Chapter 69

CHAPTER 69

S o Max had arranged for Marley to move in, which I was all for. I know he did it so there'd be somebody to look out for us, which we did not need, but Marley was good for Poppy, she was a lot happier when he was around, making her laugh, and I like him a lot.

Also, he wasn't my first priority. After Max came back from Bearton and asked if Marley could move in, he said, "Come for a drive," so I took off my apron and went with him, figuring this was it. The Big Goodbye.

We went out the back door of the shop and Max got into the Pathfinder, driver's side. I climbed in the passenger side and saw the back was full of Amazon boxes, including two big ones, and I frowned at Max. That seemed like a lot of baggage for a guy with a ruck. "So you're leaving."

"Yep." Max started the car and drove down the alley.

I was going to ask if he was taking the Pathfinder since it was full of his stuff, but that didn't seem like something he'd do. Impossible to take on the Trail. This was weird.

We crossed the bridge and then turned on the forest road that went behind Betty's place. Fernanda poked her head through the bushes and nodded to us and then went back to whatever vegetation she was terrorizing, and I realized Fernanda was very Max-like, only showing up to rescue and then going back to the woods. Max, my llama lover.

"So you're leaving," I said again.

"Yes."

"Tomorrow?"

"Unless somebody else dies," Max said.

"I can help you pack?—"

"All done," he said.

I looked back at the boxes. "Oh. Good."

We bumped off the end of the forest road and onto the grassy, overgrown road that took us to the back of the old cottage. Max parked there and then got out and opened the back of the Pathfinder. He pulled out one of the boxes and walked the short path to the door and waited for me there, like Maggs always did. I thought, I've been sleeping with an animal, which I should have figured out by now, just by his style in bed. The key was that he was an animal who said he loved me.

I took a box out of the back of the jeep and joined him and he pointed to the lock, so I picked it.

He held out his hand, and I put the padlock in it, and he put it in his pocket and opened the box and got out a lock, a real one, with a handle and everything.

Then he took a drill from the box and put a new lock on the door.

"Uh, Max," I said. "This isn't ours."

"It's yours now. I talked to Pike," he said as he finished up with the lock. Then he handed me the keys.

I almost dropped them, I was so stunned.

He opened the door and the hinges squeaked again as he picked up the box. "I've got oil for those," he said and went inside.

It wasn't warm in there, but it was clean, thanks to me, and the stone floor was beautiful. And Max was there, so it was good.

I started to say, "What the hell, Max?" but he interrupted me.

"The walls have to be redone," he said. "Needs insulation. Too deep in the woods for solar panels."

" Max. "

He looked at me then. "I told Pike you needed this place. We did a deal. It's yours."

I just stared at him.

"Needs a lot of work," he said. "But it'll be a good place for you. You can be quiet here, figure out what you want. And make things here. Art. Paint. Whatever you want. Poppy can sell them or?—"

"Max—"

"Poppy doesn't need to be out of Rocky Start," he said, looking into my eyes. "You do. You don't want the shop; you want time alone. Like you said. To work. To figure out what you want."

I want you, I thought, but I wanted this, too. He was right. First things first. Take care of myself.

Fucking Master of the Universe was right again.

"Thank you," I said finally.

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "We have a truck to unload."

He got fuses out of the box he'd brought in and put them in the fuse box I'd never noticed in the kitchen. "Definitely need to replace this," he said and flipped a switch by the door, and the old circular kitchen ceiling light came on, just one circle of white neon, and he said, "Probably want to replace that, too."

I said, "No." It was old and not fancy, but whoever had put it up had known it would light the little space. We didn't have to change everything. Just change enough to make it safe. "I can't believe you did this."

"Truck," he said, and he made me carry boxes in, though not the two big ones. I told him I could do those, too, and he said, "Don't interfere with my manliness," so I let him lug those.

There weren't many after that. One of those turned out to be the pieces to a heavy wood daybed. He dragged the box upstairs and we bolted it together, silently because I was so mind-blown, and then he shoved it into the gable on the second floor at the head of the stairs, where it fit. Probably because he'd measured it to make sure it would. Max Reddy, detail guy.

The other big box was a single bed mattress that we pulled out of the plastic and watched rise like bread.

One of the smaller ones was a space heater. "The second-floor windows are still in," he said as he plugged it in and I waited for everything to burst into flame. "Heat rises, so it'll stay warm up here. This will help if you want to read and picnic out here until you get new windows in, double-pane, but it's something."

