Page 18 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

The elk comes from the freezer, thawed in cold water, seasoned with salt, black pepper, and dried rosemary from last summer. Cast iron skillet, high heat, three minutes per side. I've cooked this cut a hundred times and the process asks nothing of my mind, which is a problem because my mind keeps going back to the same place. The small of her back under my arm. The warmth of her palms through my shirt. The six inches I held like a line in the sand.

That was three hours ago. She's on the stool reading Lonesome Dove and I'm at the stove and neither of us has mentioned it.

"It smells incredible," she says. She's watching me over the top of the book. "What is it?"

"Elk backstrap. Took this one in October off the south ridge. Six-point bull, about seven hundred pounds. Biggest animal I've dressed in these mountains."

"You hunt."

"I eat what I hunt. There's a difference, or at least I tell myself there is."

"What's the difference?"

"Sport hunters want the rack. The photo and the taxidermy and the story for the bar. I want the meat. The rack on this one is in the lean-to under a tarp because I haven't figured out what to do with it and throwing it away felt wrong."

"You feel guilty about the antlers."

"I feel guilty about wasting a part of an animal I killed."

"It's a little bit the same."

I look at her. She's almost smiling. It changes her whole face. I turn back to the steaks.

I set the table. Two plates, two forks, two knives, two glasses of water. She makes her way over from the stool slowly, limping but mobile. I don't help her. She sits. I sit. We're across from each other at the heavy wooden table.

She takes the first bite and closes her eyes. The sound she makes is small and private. I look at the fire.

"This is the best thing I've ever eaten," she says. "And I worked in a diner for two years, so I've eaten a lot of things."

"The diner had elk?"

"The diner had a menu that hadn't changed since 1987 and a deep fryer that predated indoor plumbing. But the cherry pie was real. Made from scratch. Greta's recipe. She guarded it like a state secret. I tried to reverse-engineer it once and she caught me measuring the crust and gave me a lecture about culinary espionage that lasted twenty minutes."

"Culinary espionage."

"Her exact words. She said if she caught me with that measuring cup near her pie tin again, she'd revoke my apron privileges. The pie was sacred."

She's smiling now. A real one that uses her whole face.

"Tell me about the diner," I say.

She talks. I listen.

She tells me about the morning regulars. Mr. Henderson with his Tuesday cherry pie and five-dollar tip. A woman named Dolores who came in every Saturday with a crossword puzzle and scrambled eggs and rye toast, and once spent forty-five minutes arguing that the capital of Burkina Faso was Bobo-Dioulasso. A trucker named Ray who left origami animals on the table instead of tips. She kept them all in a shoebox under the register.

"A shoebox," I say.

"I keep things in shoeboxes. Important things. My mom's note is in a shoebox. The origami crane Ray made for my birthday is in a shoebox. My whole life fits in about four shoeboxes, which is either very sad or very efficient."

I think about Mason's report. No emergency contacts. Four calls a week, three to the diner. A life that fits in four shoeboxes. I don't say any of it.

"What about you?" she says. She sets her fork down and leans forward. "Where did you come from before all of this? Before the mountains and the cabin and the badge."

"Small town outside of Cedar Falls. My dad was a farrier. Shoed horses for thirty years. Could tell you more about a horse from looking at its feet than most vets could with a full exam."

"Is he still alive?"

"Sadly no. He died of a heart attack. My mother died a few years later."