Page 8 of Rough Cut Mountain Man

Gideon

"Did you pack the rabbit?"

"You packed the rabbit."

I put her bag in the back of Kelsey's car and Rue checks it anyway, both hands in it up to the elbow, and comes out holding the rabbit by one leg like evidence.

Second Thursday of the month. Kelsey lives in Prince George now with a partner who's decent to Rue, and the arrangement works. Surprisingly. Rue comes back full of stories about a dog named Biscuit. That's the whole of it.

The house is loud when she's gone. That's the part I've never gotten used to. Empty rooms make more noise than full ones.

Faye comes at seven with a bottle of wine, looking as beautiful as ever with her hair down, dressed in a cozy sweater. It should hide her curves, but it just makes her more irresistible.

She sits on the counter with her boots off and her feet hooked on the drawer pull and asks about the mill's order book, and I answer, and somewhere in there she stops asking questions with an angle in them and starts asking questions.

Then, halfway through the second glass, she asks about Rue's mother.

"You don't have to," she says.

"It's not a hard story." I take the pan off the heat. "We had Rue young for her. Twenty-four. She was good at it for a while, and then she wasn't, and it wasn't a door slamming. It was gradual. She'd take a shift in town, then two. Then a course in Prince George on weekends. Then the weekends got longer."

Faye doesn't say anything.

"By the time she left, she'd already been leaving eighteen months." I set two plates down. "Rue was four. She asked me at the time if it was because she'd been loud in the truck."

"God."

"Yeah."

"What did you tell her?"

"That her mother loves her and can't do the every-day part." I sit. "I don't say a bad word about Kelsey in that house. Rue can decide what she thinks when she's grown."

Faye's turned her glass a quarter turn on the table. "That's a lot of restraint."

"It's not restraint. It's the job."

She doesn't buy it; I can tell.

"And what about the rest of it?" she asks.

"What rest of it?"

She looks at me directly. "You. The part that isn't the job."

I don't have an answer ready. I've had three years to build one and I never did, because nobody asked. “I survive.”

I get up and take the plates to the sink because if I stay in that chair I'm going to do something with a woman who's leaving. Behind me I hear her stand.

"Gideon."

I turn.

She's right there. Close the way she was in the mill and closer, and she puts her hand flat on my chest, over the shirt, and holds it there.

All it takes is one look, then my hands are on her waist and I lift her onto the counter without asking and she opens her knees for me before I get there.

I kiss her slow first, because I want the record to show I can. Her mouth is warm from the wine and she makes a sound against my lips that goes straight down through me, and after that the slow part gets away from us both.