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  “Nice to meet you,” Eva said, looking down her nose at me.

  “You too,” I said, thinking no such thing.

  “She’s the town gossip,” Jeannette told me quietly with a wink when she left. Great, I thought. I didn’t want to have the whole town gossiping, trying to find out who … or what I was. But it was too late for that.

  When the place had quieted some, Daisy came back with my breakfast. I peppered my eggs, gave them a bit of ketchup.

  “Jeannette, I’m also looking for a church. Do you have any churches in Esperanza with big, tall stained-glass windows?” I gestured with my arms, indicating floor to ceiling.

  Jeannette considered this. “I don’t think so. We have the Catholic church out on Hickory, but it’s just a redbrick building, no stained glass. And the Lutheran church is behind the post office. We do have stained glass. But nothing like you’re describing.” She pursed her lips for a moment, taking a sip of her coffee. She gave me a motherly look. “Are you okay, dear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I told her, trying not to look disappointed.

  Jeannette counted some bills from her big patchwork purse and laid them on the counter, turning to me. “If you need anything, you can usually find me at Betsy’s,” she said, giving me a pat on the shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I told her, hoping I hadn’t drawn too much attention to myself. Jeannette left then, and I finished my breakfast, loving the warm food in my empty belly.

  I made my way back to the cabin, in hopes that the person from the animal shelter would be there soon to get rid of my bat. I was winded and worn, realizing I might have to wait to make another trip to town to go to the library. My stamina had really taken a hit.

  Once I was back at the cabin, I took a deep breath and risked one more trip inside with the bat so that I could grab my laptop.

  I sat on a large rock in the clearing, near my handsome stranger’s fire pit, and powered up my laptop. I got all the way to clicking on my Internet icon before I realized that I wouldn’t have any Wi-Fi out here. I felt like a dope then. What was I thinking? That was why I had wanted to go to the library.

  I shook my head in frustration. It was then that I heard the unmistakable crunch of boots on snow. I turned toward the evergreen path. I hoped it would be my bat helper, but instead, as I shut my laptop and stood up, I saw that it was the cowboy from last night.

  Every muscle in me instantly tensed. Ugh. I clenched my fists and scowled. I had thought I was rid of him. But now here he was, raising his hand in a wave, swaggering over here. And was that a little smirk on his face?

  “Hello again,” he said as he reached the fire pit.

  “Hi,” I said grumpily. “I’m waiting for—”

  “I’m Ash,” he said. “Asher Clarke.”

  “Oh.” Of course. That was the kind of day I was having. “I’m Emery,” I told him.

  “Jeannette sent me,” he said, shoving his hands in his jacket. “I hear you have a bat in your belfry.”

  He smiled a little crooked smile, but I just rolled my eyes. “Very funny,” I said. “I tried to get it myself. But I have to admit that I’m a little out of my element here. I don’t usually have bats in my shower.”

  “No problem,” he answered. His smirk was gone, his demeanor businesslike. “I’ll have it out in just a minute.”

  As he walked toward the cabin, I thought of something. “Hey, when you were staying here, before I came, was the bat here?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, turning back to me. “I didn’t think of it, or I would’ve warned you.”

  “And didn’t you …”

  “Yes, I took a shower. I just didn’t disturb him.”

  “And you slept with him in there with you?”

  He just shrugged and let himself in the cabin.

  Well, isn’t he smug, I thought. Oh, how I wished that I could’ve just gotten rid of the bat myself. I could’ve stuck it down the back of his shirt. That would’ve served him right. Bat in my belfry. Ha-ha.

  I sat there, miffed, but realized that when I thought of “bat in my belfry,” I started smiling.

  All of a sudden, I heard a racket from the cabin. Loud clanks of something, maybe the broom against furniture. Then I heard a yell. I stifled a laugh.

  He wasn’t such a brave cowboy now, was he?

  The door flew open, and out ran a disheveled Ash, swinging at the air around his head with his cowboy hat in his hand, the bat flying right behind him. I thought I heard it chitter a bit, and then it was gone, to the forest.

