Part 6
“I don’t know that it will be,” Alex said. “I can come to practice Tuesday and dinner Wednesday. Then I can come again.”
Ryan said, “You missed my birthday dinner twice.”
“I did.”
“You sent a driver to my eighth-grade graduation.”
“I did that too.”
“Mom stopped telling me when you said you’d come, so I wouldn’t wait.”
A cabinet door clicked shut. “She had reason.”
Ryan’s chair moved. “And Nora fixes what? You get to rescue somebody and feel decent?”
“She rescued me.” Alex paused. “The evaluator asked if guilt was part of why I applied. I said yes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I have.”
No speech followed. The refrigerator hummed, and a car passed outside. Nora kept her eyes on the same line of print.
Ryan came out first. At the door he looked at her. “I need some time.”
“I have some,” Nora said.
He looked past her at Alex. “Practice is Tuesday at four. If you come, don’t send a driver.” Then he left.
On Tuesday Alex drove to Ryan’s soccer practice and sat through cold rain in the metal bleachers. Nora went too, wrapped in a stadium blanket. Alex did not wave each time Ryan looked up. After a missed goal, Ryan checked the bleachers once; Alex was still there.
They went again the next week. On Wednesday Alex drove Nora to Ann’s for supper, then left early enough to meet Ryan and Valerie at a diner. Nora watched his taillights disappear and discovered that being left on purpose felt different when the return time was written on Ann’s calendar.
The weeks did not settle cleanly. Nora woke twice with the cave in her throat and hid canned soup under her bed. Alex missed a scheduled call with Dana, phoned her himself, and accepted an extra home visit. When Nora wanted counseling alone, he waited in the parking lot with a company report unopened on the seat beside him.
Grandpa Mick was buried in the little cemetery above Clear Fork. Ann stood on one side of Nora and Alex on the other. Nora put a carved cedar spoon in the grave and kept the box. No one asked her to speak.
Investigator Avery called a week later: Victor Sloan had been arrested at the Spokane airport. Phone records, the blocked transfer, and payments tied to the hired men supported the arrest; what could be proved at trial would take time. Alex appointed an interim manager and kept his own hours limited while the case proceeded.
School testing found gaps, not emptiness. Nora could multiply in her head, identify plants by leaf scars, and read adult adventure books, but she had never written a book report or stood in a lunch line. The school planned third grade with extra writing help and a quiet place she could use without asking in front of the class.
Ryan returned one Saturday with two grocery bags. He announced that Valerie said Alex’s refrigerator contained ingredients rather than food. In the backyard Nora showed him how to catch a flame in cedar shavings with a ferro rod.
“No matches?” Ryan asked.
“Matches get wet.”
“Phones call for pizza.”
“Phones get wet too.”
He practiced until a spark held. After that he came most weekends. Sometimes he and Alex talked; sometimes they stopped after two sentences. Nora learned that Ryan drummed his fingers when he wanted to leave and stayed longer if no one blocked the door with an apology.
One evening Ryan said, “Dinner next Wednesday. My next game. Start there.”
Alex set his phone facedown. “Wednesday. The game.”
Ryan glanced at Nora. “You too, if you want. I’m not promising we’ll look normal.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Nora said. “I’ll bring dry tinder.”
Dana’s visits continued through the trial. She checked the cupboards, spoke with Nora alone, and noticed the soup cans before Alex did. Nora reported that he hovered at the stove and had twice forgotten to knock. At the next visit, a strip of blue tape marked the distance Alex had to stand from the burners, and his knuckles touched every closed door first.
On the evening before school began, Alex asked Nora and Ryan to come for a drive. They followed a county road into low wooded hills and stopped at a meadow above the lake. A young western red cedar stood in freshly turned soil, barely taller than Nora.
“The company donated this land to the conservation district years ago,” Alex said. “No one will build here.”
Nora touched the flexible trunk. “Grandpa showed me how the windward branches grow shorter after enough storms.”
Ryan handed her a bottle. “How much water?”
She showed him where to pour. Alex knelt on the other side, making a ring in the soil with two fingers so the water stayed near the roots.
When they finished, Alex gave Nora a small wooden box. Inside was a silver chain with a cedar cone no larger than her thumbnail.
“From both of us,” Ryan said.
Nora held the chain toward Alex. “Will you put it on?”
He fastened it without touching her neck. When the clasp clicked, Nora turned and hugged him. Alex waited a beat before his arms closed around her.
“Thank you, Alec.”
His breath moved her hair. “We got each other out.”
Ryan picked up the empty bottle and said the tree needed a schedule before the two of them drowned it.
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