He came to my porch and stood too damn close to me on it.
He called me honey five times in ten minutes—onmyporch—and I stood with my back against my own rail like a cornered animal because I was raised too polite to tell a man to get the hell off my property when he hadn’t become dangerous yet.
And the worst part, the part that has me grinding my teeth at five in the morning, is that I said thank you for stopping by.
Like he'd brought me a casserole.
Like he'd come by to drop off mail.
Like a Texas woman ending a conversation without raising her voice—and Todd heard it and he kept on talking anyway, and that means I gave him the polite version when I should've given him the other one.
I give up on sleep at nearly five-thirty and pad to the kitchen barefoot.
Nash is asleep down the hall. I can hear him breathing through his door, which I leave cracked open every night so I can listen for him in the dark.
The cabin is cool from the night air and the linoleum is cold under my feet.
I put the kettle on the stove because if I make coffee I'm going to drink the whole pot before sunup and shake all the way through breakfast service.
While the water heats I stand at the sink and look out the window across the dark yard.
Rogue's front room light is on.
It was on at midnight when I gave up on the porch and went to bed.
It was on at two when I got up to use the bathroom and looked out my own kitchen window.
The man hasn't slept either.
Around six o'clock, I take my tea out to the porch.
I stop at the screen door.
The framed wedding photograph of Todd and my dead husband is no longer on the porch rail.
I left itexactlywhere Todd put it yesterday afternoon.
I couldn't bring myself to touch it. Couldn't throw it out either, because somehow that felt like throwing out Garrett too, and I haven't figured out how to do that part yet.
I had been planning to deal with it today.
Wake up, drink my tea, and finally figure out what to do with the thing.
Somebody dealt with it for me.
I push the screen door open and step onto the porch.
The rail is empty. No frame. No flowers—those went in my trash bin yesterday before Todd's dust was off the gravel.
Just bare wood and morning light starting on the eastern edge of the sky.
I exhale, sharply.
I think about a man who would take a thing he knows you don't want without making you ask.
A man who'd do the work for you without telling you he was going to.
Who'd walk across his own yard in the dark to your porch and take an object that was hurting you, then put himself to bed without saying a word about it.