After a while, sleep overtakes her—she has been awake for nineteen hours—and she lies on the couch, knees tucked tight to her chest, while I finish sewing.
I stack the squares and tiptoe over to the door. Slip into my jacket, pull the beanie down over my ears. I step outside into the night, frost diamonding the grass, the air cold and dry. A jet blinks red across a sky that is bright and full of stars. I shove my hands into the pockets of my jacket and lean against a porch beam.
The year before, we’d sat at the campfire, Jake and me, on a night not unlike this.
He’d poked the embers with a stick. “You know if I don’t come, one of these years, it’s because I can’t.”
I’d told him I knew.
“What I mean is that I’m not going to die of old age,” he’d said, and then he’d grunted. “That’s the way my neurologist put it.”
“Doctors and their bedside manner.”
“Well, it’s sort of good to know, don’t you think?”
Had he held my gaze, then? Had he stared at the fire, avoiding eye contact? Because now, a year later, I can’t help but look back on that conversation and wonder if maybe Jake was trying to tell me something. Maybe he had a premonition, maybe there was something about his situation that he just couldn’t bring himself to say out loud, maybe it was a cry for help, even. What was it I’d said to him when I’d helped him into the house that night? Don’t go dying on us. Which in hindsight feels insensitive, I realize. Selfish. The thought of him alone, suffering, or worse. The one and only person in this world I could fully trust, who was there for me despite everything that had happened. After all he’d done for us. And I couldn’t help him. Couldn’t even be there. I kick loose a piece of gravel. Pick it up, grip it tight in my palm, cold.
I’ve always known this was a possibility, that at some point we’d need to fend entirely for ourselves. For years I’ve been trying to get more out of the garden but the truth is, the soil is bad out here, rocky and acidic, and the additional food we’ve been able to grow—it’s still not enough. I’ve mapped out routes to stores, calculated the timing, fine-tuned my annual list. I’ve just hoped the day when I’d need to act on those plans wouldn’t come.
Thing is, I did go out, early on. The first time, it was just to call Jake at the nearest gas station pay phone. We grabbed a few items inside the store since we were there. Milk, bread, a jar of peanut butter. The second trip went smoothly enough. But the third one went so poorly I can hardly bring myself to think about it. I haven’t gone out since.
Finch was about twenty months old and far too squirrelly to take along. She’d recently learned to walk, and she had this thing where she would kick and bite and scream no, no, no! any time I tried to pick her up. I mean a full-on tantrum. Taking her to a store would almost certainly result in a scene, and I couldn’t risk drawing the attention of bystanders, especially when everyone knows the first thing that comes to a person’s mind when they see a man scooping up a kid who’s carrying on like that. So, after weighing the risks, I decided to put her down for a nap in the playpen and then sneak out for a quick trip. She was a reliable sleeper in those days, so I knew I had a solid ninety-minute window. I was back in seventy and feeling good, but when I pulled up in the Bronco, there was Scotland on the front porch, holding Finch on his lap. She was snuggled up and sleeping.
I almost lost it, then. Really. Don’t know that I’ve ever been so close. I had the Ruger in my pocket and I yanked it out and rushed to them and grabbed Scotland by the collar. Finch startled awake and began crying, and I scooped her out of his arms. I held her, but she immediately started pushing to be let down. I set her on the ground and stepped closer to Scotland.
“What the hell is going on here?” I leaned in close and could smell the wintergreen and woodsmoke. Crow was perched on the gutter and began to hover and caw, and Finch pointed and squealed.
“Easy, Cooper. Easy. Just lending a hand, that’s all.”
“Don’t give me that. She was fine, she was sleeping.”
He shook his head, adjusting his shirt. Then he held my eyes in that way of his. “She wasn’t.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I was here. On the porch.”
I ran my thumb along the stock of the Ruger. Heart roaring, the edges of my vision beginning to blur.
Scotland shrugged. “I saw you leave, alone. I came down here to keep an eye on her. Thought maybe you were too proud to ask, but I figured I’d go ahead and do you a favor. And it’s a good thing I did. Because she woke up and climbed right out of that little contraption in there, quick as a whip.” He folded his hands on his lap. “Cooper, you can’t leave a child her age unattended. It’s just not safe.” His scar flickered silver in the sunlight. “Lucky I was here.”