Page 9 of Rune’s Solace

I just moved in and put my arms around her, and she turned and grabbed onto me hard, this woman who’d found me at my lowest, and never once asked me to be anything but a mess for as long as I needed to be, and I held her up the way she’d held me, and I let her cry into my hair, ruin my shirt and I didn’t say hush and I didn’t say it’s okay, because it wasn’t, and she deserved somebody who wouldn’t lie to her even to make her feel better.

“I’ve got you,” I said instead, into her shoulder. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? I’ve got you.”

She cried harder, which I’d learned by then meant it was landing. Over her shoulder, up the long dark slope of the yard, I could just make out Horse on the porch, standing exactly where he said he’d be, not coming, watching the two of us down at the fence like a man standing guard over the one thing he’d long since decided he wasn’t allowed to have.

I knew a little something about that. More than I wanted to.

We stayed there until the worst of the crying passed and her weight stopped leaning so hard into mine. I don’t know how long it took. Long enough for the last of the daylight to go and the bugs to get loud around the marsh, long enough for my shoulder to start aching from holding her up.

I didn’t mind.

She’d held me up plenty.

When she finally pulled back, I wiped under one of her eyes with my thumb and showed her the black streak.

“You’re a mess.”

She sniffed. “Shut up.”

“There’s my Brenda.”

That got the smallest laugh out of her.

It wasn’t much, but I’d take it.

I got her turned around, finally, and walked her back up toward the clubhouse with my arms around her, and Horse straightened off the porch rail when he saw us coming, didn’t say a word, and held the door.

CHAPTER FOUR

HORSE CAME AND got me himself, and that was how I knew it was bad.

He didn’t knock so much as fill the doorway, big and awkward with it, turning his rag of a bandana over in his hands like he’d forgotten what hands were for. Horse didn’t come to my cabin. In all the years I’d been out back, I could count the times he had on one hand. He sent prospects. He sent word. A man like Horse would rather crawl over hot asphalt than let another man see him needing a damn thing.

He looked like he needed something.

“It’s Brenda,” he said, before I could ask. “She ain’t — ” He stopped. Worked his jaw. “It’s been two days, Rune. She won’t eat what Josie brings up. Won’t hardly drink. Amy and Fiona been takin’ turns sittin’ up with her at night, and they got maybe an hour of sleep out of her last night and none the night before, and she’s just layin’ there starin’ at the wall, and I can’t — ” His voice did something and he shut it down hard. “I can’t do a damn thing with her. Won’t let me near, and I don’t blame her. But you. You got somethin’. For sleep, or… I don’t know what you got. You got somethin’.”

I did. I was already running through the shelf in my head, figuring what I’d steep and how strong I could make it on an empty stomach without making her sick, because that part of me had switched on the second he said Brenda’s name.

The rest caught up a beat later.

Amy and Fiona had been up with her two nights.

Which meant Amy would be in that room.

I’d spent months arranging my life so I didn’t have to get close to that girl, and I’d gotten damn good at it too, right up until Horse stood in my doorway asking me to walk straight into a bedroom where I knew she’d be sitting. Didn’t matter. Brenda was family, she hadn’t eaten in two days, and I was the man Horse had come to because I knew what might help.

“Give me ten minutes,” I said. “Tell Amy to boil some water and get a clean cup.”

Something eased in his face, just barely. “So you’ll come.”

“I’m coming. Go on.”

I put the blend together at the counter without having to think much about it: lemon balm and chamomile for the base, a little skullcap, a little passionflower, valerian last and not to much, because too much would leave her groggy as hell tomorrow and she already had enough to deal with. I tied it off in a twist of cloth and put honey and the good salt in my kit, because my mother swore a body that hadn’t eaten wanted salt and I’d never known her to be wrong about a body.

I told myself it was work. Brenda needed something and I knew how to make it, same as some brother showing up bleeding. Amy being there didn’t matter.

I was full of shit, and I knew I was full of shit. Had plenty of practice at that lately.