  “Quick, close the door!” he barked at me. And I ran up to the cabin and obeyed.

  “Holy shit!” Ash yelled, laughing, bending over to catch his breath, hands on his knees.

  I sauntered back toward him, trying to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t have to say any I-told-you-sos.

  When he looked up at me, laughing, his cheeks flushed from the bat chase, the breath caught in my throat for a moment. His dark eyes, the line of his crooked smile. It was familiar.

  Ash, I said to myself. And it was like I knew him. Déjà vu. But not déjà vu. Worse than that. Stronger. Better.

  I found myself tongue-tied as Ash composed himself. My mind searched for some lost connection, some way I could know him, something.…

  I realized he was saying his goodbyes now. He tipped his hat at me, gave me a bit of a quizzical look. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, quickly coming back to the real world. “Let me pay you. I have cash.”

  “No,” he answered. “Consider it part payment for yesterday, scaring the daylights out of you.”

  I nodded, still trying to find my bearings. I tried to smile.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  And he left.

  Eleven

  With the morning’s activities, I was exhausted. And after my visit to the diner, I felt exposed. So I decided to lay low, painting the cabin’s Dala horses in watercolors, snacking on popcorn. Just hanging out. I curled up on the love seat, a cup of tea in my hand, watching through the eastern window as the sky darkened against the white of the falling snow. My eyelids felt heavier and heavier, and eventually I just set my teacup down and gave in, even though it was probably no later than seven.

  I awoke with a start in the early hours of the morning. It was still dark out. For a moment, I didn’t know why I had woken up. But I was scared, and my muscles were tense, at the ready. I was holding my breath.

  For a second, I thought I might be about to loop. But then I heard it again, and I realized it wasn’t part of my sleep, part of my dream, or part of a loop. It was a yelp, a man’s voice. Surprise. Fear.

  I looked around as I threw off the red-and-white quilt, and I put the pieces back together, where I was, what I was doing here. Who could be making noise out there?

  In the few steps that it took me to get to the door, I had an idea.

  I threw the cabin door open and hurried outside toward him, adjusting my eyes to the dark, to what little light was given off by the waning fire. I realized I was only wearing socks and yoga pants and my U of M T-shirt. I curled my arms around myself instinctively. That was when he turned to me—Ash.

  I could see that the arm of his coat was smoldering, blackened and curling. I gasped and took a few more steps toward him. He reached for a handful of snow and patted down his sleeve with it. His eyes were wide.

  “The fire. I slept too close. I’m fine.… I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  I took a few steps closer and could see that he really was fine. His jacket was burned, certainly, but I didn’t think that it had gotten any farther down. His sleeping bag had some black edges to it too, but all in all, it could have been much worse.

  “I’m fine.” He looked up at me this time, squarely turning his head, and I gasped.

  He had a thick glob of blood running down his left brow, over his eye. “You’re bleeding!” I exclaimed.

  “I know,” he said, touching
his hand to his brow. He grabbed some more snow and wiped it off. The blood did not stop. It kept seeping.

  “When I awoke, I jumped up and must have had my feet tangled. I fell right over and thunked my head on that rock.” He gestured toward the rock about the size of a truck tire near the fire.

  I stood there, mouth agape, rubbing my arms, shifting my weight from one foot to another, lifting one sloppy sock out of the snow at a time. I was freezing.

  The firelight danced in his eyes. He had a broad and long nose, a strong jaw, full lips, and uncannily straight teeth, save for one eyetooth that twisted to the side a bit. God, he is so handsome. I didn’t want to notice it. But there it was.

  “It’s bleeding a lot” was all I could muster.

  “I know.” He grinned then, for the first time, and my knees almost buckled. Because the way he looked at me was new and full of expectation, but even more than that, there was that sense of déjà vu.

  We stood there in the cold, in the firelight, for a few moments. Him grinning, me staring. A drop of blood fell from his brow to the snow between us. Red and thick on the whitest white.

