She chewed enthusiastically for several minutes to stall. How to explain that there were certain human experiences she had no desire to revisit? Grant didn’t know certain things and that wasn’t on him; she just wasn’t ready to let him see those parts.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did Stephen say something to you about this?” Stephen was Grant’s best friend and also Braithe’s husband. They’d gone to school together, and it was Grant who’d gotten Stephen the job with his company.
He glanced up at her and she could see the guilt in his eyes. She waited to see what he would say, her nerves spiking. Her foot began a vigorous side-to-side shake under the table.
“Stephen did mention that they were going to invite you on their trip. To be honest, I thought you’d want to go. And,” he continued, “my work trip is coming up. I’d feel better if you weren’t alone up here the entire time.”
“I won’t be alone,” she said, glancing at Shep, who was asleep in the corner. It sounded nice actually: a few days of uninterrupted work would allow her to catch up on things.
“Rainy, I’m serious. If you get a random snowstorm while I’m gone, you’re going to be trapped up here without power. The soonest I can get the generator installed is late spring.”
“We can manage,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “If the power goes out, I can build a fire, and we have plenty of supplies, don’t you think?”
Grant made a face, and she knew what he was thinking: city girl. And that had been true of the last decade. But Rainy hadn’t always lived in the city: quite the opposite.
And anyway, what was she supposed to say? I’ve survived worse than a snowstorm? I’m terrified of people, not nature?
“All I’m saying is, if you have the chance to get out of here before bad weather hits, take it.”
“And what about Shep?”
“Are you kidding? He loves going to Mr. Bean’s house.” Mr. Bean was their closest neighbor, and his name was actually Mr. Beade; Grant had come up with the nickname, saying he looked like the TV character. She couldn’t tell him that it was Nevada she was afraid of, not snowstorms, and that she’d rather starve here than go there.
“I’ll think about it,” she lied.
After they ate, Grant cleaned up while she went down to her studio. It was an industrial space with heated concrete flooring and the same floor-to-ceiling windows that the upper levels boasted. There were doors to two adjacent rooms: one that she used for her office, and the other held a full-size bed that she crashed in when she worked late nights. The area was large, and there was also a garage-door entrance, which allowed her to get her larger pieces in and out easily. She was working on a sculpture for a private commission, a beehive using wire as its base. She stepped over the mess she’d made earlier in the day and walked briskly to the little windowed room that held her desk and computer. There wasn’t much privacy in there, and at any moment Grant could walk into her studio and see her through the glass, but he hardly ever came down, saying he wanted to give her space. She sat down at her desk and only then did she allow herself to feel what she’d been holding in. It was as if balloons of anxiety floated in her belly, bloated and ready to burst at any moment. She bent over her desk until her cheek rested on the cool surface and waited for the feelings to pass, breathing deeply as tears ran in a steady stream down her cheeks. She felt frozen, unable to navigate through the maze of emotion that had taken over.
“It’s over,” she said, her voice husky and thick with tears. “You’re gone from that place and that time.”
Rainy hid in her studio that night, plugging her earphones into her ears and turning up her music until it was time for bed. Then, in an exhausted zombie shuffle, she walked the three flights of stairs to their bedroom and fell into a dreamless sleep until morning.
She woke alone with the rain sprinkling the window. Rolling over, she was sad to see Grant had left for work, his side of the bed rumpled. Grant was an architect in the city, and had a love of sculptures in particular. He’d visited her show in New York while he was at a conference and bought a piece called Our Father in which she’d used industrial metal wires to construct a man’s face. The face, Grant claimed, looked just like his dead grandfather’s. He’d paid thirteen thousand dollars for the four-foot sculpture, while confessing to Rainy he’d seen her work in an architectural magazine, and then he’d asked her out on a date.