The sliding doors kept opening, with different flights filing in, passengers who had poured out of planes and up ramps and down elevators, people who just wanted to grab their stuff and get out, because who doesn’t hate the airport. Laurie bounced on her toes, jingling her keys in her hand. He had texted that he had landed, then that he was off the plane, then that he was on his way. And then the doors opened, and he stepped through: Nick, her Nick, with a carry-on in one hand. He grinned when he saw her, came over and kissed her, made her feel like she was being melted from the inside out. “Hello,” he said, pulling back enough to look her in the eyes.
“Oh, hello,” she said back. “How was your flight?”
“Long,” he said. “How was your wait?”
She laughed. “Not as long as the flight.”
They stood by the carousel until his dark green suitcase slid around a corner, and he plucked it off the belt. She picked up his carry-on. “Oh, thank you,” he said. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Hey,” she said, “you get the pickup service, it includes all the extras. We’re that way.” She gestured toward the long walk to the parking garage.
On the ride home, he told her about Ginger’s shoulder surgery, which had gone well, and about June’s kids both coming down with the same bug, which had been a mess. The library was undergoing a major renovation, and the Claws had finished at the top of their league for the season, which had made everyone very, very happy. “What’s going on with the duck piece?” he said.
Laurie had successfully pitched the story of Dot and the wood duck to one of the outlets for which she often wrote. They were allowing her several thousand words to explain about the decoy, the scam, and especially what it meant to learn that her great-aunt had a talent that went unrecognized throughout her life. Nick was convinced it would be a book; she told him she had to take it one page at a time.
“Are you sure you can take having me in the house for a week?” he said as they sped along the highway. “Not too much togetherness?” he said. “Because I can still stay somewhere.”
“Are you kidding? It’s eight days. I’m going to absorb you through my pores,” she said. “I’m going to breathe you in like you’re an inhaler. It’s going to be positively creepy how I attach myself. It has to last me an entire month, so consider it a down payment.”
“But you’ll wake up in the middle of the night,” he said.
“I have a guest room.”
“What will you do when I crowd you?” he said.
“I’ll go for a walk. I’m sure you can entertain yourself.”
“You probably won’t be surprised to hear I brought books.”
She laughed. “By the way, Erin’s been telling the rest of my friends all about you since you were here last time. She just calls you The Librarian. They’re irate they haven’t been introduced yet.”
“I’m flattered,” he said.
“I think they’re going to ask you about the Dewey decimal system,” she warned.
“Now, see, you’re kidding, but I could fill about an hour talking about Dewey versus BISAC.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s why I need an hour.”
She had an hour. She had a week, and she had work, and she had a beautiful wooden duck on her mantel at home that everyone had agreed she should keep. She had a bed someone else could sleep in or not, a kitchen someone else could make coffee in or not, a front door she was excited for him to walk through again, and a linen closet door she needed to call somebody about because it didn’t quite close. She had friends in two corners of the country and family in even more. She had a WE’RE #1 foam finger marking the accomplishments of her first hometown’s baseball team, and she had a paperback book in the glove compartment where she was gradually checking off the best places to see wildlife in her second hometown. There might yet be a third.
Maybe she would bring him with her in a day or two to look for black bears and bald eagles, or maybe she would leave him with something to read and speak to no one for hours, peering through her binoculars and taking pictures with the hotshot rig she used for work. Or maybe she would take her new instant camera, so that when she got back, she could hand him a picture of the best thing she saw, and he could hold it in his hand, turn it over, take it with him, take it out when he missed her. Maybe he would put it in a drawer and save it, and one day they would find it again, among their things, among his things, in whatever space they made.