  “Why are you out here, anyway?” I finally asked.

  He considered this for a second, brushing the black bits of burned cloth off his coat. “I can leave …,” he began.

  And for a split second, a fleeting moment, I was scared. I saw myself from outside myself, standing here, in this clearing, in this little remote pocket of a little remote nowhere. Me standing here in my sopping socks, and Ash, twice my size. Here. Stalking me.

  An icy sensation swirled its way up my spine and sat at the base of my neck, and I just wanted to run back into the cabin, wait for daylight, trek back into Esperanza, and call my dad for a ride back home.

  Safety.

  Routine.

  All that in an instant, and then Ash cleared his throat. He finished his sentence. “I was going to leave, but I wanted to make sure you were okay out here by yourself.”

  He looked at me and his gaze didn’t falter, like he was telling the truth.

  “That sounds kind of crazy,” I said.

  “Does it?” he said, apologizing with his eyes.

  Although part of me wanted to tell him off, roll my eyes at him, I didn’t.

  “Come in,” I said instead. “I’ll fix you up.” I turned on one heel and went toward the cabin, not giving him a chance to say no.

  He didn’t say anything, to his credit. But I could feel his hesitation. I could sense it in the way that his footsteps began behind me, but more than that, I saw it in how his grin had disappeared when I glanced back at him.

  Once we were in the cabin, I turned on my lantern and placed it on the mantel so that I could see what I was doing. I sopped up the blood on his brow first with a damp washcloth and then put some water on to boil, dropping some chamomile tea into the pot as well—Nan’s old home remedy for swelling.

  I quickly changed my socks and threw on a sweatshirt while I waited for the water because I was beginning to feel my teeth chatter from the wet, frozen feel of my feet.

  “You are freezing,” he said. He shook his head at the lousy fire in the fireplace, sputtering out its last embers. He ripped up some newspaper from the pile next to the hearth and used the metal poker to get the fire going, the orange-red flames growing higher and higher, the warmth reaching me all the way in the small kitchen. He added two logs and seemed satisfied with the blaze.

  I motioned for him to sit in the kitchen chair. He obeyed, sat down, and glanced up at me. I turned back toward the hot plate, not wanting him to see my cheeks redden. This act of chivalry—building the fire—was just so nice, friendly.

  For a second I felt light-headed. I steadied myself with one hand on the edge of the sink and tried to control the pattern of my breathing, so as not to give away my incredible dorkery. I stood there for a solid minute, trying to get my breath back. Then I dipped another washcloth in the chamomile water, when it had cooled enough, and walked over toward him.

  Neither of us spoke as I cleaned off the cut. It was about two inches long and just above his left eyebrow. Even his wound was perfectly handsome and rough-and-tumble.

  “You should get stitches in the morning,” I told him.

  “Have you had any more seizures?” He didn’t look up.

  “I’m fine.” I was aware of the cloth shaking a bit in my hand. I was aware of his skin, his hands, his smell. I caught my breath in my throat and tried to calm myself. I was only inches from his face, which was almost level with my petite self standing. His scent—soap and hay, fire and snow—wafted toward me.

  “You’re fine?” he asked as he looked up.

  I couldn’t answer. I just stared at him. At his eyes. What was it I saw in his eyes? Concern?

  “You’re sure you’re fine?” he repeated after a few moments. I knew he had to be speaking only about the seizure, but standing in front of him, breathing him in, seeing his eyes locked on mine, it seemed like he was asking more.

  Like he knew somehow.

  That was when I remembered the drawing that I had stuffed in my pocket. The woman. To draw that pain, he had to know that pain.

  And it broke my heart for this guy. I couldn’t take it. Him asking me if I was fine. Me knowing this about him, this drawing. It was too much.

  I guess the past few days—the past few years—caught up with me. Because all of a sudden, I couldn’t take it anymore. The curse of these loops. The utter isolation that was my life. Devoid of hope. Only pokes and probes and monitors and data. Me as a subject, a lab rat, an anomaly.

