Page 17 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

She looked at the food. Then she looked at the second bowl in my other hand.

“Bench out back,” I said, and I headed outside.

After a second I heard her chair scrape back.

We sat on the bench by the barn doors in the sun and ate. It occurred to me halfway through my sandwich that it was the first meal we’d shared in five weeks. The ridge across the hollow had gone almost all the way red.

“This is really good,” she said.

“It’s my grandmother’s recipe.”

“Did she teach you to cook?”

“She taught me to make chili. Everything else I figured out on my own, mostly by burning it.”

She laughed, and some of the careful went out of her shoulders. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since the yard. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until right then.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask.” I wasn’t sure I was ready to answer.

“How did you know about the creamer a few weeks ago? You never told me.”

I’d made up some excuse that didn’t explain anything.

“There was an empty bottle in the recycling bin by the stairs,” I said. I could be honest with her about that at least.

She went still. Then her whole face changed. It went soft and surprised, and her eyes got bright.

“You noticed,” she said.

“It was right there in the bin.”

“You noticed,” she said again, quieter, and went back to her chili with her cheeks pink.

I figured I could live with being caught, if it made her look like that.

When we finished, she stacked my bowl on top of hers. “I need my sketchbook. It’s in the car.”

I watched her cross the gravel and lean into the passenger side. She came out with the sketchbook, swung the door shut, and it bounced right back open. She gave it a hip check, and it stuck.

That was it. I went to get my toolbox.

When I came back, she was standing by the car holding the sketchbook against her chest. “You don’t have to⁠—”

“I’ve been watching you do that since you first showed up here.”

I knelt by the door and started on the panel. She stood there a minute, deciding something. Then she climbed up to sit on the hood and opened her sketchbook on her knees.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

“Don’t know yet.”

“Will you tell me when you do?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at that from one ear to the other.