Part 2
The rope fought Nora harder than Alex did. She sawed until her palm burned, working first at the knot above his right wrist, then through the wet strands across his chest. When the last binding parted, Alex folded to the ground so abruptly that she jumped back with the knife raised.
“Pins and needles,” he said through his teeth. “Give me a minute.”
He rolled to one hip and flexed his hands. Nora watched him without lowering the blade. When he could stand, he rose slowly, using the cedar for support, and kept both hands where she could see them.
“Still think I’m going to attack you?”
“Cutting first and finding out after is stupid.”
“Your grandfather taught you that?”
“He taught me to notice.”
Alex’s dress shoes were split at the seams, one sole flapping. His left ankle had swollen above the collar, and he moved as if his ribs hurt. He could walk, but he was not getting them anywhere by strength alone.
Nora opened Grandpa’s compass. “The highway is south. There’s an old line shack about a mile southeast, beside a spring. Hunters leave supplies.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. I’m sure it was there last fall.”
He nodded as if that were a sensible distinction. “Lead on.”
They moved beneath dripping cedars and white pines, Nora choosing ground that would not slide under Alex’s ruined shoes. Twice he stumbled and waved her off. The third time she cut a straight alder branch and handed it to him without comment.
At a fallen log she made him sit while she examined the loose sole. Grandpa’s repair wire was wrapped around the knife sheath; she threaded it through two holes punched in the leather and twisted it flat so it would not bite his foot. Alex watched her work with the embarrassed patience of a man unused to being mended by anyone, much less a child.
“Two hundred and thirty people,” Nora said. “And none of them taught you to fix a shoe?”
“Most of them are better at useful things than I am.”
“Then why are you the boss?”
He considered that instead of laughing. “Because my father left me half a mill and a great many chances to learn. I turned those into a company. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that meant I had built everything alone.”
The shack leaned into a slope, its tar-paper roof patched with flattened coffee cans. Nora checked the door thread Grandpa had tied there months ago. It hung broken.
“Someone’s been inside,” she whispered.
Alex peered past her shoulder. “Recently?”
“Could’ve been wind. Could’ve been a person.” She listened, then pushed the door with the alder stick. The single room was empty.
The place offered a rusted box stove, two bunks, a scarred table, and a shelf where backcountry travelers left what they could spare. Nora found matches sealed in a jar, tea, salt, and a can of beef stew whose lid had not bulged. At the spring she filled a blackened pot while Alex gathered dry twigs from beneath low branches.
“You know how to do that?” she asked when he knelt at the stove.
“I camped with my son when he was little.” He struck a match. “Before I decided every weekend belonged to work.”
His first fire smoked out. Nora crouched beside him, rebuilt the base with cedar bark, and held out another match. She did not smile when the second flame caught, which seemed to make him smile anyway.
They heated the stew with water and a pinch of the dried yarrow and onion Nora carried. She served it in two dented enamel cups.
Before eating, Nora cleaned the raw places at his wrists with boiled water and tore a strip from the least dirty lining of his shirt. Alex asked where she had learned that. She said Grandpa had once caught his arm in a pulley and made her describe every step before he let her tie the bandage. Her hands had shaken, and he had corrected them one movement at a time because nobody else was close enough to help.
“This shelf works because you replace what you use,” she told him. “Next time you come, you bring two cans.”
“I’ll bring a case.”
“A case won’t fit.”
He laughed, then held his ribs. The sound was rusty, as if it had been stored too long.
Near the stove, color returned to his face. He told her his son’s name was Ryan and that Ryan was sixteen. Ryan lived with his mother, Valerie, outside Coeur d’Alene. Alex said he missed him, then turned the cup between his palms as if the date of their last call might be written on the enamel.
“Why doesn’t he live with you?” Nora asked.
Alex turned the cup between his palms. “Because I kept choosing the company. His mother got tired of believing the next promise would be different. Ryan did too.”
“Did you go after them?”
“Not the way I should have.”
Nora thought of her mother’s face in the bus-station picture. “My mom liked towns better than the mountain. Grandpa said that was her choice, not my fault.”
“He was right.”
“He was usually right. It could be annoying.”
Alex looked into his cup, and Nora saw the beginning of another smile.
At dusk she laid fir boughs beneath an old canvas tarp. Alex found a wool blanket in a mouse-proof trunk and gave it to her, taking the thinner one for himself. Wind pressed damp branches against the roof.
“When we reach town,” Alex said, “what do you think will happen to you?”
“The state will put me somewhere.”
“With family?”
“There isn’t any. Maybe foster care.” Nora fitted the cedar box under her head.
Alex picked at a loose thread in his borrowed blanket. “If there’s no family, I could ask whether I’m allowed to help take care of you while they look. I’m not asking you to choose in a shack.”
“They don’t know you.”
“Neither do you.”
“Your son might not want me there.”
Alex stared into the stove. “He might not want me there. I have things to repair before I ask anyone for a key.”
“Then why ask?”
His fingers closed over the frayed thread. “I don’t know enough yet.”
Nora turned toward the wall. For a moment she pictured a lamp beside a bed, then checked that the knife was still beneath her hand. Across the room Alex folded his coat beneath his head and did not ask again. When the wind pushed rain under the door, he rose without touching her blanket, stuffed a rag along the threshold, and lay down on the colder side of the room. The stove ticked as it cooled. He coughed seven times into his sleeve before her counting blurred into sleep.
She woke before dawn with Alex’s hand covering her mouth. For one terrified beat she reached for the knife. Then he pointed toward the door.
Boots ground across the wet porch. A man outside said, “Tracks end here.”
Another voice answered, close enough to touch through the boards. “The man who hired us wants a body before he pays us. Check the shack.”
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