Eric acted before I did. He stood slowly. "I'll leave you to it."
He walked toward the gate with the same deliberate pace he'd used to approach. I remained on the bleachers, watching him disappear beyond the fence line and listening to his footsteps fade into the general chorus of night sounds.
I sat there for another thirty seconds, maybe a full minute, telling myself I was simply waiting for him to get far enough ahead that our separate departures wouldn't feel like a coordinated retreat. I wanted to honor the solitude I'd come to the rink to find.
I caught up with Eric at the junction where the rink path met the main trail back toward the cottage. He briefly glanced back, registering my proximity without comment or obvious surprise.
We fell into step perhaps ten feet apart. The path wound through dense undergrowth where sumac branches reached across the narrow corridor to brush against our jackets.
Neither of us spoke. The silence we'd established at the rink had followed us onto the path.
Thorns caught at our jeans and tugged while somewhere in the darkness, a night bird called once before falling silent again. The cottage windows appeared through the trees ahead of us, golden rectangles that spoke of shelter and warmth.
Eric reached the porch steps first. He paused there for a moment. Then, he opened the screen door and stepped inside without ceremony.
I stood at the bottom of the porch steps, one boot resting on weathered wood while the other remained planted on the ground. I hesitated for only a few seconds. As I climbed toward the open door, the porch boards creaked under my weight.
Sleep was unlikely to claim me. In the kitchen, I stood listening to the cottage settle around us—the familiar creaks and sighs of old wood, but underneath it, something new. Eric's presence had changed even the silence. The guest room door was cracked open, and I heard him breathing, steady and deep.
I turned toward the coffee pot, then stopped. I stood in my kitchen, learning what it sounded like with someone else dreaming under my roof.
Just over two weeks, and then the cottage would be quiet again. It would be different. Perhaps the building itself dreaded the silence that would follow.
I turned and focused my attention on the coffee pot. The familiar ritual of measuring grounds and adding water gave my hands something to do.
A calendar was visible in my peripheral vision. October first, halfway through the experience of knowing Eric Callahan.
Fifteen more nights of lying awake, listening to someone else breathing in the room down the hall, wondering what dreams filled the space behind his eyes.
The coffee maker began its familiar gurgling. I focused my attention on tasks that would eventually lead to breakfast. It didn't require me to acknowledge how much I'd grown accustomed to the sound of someone else making themselves at home amid my carefully constructed exile.
Chapter nine
Eric
The ferry's diesel engine coughed to life beneath my feet, sending vibrations through the weathered deck planks. Wes needed fresh batteries for his weather radio, and we were running low on coffee. We could buy both from the co-op, but I used them to justify a trip to Whistleport.
I needed space to think, and twenty miles of choppy ocean water would help.
The crossing gave me forty minutes to watch Ironhook shrink behind us, its granite shores and scrub pine becoming abstract shapes against the horizon. Gulls followed in our wake, their cries sharp above the engine's rumble. Salt spray misted across the bow, leaving crystalline deposits on my jacket sleeves.
When we docked in Whistleport's harbor, the familiar bustle was almost overwhelming. Late-season tourists wandered the boardwalk with ice cream cones. Fishing boats bobbed at their moorings, their rigging clanking in the breeze like wind chimes made of metal and rope.
On the way to collecting supplies, my phone felt heavy in my pocket. I'd meant to call Dad since arriving on Ironhook, but theconversations we shared lately were brittle, like we were both afraid of stepping on landmines buried in seemingly innocent topics.
I dialed his number while walking past the boats in the harbor.
"Eric? Everything alright?"
"Everything's fine, Dad. Just checking in." I settled onto a bench overlooking the water, watching a lobsterman secure his traps for the day. "How's work?"
"Same as always. Had a kitchen fire on Maple Street yesterday—a grease problem that got out of hand. Nothing we couldn't handle. How's the island treating you?"
"It's good, Dad. Really good. The research is going well." I picked at a splinter in the bench's surface. "Actually, I've learned some things about the night you saved someone from that car accident. Graduation night, sixteen years ago."
The line went quiet except for the faint static of our connection. I checked my phone screen to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
"What brought that up?"
