Page 3 of Rune’s Solace

He knew what mine was.

Never said her name.

I knew what his was too. A sister. A bad husband. A phone call that came too late.

Never said hers either.

“Kitchen’s out of mint again,” he said after a while, giving me the exit without making it obvious. “And that tea you make for Brenda’s back. She was up half the night. Tried to hide it at breakfast, but she was moving like a woman twice her age.”

“I’ll cut some before it heats up.” I looked over at him. “She take anything?”

“Aspirin.” He said it like she’d swallowed rat poison. “Told her you’d have something better. She said, and I’m quoting here, she didn’t want to bother the witch doctor.”

The corner of my mouth pulled. “She’s called me worse.”

“She has.” Josie grinned, finished his coffee, then stood, the old crate giving a complaint when two hundred-some pounds finally got off it. “Church tonight, by the way. Full table. Devil’s orders. Patched and prospecting both. Chain came through the kitchen this morning running his mouth about it.”

“What over?”

“Beats me. Didn’t say, I didn’t ask.” He shrugged, because Josie had more sense than most men about worrying over things he couldn’t do shit about yet. “Find out at the table like everybody else.”

Fine by me. Whatever Devil had, it’d still be there tonight whether I spent the next twelve hours chewing on it or not, and I’d learned a long time ago there wasn’t much point trying to get ahead of that man.

Josie bent and scooped my empty mug off the grass before I could reach for it, but instead of heading back toward the clubhouse, he stood there another second and looked at me. Not obvious about it. Josie was never obvious when it mattered. Just that steady once-over of a man who’d known me long enough to see the difference between tired and something worse.

“You look like hell lately,” he said.

“I look like a man who’s up at five.”

“Yeah.” He nodded solemnly. “That’s definitely it.”

“Go cook something.”

“Planning on it.” He started across the yard, then lifted the mugs without turning around. “Try moving before the sun sets. Folks’ll think we put an ugly scarecrow in the tomatoes.”

“Fuck you, Josie.”

“Feeling better already.”

I watched him go back toward the clubhouse, apron hanging crooked and shoulders big enough to fill half the kitchen door when he went through it, then looked down at the row in front of me and realized the bastard had been right.

I hadn’t done a damn thing in a while.

So I went back to work.

There were weeds starting around the chamomile that I’d ignored, and I pulled them, loosened the dirt where yesterday’s rain had packed it down, checked the comfrey for damage and moved on to the next bed. That was the good thing about work. It didn’t care what was happening in your head. It sat there until you put your hands on it, and if you did the job right, there was something better when you were finished than there’d been when you started.

Probably why I’d always preferred it to people.

I worked my way down the row until I reached the mint Josie needed, then sat back for a second and looked over everything I’d put in that ground. Some of it had taken years to get right. I’d killed plenty learning what belonged where, what could handle full sun and what needed shade, what wanted wet roots and what would rot if you gave it too much. My mother had known most of it without thinking. I’d had to learn the hard way.

Maybe that was another thing I’d gotten from her: the need to know where something belonged before I trusted myself with it.

Amy didn’t belong here.

I’d been telling myself that since the day she showed up.

She belonged across the river, at that school, answering questions in classrooms and drinking coffee with kids her own age. She belonged somewhere she could build a life without checking the parking lot for patches before she walked into it, somewhere the worst thing a man had done last weekend wasn’t discussed over breakfast like weather.