“You always do that.”
“I know.”
I stirred deliberately, put the lid on the pot, and waited. After three minutes, I poured. Perfect color, like dark oak. I handed a mug to Dornan. He stood, added sugar, and sat again, cross-legged, facing me. His face was tired, but very still. When the worst has happened, there is a certain peace for a while.
“She came back, and now she’s gone again. She told me some of it.” He tasted his tea, added more sugar, stirred, sipped again, and added, “I’m glad you hurt him.”
I nodded but my heart squeezed. Annie had said almost the same thing while Julia lay fighting for her life: I’m glad you killed them.
Dornan stared at his tea. “Now we’ve both lost them.”
There didn’t seem much more to say.
After a while, I made more tea and Dornan added more wood to the stove. The cabin grew warm. The sun managed to break through the cloud and stream through the front windows. I watched the flickering flames and thought of nothing in particular. Eventually Dornan stirred.
“The forecast is for snow tonight, and I have to be in Atlanta by midmorning. I should start back now.”
“Dornan—”
“No. I’ll be all right. The sun won’t be down for another two hours and I’ll be safely onto the interstate by then.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“I know.” He smiled sadly. “But I don’t want to hear anything else. She’s gone. She said she’s sorry, that she always liked me, but that she should never have agreed to marry me in the first place.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled something out. He opened his hand: Tammy’s engagement ring.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. I know, that’s not what you meant, either.” He stood, reached for his jacket. “I just stayed to tell you. And to thank you. For everything. For finding her and bringing her back, in more ways than one.”
He pulled on his jacket, a cheerful magenta-and-black waterproof, probably picked for him by Tammy, and moved towards the door. I put down my mug and followed him. When he put his hand on the latch, he smiled again. “We hung a good door, didn’t we?”
“We did.” He didn’t move. “I can show you my workshop, if you like, when I get back to Atlanta.”
“You’re coming back then?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon. Very soon. A day or two.”
“Good. Being out here alone is not good for a person. Grief, I find, is…” He shook his head. “Listen to me, talking as though I know it all.” He laughed shakily. “I thought it would be easier this time.” He looked so small and wounded in his bright jacket that I opened my arms and pulled him in. He wrapped his hands over my hips, leaned his forehead on my breastbone, and wept. He smelled of woodsmoke and tea.
Eventually he stopped. He tried to wipe his face on his jacket sleeve. I brought him a box of tissues. “As you said, every modern convenience, even in the middle of nowhere.”
A smile tried to break through his grief, but unlike the sun, it failed. He mopped and snorted for a minute or two, but turned down my offer of more tea. “I really have to get back, to stay busy. At least for a while. No,” he said as he opened the door, “don’t come out with me. Stay where it’s warm. I’ll be seeing you in a day or two.” He stepped onto the stoop, then turned and took my hand. Either his was very warm, or mine cold. “Friends help. Don’t forget that.” He patted my hand, then walked with that quick step of his over to his Isuzu, opened the door, slid in, turned on the engine and lights, and pulled away.
I carried the rest of my things from the truck—a few clothes, two folders of documents, some toiletries—to the cabin and took them upstairs. The bed was stripped, everything neatly washed and folded. I sniffed the linens: clean, but no longer smelling of laundry soap. It had been at least three days, then.
The weather forecast was wrong; the snow did not come. A little before nine that night I bundled up in jacket, hat, and gloves and went outside to stand under the cold magic of stars and listen to the huge attentiveness of dark. I stood for a long time.
An owl flew across the moon and from half a mile away the sound of a Subaru engine drifted up the mountain. It grew louder, and five minutes later Tammy pulled into the clearing.
When she climbed out of the car, I saw the difference, the sleekness, her buttocks ripe as mangoes, her arms and legs plump and muscled.
“What are you doing standing out here in the cold?”
“Looking at the stars. Thinking of Thomas Wolfe’s description of the night.”
“Oh. Right. Where’s the trailer?”
“In storage in Asheville. I thought there would be snow and I wouldn’t be able to get it up the track.”
We went inside. I lit two lamps, then sat on the couch. Tammy went straight to the stove and opened it so she could rub her hands in front of the naked flames. “Forgot my gloves. I forgot to buy gloves I’ve been so busy.”
That was my cue to ask what she’d been doing, but I felt out of sorts, grumpy on Dornan’s behalf, even though, rationally, I knew none of it was really her fault; it was just that she looked so good and he looked so bad.
“You don’t seem exactly thrilled to see me.”
“I’m not too happy with the world in general. Everything is so… complicated.”
“Things didn’t go so well in Arkansas, huh?”
“No. Well, yes, sort of.”
“Well, that’s clear.” Déjà vu. She shut the stove door. “Have you eaten? One thing I learned while you were gone: you can cook a whole meal in one pan if you just fry everything. How about steak, eggs, and fried potatoes? And then you can tell me all about it.”
She cooked. We drank coffee with our meal. In the mixed lamp- and firelight, Tammy’s rounded cheeks glowed like those of an ancient, burnished idol.
“You look good,” I said. She raised her eyebrows. “The mix of softness and strength suits you.”
“I feel pretty good. More at home with myself, you know what I mean?”
“Yes.” At least sometimes.
“So now I want to hear about Arkansas.”
I told her about the Carpenters, of Luz and her Spanish and Adeline’s covert fostering of it. Of Jud and his discomfort with strangers, of Button and his odd eyes. Of Goulay, and Mike.
“You tied him up like a pretzel?”
“He looked more like a pool triangle, actually.”
“I don’t get how he got his hands loose to hit you.”
“I was careless. I made an assumption—that he wouldn’t be flexible enough to step backwards through the belt and get his hands to the front.”
“Well, hey, you won in the end, even if you did get a few more dings to add to your collection. But the letting-them-go part doesn’t seem too smart.”
“I couldn’t turn them over to the police, because then I would have had to explain how I’d come by my information.” She gave me a crooked smile, and eventually I nodded. “Killing them would have upset Luz.”
“They might come and find you.”
“They can’t, and they won’t. They’re going to be only too glad to forget I exist.”
She gave me a look. “Oh, right. You said you’d be shutting down their business. That’s pretty easy to forget.”
“True. Except it’ll be my lawyer doing the watching.” Bette already had the preliminary information, and was busily amassing more. When we had sufficient hard evidence, she would—without using my name or Luz’s details—bring in the child welfare agencies, charities, and news organizations, the crusaders and rights groups, and INS. There had to be a way of helping these children without wholesale deportation. Meanwhile, if Goulay broke or even bent so much as a traffic ordinance, Bette would tie her up in knots.