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He picks up his coffee. “Eat the pie, Lindsey.”
Across the table, Cassia catches my eye and mouths, “Oh my gosh.”
With hot prickles at the back of my eyes, I eat the pie.
After dinner, Martin takes him out to look at the woodpile, and I dry dishes for Nolene. Out the window over the sink, Martin is talking and waving his hands. Then he hands Travis the maul, and Travis sets a round of wood on the block and splits it with one swing, clean down the middle, and Martin laughs out loud and slaps him on the back.
Cassia sidles up next to me with a dish towel.
“Martin likes him,” she says.
Out by the woodpile, Travis pushes his shirtsleeves up to his elbows before he swings again. The scar on his left arm catches the porch light. A long, pale, twisted stripe up his arm and past his elbow, running on under the sleeve.
Cassia must read my mind. “He got that scar pulling two men out of a burning truck. Rob told me. There was a third. He couldn’t get to him.” She dries a glass as she stares out the window. “Rob says he came here because he was about to stop living, Lindsey. Not the dying kind. The other kind.”
I know exactly what she means. I’ve been doing it since high school ended.
On the drive home, the stars over the mountains are so thick they look spilled. Travis is quiet, but he seems at peace. He parks in the gravel lot, walks me to the bottom of my porch steps and stops.
Neither of us goes up.
“Thank you for driving me,” I say.
“Nolene told me to. I think everybody does what Nolene tells them.”
I laugh. He doesn’t, but his eyes soften, and the porch light catches the little lines that only show up when he’s trying not to smile.
He’s standing close. There’s a tiny nick on his jaw where he cut himself shaving. Unable to stop myself, I reach up and touch it with one finger.
He doesn’t move away, and once again his eyes move hungrily to my mouth.
“Lindsey.” His voice has dropped low, almost a rasp.
“Evening, Lindsey!”
We both jump a foot. Out on the sidewalk under the streetlight, Betsy Morris is waving like she’s flagging down a plane. Pearl the poodle is on a pink leash.
“Evening, Betsy,” I call weakly.
Betsy’s eyes go from Travis to me to the two feet of air between us that used to be about two inches.
“Evening,” she says brightly, “Lindsey’s tenant.”
She walks on down Main Street, humming.
I put my face in my hands. Next to me, a noise comes out of Travis that I have never heard before. It takes me a second to realize he’s laughing.
In that instant, I make up my mind.
“Travis.”
He’s still smiling. “Yeah?”
“I ate. I’m not falling apart. Carol Hayes is not in my head.” I go up one step, so we’re eye to eye. “Come inside.”
His smile slips away slowly, and something much hotter takes its place.
“You sure?”