Windows. I don't know what kind of deal he'd done with Pike, but I bet it didn't include windows. "I don't think I—" I started.

"Luke's coming next week," Max said. "I showed him pictures of the old windows and told him I wanted new ones that looked just like those. He said it was no problem. Marley said he'd help, so I imagine Poppy will, too?—"

"Max, I can't take this stuff from you," I said. Not if you're leaving.

"Herc paid me," he said. "I paid Pike. And we worked together, in case you forgot. You earned it."

Then he went down the stairs, and I just stared at the mattress on the daybed.

Which was evidently my daybed.

When he came back up, he had a mattress cover and sheets. When he snapped the cover over the mattress, I caught the other side and helped him stretch it corner to corner. Then he tossed the fitted sheet on and we stretched that, and he flipped the top sheet on and I caught that, too, and helped him smooth it out. Then he picked up a pillowcase and I said, "Give me one," and he threw a case to me, and we finished the pillows together.

Four of them. Lots of pillows. Because I like pillows.

Then he went back downstairs and I sat on the daybed and thought about bringing Coral's picnics here and maybe Poppy could find me a side table on one of her trips with Marley, and I could come here and just be alone and think?—

Max came up the stairs with more bedding in his hands. "This bed needs a comforter," he said, and I got up, and he flipped what he had over the daybed: a big, white, marshmallowy comforter.

I swallowed hard, willing myself not to cry because he'd hate it.

He put his arms around me and said, "I just want you safe and happy."

I'm safe here, I thought, with your arms around me , but happy is going to need you here, too. But then I thought that maybe that's what the cottage was. He couldn't stay, so he was wrapping the cottage around me.

"The odds are really against a second serial killer showing up," Max said. "Really. Even for Rocky Start." He pulled me down to sit beside him. "You okay?"

I nodded.

"One more box," he said and went down to get it while I willed myself not to get emotional. This was all fine.

This was all great.

He brought the last box up and put it in front of me, the flaps closed but not taped, and then sat next to me again.

He didn't move, so I opened it.

It was old books, used but in pretty good shape. I went through them, losing my breath again, and they were all things I loved, the Pratchetts and the Aaronovitches and the Wellses and the Noviks and the Blakes, the Heyers and the Chases and the Phillips and the Stuarts and the Gaffneys and the Austens, the Gilberts and the Christies and the Marshes and the Allinghams, and some really, really old ones that he must have had to hunt down, like Green as Spring by Rosalys Haskell, one I'd found at a library when I was a kid . All my re-reads, all my comfort books, he'd found them all.

"Poppy had bought some for you for Christmas," he said while I stared at them. "And she told me the ones you really loved. I know you had them in digital, but I thought a house should have books." He frowned. "I should have gotten you a bookcase?—"

"I hate you," I said, trying really hard not to cry. "I hate that you know how important this is to me, I hate that you know to do this and you're leaving me. "

He put his arms around me again, and I leaned into his solid heat, so real, and tried to memorize what he felt like so I'd have it when he was gone. I could sit here alone and remember.

Somehow, that did not help.

"We don't know what's going to happen," he said. "All we know is what we have. Now we have to figure out what we want. And you were right, we need to do that alone for a while. You have this place in the woods to be alone. And I have the Trail. And when I get to the end, maybe we'll know." He looked down at me. "I know I love you. I just have to figure out the rest. So I don't screw this up. I'm not used to this kind of life. I don't know how . . ."

"This is a perfect gift," I said, Except for you leaving.

He was watching me; I think he was waiting for me to cry, which was not happening.

"So," I said. "Anything else to unpack? Anything else I need?"

"You tell me."

"Well, there's this." I leaned closer and kissed him.

"No, that's what I need," he said and pulled me down on the bed he'd made for me.

* * *

An hour later, it was dark and we lay there naked in my cottage in the woods, tangled in the sheets he'd bought me—which surprisingly were not black—the marshmallowy comforter on the floor where we'd kicked it, the river burbling below.

I don't know why the sound of the Little Melvin was so comforting. It had almost killed Max three times.

"Thank you for the white sheets," I said.

"Classic," he said. "Like you."

"Can we spend the night here?"

"Depends on how you feel about peeing in the woods."

I sat up. "Yeah, let's go home."

"In a minute," he said and pulled me down to him and kissed me again.

For a guy who didn't know how to be in a relationship, he was doing pretty good.

"It's only gonna be a minute?" I said when I came up for air.

"No, longer than that," he said, and for some reason, I didn't think he was talking about sex.

Although that was longer than a minute, too.