Page 7 of In the Crease

“Until May,” I said on a chuckle. Griffin had called it exactly. She was already getting the education he’d promised.

She made a sound that wasn’t a word.

I got her bag into the back, held the passenger door for her and when she was in, came around to my side. I cranked the heat up for her first. She held both hands in front of the vents. I made myself look at the road.

She smelled like something warm and clean that I clocked once and then absolutely did not think about for the next thirty-nine minutes.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

“Of course.”

A pause while she continued warming her hands. Do I have anything I can give her to be warmer?

Her talking interrupted my thoughts. “He talks about you a lot.”

“Good things, I hope.” I said it like I meant it and had absolutely no follow-up questions.

“Mostly.” She smirked at me and let out a small laugh.

I pulled into traffic.

I reached behind the seat and found the hat by feel. Dark-green knit, small moose on the cuff. My sister had sent it from Stockholm in a package with a note that said because you are large, slightly intimidating, and not as graceful as you think you are. The moose is you. Wear the hat. I held it out.

She looked at it. “Is that a moose?”

“My sister sent it. She lives in Stockholm.”

“Your sister in Stockholm sent you a moose hat.”

“She thinks it’s funny.” I rolled my eyes but insisted she take the hat.

“It’s a little funny.” Maren’s lips parted into a wide grin.

“Don’t tell her that.”

She smiled. She took it, pulled it on without checking a mirror, and tugged it down over her ears. “Thank you.”

“Mm.”

The heat did its work and she gradually unclenched. By the time we hit the highway she’d settled back and was watching the landscape, flat and pale, birch stands at the field edges, the last snow in the low places. She watched it like it mattered.

She asked about a town we passed. Then a follow-up. The conversation built on itself easily, naturally, and kept catching me off guard because Griffin had said she’d ask twenty questions but he hadn’t mentioned that she’d listen to the answers, or that she’d take what you said and immediately go somewhere interesting with it, or that she was funny in the dry way I liked. Not trying to be, just landing it.

She was going to be a problem. Griffin’s little sister, who had opinions about the neutral zone trap and laughed like that and smelled like that and asked twenty questions and actually listened to the answers. Of course she was.

Not a problem. She was Griffin’s sister. She wasn’t going to be anything.

I drove.

I pulled into the lot at 5:02. She looked at the building, three floors of beige, exterior stairs, railings that needed paint, and gave it a look.

“Very practical,” she said.

“The elevator’s been broken since November.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“We’ve made our peace with it.”