over the morning I lanced the gelding's abscess. Once, as I was washing up in the sink, he'd seen my light on and showed up at the back door asking for two eggs. Then he needed the number for the local internet provider, so new it was not in the phone book. I warned him the connection would prove sketchy.

After the first, freak ice storm, my old Jeep was stuck in the sand and he stopped working on the siding to come over and help me push it out. As usual, he was underdressed—no coat, no hat—and I could see his back muscles through the black cotton thermal shirt as he strained to get me out of my rut. When the car sputtered and fishtailed to safety on hard ground, he merely wiped his hands on his pants and went back to work, without even a glance over his shoulder at me.

But I looked him over, at first surreptitiously and then not so much, and the more I saw of him, the better he looked.