Page 18 of Call Off the Dark

Wade kept a rifle on the mounted rack in his truck, and sometimes when he was working in the trees, he lucked out and got a deer or elk or wild turkey.

Helen’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going to town?”

“Yeah. I’ll drop the rifle off at the gun shop and pick up a part for the truck. It’ll take me a couple hours.”

“Maybe I should go with you.” She wouldn’t say a word about pizza this time. She would stay quiet, roll down the truck window, and look out at the storefronts. She’d simply make eye contact with people on the street, and if she saw a dog, she’d pet it. That’s all. Then she’d use the phone in the corner market to call her mother, and she’d buy herself a small box of strawberries, because they were her favorite fruit and her crop was done for the season.

Wade asked, “Is that stew you were making ready?”

“Not yet. I got a little sidetracked . . .”

“With what?”

Tyler and a revolver and a raven and a poem and Agnes. “Just chores.”

“I’ll be starving by the time I get back.”

Helen swallowed her disappointment and nodded.

“Great,” Wade said. “I just need to grab a few things from the shed.”

He started across the yard. He was halfway to the shed when Helen spoke again. “I hate cooking.”

Wade stopped and turned back. “What?”

Helen said, “What?”

He looked at her strangely, and she could tell that his What hadn’t been a challenge. He really hadn’t heard her. “What did you say?” he repeated.

“Nothing. Just . . . I hate the shed.”

“Yeah, I need to organize it.”

Wade disappeared into the shed. She stayed there, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest, as he clanged and banged around for a couple of minutes. It seemed ironic that he was the one going into town alone these days while she stayed behind. He wasn’t antisocial exactly, but he didn’t crave interactions with people the way she used to in her past life. He was content as a loner, and from the little bits he’d been willing to share about his life in Oregon, she’d come to understand that he’d been frustrated when the ma and pop stores on main street started closing and the housing developments started creeping onto the surrounding farmland. The shuttering of the local feed store had been the final blow. The closest big box store had told Wade to place orders on their app, but he’d only had a flip phone and no interest in upgrading to a smartphone. Helen wondered, if they hadn’t met in Seattle, would this plan have ever come to fruition? Would he have done it alone, or had it required the perfect storm of two restless souls? One soul weary of the modern world and one soul aching for an escape and willing to try almost anything as long as it was different.

When Wade emerged again from the shed, he looked surprised to find Helen still there at the door, just staring. He held up a tool as if it was some kind of explanation.

“Be back soon!” he said as he climbed into his truck.

She stayed in the doorway until the truck rounded the bend in the dirt driveway. Then she returned to the kitchen and stared at her pile of partially chopped vegetables.

Every once in a while there were meteor showers, but most days there were just potatoes.

Chapter Nine

Ten years, seven months, and three days ago

It had been five days since Helen and Tyler’s date. Five days since she’d taken him into her bed. Five days of silence from him.

Last night, she’d fallen asleep crying. This morning, she’d woken up and thought, I need to sell this mattress and get a new one. Then she told herself to stop being so dramatic. Her mattress was just a mattress, not a temple to some man who hadn’t called her. People had one-night stands all the time. She’d simply joined a popular club. It was nothing. He was nothing. She was nothing. And it was time to get ready for a nothing day at her nothing job.

So Helen put on her makeup and put on her clothes and put on an attitude of I’m fine, and she left her apartment without eating breakfast because the ache in her throat made it hard to swallow.

She was about to start up the concrete stairs to her office building when she saw him through the glass of the front doors into the lobby. He was at the elevator bay, standing nice and straight as if the world hadn’t tilted on its axis for him the way it had for her. He was wearing charcoal fitted trousers and a black leather bomber jacket that was nice enough for work but edgy enough that she couldn’t breathe. He didn’t look like someone who’d been up all night crying.

She froze on the steps.

Tyler turned his head and looked right at her.