Still, my protectiveness over her was intense. I wanted to kill the son of a bitch who had come after her and told her so. She had only smiled and shaken her head.
“No,” she said. “Not these guys. There’s more than one, and they are tough. They are ruthless. They are vicious and vindictive. They killed my family just to gain power and want to wipe me out on some wild notion that I could get it for myself. I want nothing to do with any of it, but they don’t care. I’m still a liability to them.”
“Maybe you should call Sammi back,” I said, referencing her friend she had told me about. “You said her dad could help. He has men too.”
“No, I’m not getting them involved. I have to find some other way.”
“But they want to help—you said so,” I argued.
“No, please,” she said. “Please stop bringing it up.”
So, I gave it up. There was no use in continuing to fight her on it. She’d made up her mind not to get her friend and her family involved, and I respected it, even if I didn’t agree with it. She was trying to protect the people she cared about. She would have kept me out of it too had I not been there when they showed up to kill her.
Thus, the week anniversary of her escaping with me was met with the thick fog of tension, and I spent most of it tooling around the cabin, staying out of her way while trying to also make myself visible for her. If she needed something, I wanted her to know I was there.
She sat curled up on the love seat I had at the end of the bed. Like she perpetually had, a book was in her hands, opened about halfway, and her feet were curled under her. I watched from the kitchen as she pulled a blanket around her and flipped the page. The title became visible, and I saw it was an old detective novel I had completely forgotten about. I made a mental note to ask her about it later.
Desiree had been burning through my bookshelf at an impressive rate. I understood the impulse to disappear into something fantastic, something wildly different than her real life. I would too if I were her. I had done the same thing in the desert. Some of the books on that shelf had been packed away in my rucksack, sand still trapped in between pages from nations far away.
I had decided to go ahead and run the electricity in the cabin full on. It would help make her more comfortable, albeit it meant that I would need Brett to go into town for refueling supplies sooner. The crank radio was good for a little music in the kitchen, but I was considering turning on the television and watching a movie. I had yet to show her the hidden bookshelf of DVDs in the TV cabinet. I wasn’t sure if she was going to like many of the ones I had in there, but at least it would provide a little more escape for her if she got much more stir-crazy.
With dinner finished, I poked my head into the bedroom. The sun had just set, and she had turned on the lamp by the bed to keep reading. I must have startled her by appearing in the doorway because she jumped a little and slammed the book shut, almost like she was ready to chuck it at me.
“Dinner’s on,” I said.
“Oh, thank you,” she said.
I went back into the kitchen and made plates for the two of us, bringing them to the table and setting a place for each of us. She joined me a moment later, the book still in her hand. Placing it on the coffee table in the living room, she sat down across from me and began to poke at the side salad first.
We ate mostly in silence for a while. It was unusual for her not to say anything, and when I asked if she wanted extra cheese or pepper or salt, she simply shook her head rather than speaking. I glanced over at the book and then back to her, but her eyes still hadn’t left her plate.
“So, that book, I don’t remember it. Is it good?”
“It’s okay,” she said simply.
“What’s it about again?”
“A detective.”
I waited for more, but she didn’t seem to want to elaborate. Quietly, I put my fork down and leaned on my elbows.
“Hey,” I said. She looked up, finally, and our eyes met. There was an intensity in her gaze, like a hyper focus on something far away. She was looking at me, but she was also looking at whatever was occupying her mind. “What’s wrong?”
Those eyes, so severe and serious, suddenly burst into tears. She threw her hands up to cover them, the fork clanging against the plate and sending pasta sauce onto the table. I didn’t care about that, though. All I cared about was Desiree.