Page 11 of Rough Cut Mountain Man

I shouldn’t go to dinner, but I do anyway.

The drawing is of a truck. It's a good truck. There's a small figure in the driver's seat with hair drawn in aggressive brown scribbles and a much larger figure in the passenger seat, and the caption says FAYE DRIVING BECAUSE DAD IS TIRED.

"That's you," Rue says, in case I'm slow.

"I gathered."

Supper is elk stew, the windows steamed over, Rue narrating a schoolyard dispute over a skipping rope while Gideon asks follow-up questions. I laugh so hard I have to put my spoon down to catch my breath.

And the entire time, under it, I am aware of him. Of the size of him at that stove. Of his hand when he passes the bread. Of the fact that twenty hours ago I had my back against his office door with his hand over my mouth, and that neither of us has said a single word about it since, and that both of us have been thinking about nothing else.

He hasn't touched me since I came in. Not once. Not the small of my back, not my shoulder. He's keeping it clean in front of his kid, and I understand exactly why, and it is doing something to me that no amount of touching could.

After dishes, Rue asks what we’ve all been thinking, or avoiding thinking about.

Chin on her folded arms, straight down the middle, no idea she's fired anything. "Are you staying or are you visiting?"

The kitchen is very quiet. The tap drips. Gideon has his back to us at the sink and his hands go still in the water, and he does not turn around, and he does not answer for me.

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

Because the true answer is I don't know, and you cannot say that to a seven-year-old whose mother left gradually. You cannot hand that child a maybe. Her whole life is a case study in what maybes do.

"That's a really good question," I say.

Rue’s expression fades just a bit. "Okay," she says, and she takes her plate to the counter, and she goes upstairs without being asked.

I sit there with my hands flat on the table.

Gideon dries his hands. He comes and sits across from me and doesn't reach for me.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Don't be. She asked a fair question."

"I couldn't answer it."

"No." He looks at me steadily. "That's ok too.”

"Gideon."

"If you want me to ask you to stay." He says it without heat. "I'm not going to."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd say yes." He turns his mug on the table. "You'd say yes on a Tuesday in October with the leaves turning and my kid drawing pictures of you, and then it'd be February and the light's gone by four and you'd be looking out that window at sixty-one acres you could've been paid for, and I'd have to watch you regret it."

"That's not fair."

"It's not," he says. "It's true, though."

"You don't get to decide what I'd regret."

"No." He puts the mug down. "But I get to decide I won't be the reason you didn't get to choose."

I drive home without a kiss goodbye.