  And what I had been missing for so long, so many years, here it was staring at me. Concern.

  I shook my head and turned away then, covering my eyes with my hands. I cried silently for a few moments, trying to hold it in. But then it just came in a couple of blubbery sobs.

  He stood up behind me and took my left elbow, led me over to the couch, and sat me down. He sat beside me for a minute. I quieted myself a bit, wiping my tears with the back of my hand.

  He got up from the couch, brought me a paper towel from the kitchen, and settled back next to me.

  He didn’t leave. He didn’t demand any answers.

  He just sat there and let me finish crying. When I was done, I kept my head down and stared at my hands in my lap. “Sorry. I’m a moron, obviously.”

  “Can I draw you?” he asked.

  I looked up. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be a subject, not again. I opened my mouth to protest. But I didn’t.

  He pulled out a pad of paper from his pocket, a small one, and started to sketch. “I began this the other night … when you were out. I’m sorry I did it without asking.”

  If he was confessing, so was I. “I kept one of your drawings. It was—”

  “I know which one it was.”

  “I’ll give it back. I—”

  “No.” He didn’t look up from his drawing. “I’m sorry that you had to see that—”

  “It was beautiful in its pain.”

  He looked up then but stared past me. “It was my mom. She died.”

  “I’m sorry.” I could think of nothing else to say to this, my mind conjuring up the awful, hollow scream in the drawing. I tried to push it away. I almost confided that my mom was also dead, but it felt strange to bond over such a thing. Plus, the look on his face showed that this loss was much more fresh, more alive than mine.

  Ash returned to his work, and we sat in silence for a while. I watched him as he moved the pen across the paper, deftly, quickly, confidently. I scratched my nose, self-aware, inadequate, a bit annoyed with myself for being thrilled to be here with him.

  “This isn’t your family’s cabin.” It was a statement.

  “No,” I answered anyway.

  “You were in the hospital.” Another statement.

  “Yes, how …?”

  “I saw the IV marks on your arm.”

  Through the east window, the first glimmer of the rising
sun began to sift into the cabin. I watched his hand working the ink on the paper. He wore a red flannel shirt, his cuffs turned back at the wrists, revealing thick, strong forearms, but his hands were graceful, worked the pen and paper with ease.

  “I’m finished. And I should be going.” He stood up quickly. He took a few steps and deposited my sketch on the windowsill.

  His footsteps were loud. He grabbed for the doorknob. “You’re fine?”

  “I am.”

  He held on to the doorknob, his head down. “I shouldn’t have … I’m not …” He just turned around then and looked at me, his eyes pleading with me. He had secrets. I did too.

  “I understand,” I willed myself to say, but I wanted him to stay. I was surprised at how much I wanted him to stay.

  He shut the door quietly behind him. I watched him head west into the woods. Then I realized that he had left his hat on the table.

  I called to him, “Ash!” I slipped on my boots and headed out the door after him.

  “Your hat!” I called. I ran toward him and handed it to him. Our hands touched for the briefest of moments and our eyes locked. I immediately found it impossible to catch my breath. The clearing, the air between us felt charged, electric.

  “Emery,” he said.

  He held my gaze, and the way the corner of his mouth turned up, I began to feel self-conscious. I broke the gaze. “You need stitches.”

  “I’ll get them at the shelter.” He nodded and left.

  I trudged back to the cabin, my head spinning. I put on some water for tea. I flitted about the cabin, picking up Dala horses and giving them a look. I pirouetted over to the east window and looked out at the cold lake, so crisp and gray-blue. “Ash,” I said aloud to myself, and smiled. I quickly rolled my eyes at myself, and shook my head.

  And then I remembered the picture—my portrait. I smiled as I retrieved it from the windowsill.

  It was strikingly good. I knew enough about art to know that he had talent, that he was no hack. The hard angles of his lines, the abandon of perspective, it was modern. Clean and new.

  That was when I saw it, the way that he had drawn the curls in my hair.

  “No!” I whispered.