"Thank you," she said.
I took the chair again and pulled out my phone while she was in the bathroom. I had two bars out here on a good night. Tonight was a good night.
I found Bishop's name and typed,Your cabin. Long story. You know a guy named Dane?
His reply came back inside of a minute.Howell? Yeah. Ran in the same circle for about a year before I cut him loose. Why?
I typed,He sent a woman here. His fiancée. Long story. You got good locks on this place?
Three deadbolts and a shepherd mix named Gerald who stays with the property manager next door. Want me to send him over?
Keep Gerald. I'm good.
Bishop sent a single word back.Obviously.
I put the phone away.
The bathroom door opened, and she came out in the flannel and sweats, the dress draped over one arm. The shirt hit her mid-thigh. She'd washed her face. The mascara tracks were gone. She looked younger without them, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
She looked around the room like she wasn't sure what to do with herself now that the forward motion had stopped.
"There's food in the kitchen," I said. "Help yourself to whatever's there."
"I'm not hungry."
"I know. But eat something anyway."
She almost argued. I watched her decide against it, and she went to the kitchen and came back with a piece of bread and a handful of crackers. She sat back on the couch and ate like it was a task she was completing.
I got the extra blanket from the bedroom closet and set it on the far end of the couch with the pillow. "That's for me," I said. "Bedroom's yours."
"I'm not taking your?—"
"Pandora."
She stopped.
"Take the bedroom."
She looked at me for a moment. Then she picked up the dress from where she'd set it on the arm of the couch and held it in front of her and said, "I'm not upset about him. I want you to know that. I know how that sounds. But I'm not."
I nodded. "Okay."
"I don't know what I am. But it isn't that."
"That's fair," I said. "You don't have to know tonight."
She stood there another moment with the dress in her arms, and then she went to the bedroom and pulled the door mostly closed behind her.
I sat in the chair for a while in the quiet. The fire had burned down to coals, and I didn't build it back up. The night sounds came in from outside—the river somewhere below, the wind through the tree line, the silence of the mountains at midnight that had weight to it, like the dark itself was settled and sure.
I'd come up here because Bishop had arranged it and I hadn't had a good reason to say no. I planned to spend the week doing absolutely nothing useful, which was something I was historically bad at. But I'd been here two days, and I could already feel something in me loosening in ways I hadn't expected.
Then a woman in a wedding dress had knocked on the door.
I'd felt it the moment I'd seen her standing there—something that moved through me before I'd had time to think about it, before I'd learned her name or heard a word of her story. Like recognizing a landmark you've never seen before but somehowalready know. I wasn't a man who put stock in things he couldn't explain, but I also wasn't a man who argued with what was plainly in front of him.
I wasn't going to examine that tonight.