Quilt. Mitch awoke and frowned. He was lying in front of the dying fire in Cy’s cabin. With a quilt spread over him.
For one traitorous second, Mitch remembered being tucked into bed as a child, remembered the sense of safety and order, of being wrapped in the arms of love. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, hoping to sleep again and recapture just one more fleeting moment.
But sleep had fled and with it, illusion. He hadn’t been a child for many years, and he had lost all right to love through his own failings. He had killed the woman who had loved him from birth, and he had been banished—and even that wasn’t payment enough. What he had done to destroy his family could not be put right.
So he lived alone.
And he would live alone again, once they were gone, the boy who reminded him so much of Boone…and the fragile woman who had covered him with a quilt.
They could not leave soon enough. He was ready, more than ready, to knit silence around him once more. He had talked more in the last two days than in the last two years. He could not need, could not let himself want more than he had. The peace he had reached had required years to build and in a matter of days, the boy and his mother had breached his walls. Where quiet stillness had reigned, now too much lay tumbled like a fallen house of blocks.
Mitch shoved to his feet, throwing the quilt aside with a muttered curse. He strode to the window and scowled, seeing that it was still full darkness outside.
Pacing the floor like a caged beast, he wanted nothing more than to walk away, to seek the stillness of the forest, to lose himself in the call of a bird, the rustle beneath the branches. To think of nothing more than the tracks on the ground before him, to become not a man but simply a thread in the fabric of nature. Nature had no expectations to betray. Mother Earth simply was. You learned her many faces, and you stayed alert to stay alive. In the keen pitch of attention she required, the world of people, of pain and loss, could not compete. Could not torment.
But even as he craved that immersion, Davey’s little face rose before him, blue eyes alight with the magic of seeing the forest through new and innocent eyes. For one sweet second, Mitch imagined that the boy was his, imagined guiding the child to manhood. Swiftly, like an assassin, longing pierced, needle-sharp.
Mitch abruptly turned from the window and faced the door of the room where they slept, the golden-haired, faithless mother and her child. No matter what he wanted, no matter how much he longed to walk away, he would not. She was too weak yet, the boy too small, this place too remote and wild.
As soon as she was stronger, he would know why Perrie was here and when she would leave. When he could be alone again.
But for now, he would watch over them both.
From a distance.
Mitch picked up the quilt and folded it, trying to shake off the image of delicate hands touching him while he slept.
“Mom, what about the new story?”
Perrie lay back against the sofa cushions, wondering about Mitch. He’d been gone most of the day, and now they’d finished supper and he hadn’t appeared yet.
“Mom? Did you hear me?”
She pulled her gaze from the doorway and took Davey’s chin in her hand. “I’m barely started on it.”
“That’s okay. Sometimes you take a long time.”
He was right about that. Sometimes the stories required weeks, even longer. She’d had little time or energy since before they left to begin a new one. Truth be told, she wasn’t ready now. But Davey had accepted so much change in his life; this she would not deny him.
She’d always spun stories for herself as a child, then for Davey. It was a pleasure they shared, a gift she could give him. Even through the years after she’d discovered the nightmare of marriage to Simon, she’d been able to hold onto the refuge of her stories. She’d known it would be the final defeat if she let Simon kill that part of her, so she’d held on for dear life. The stories and Davey had been the only color in the prison she’d entered the day she married the man she’d thought was her prince.
“This one might take a while,” she said. “Ermengilda’s a complicated girl.”
Davey giggled. “What a dumb name!”
Perrie lifted her chin playfully. “She can’t help the name she was given. She’s a princess, even if she looks like a trout.”
“A trout? Like the one I caught?”
“This is a very special fish, much too clever to be caught.”
“Mitch could do it. I know he could.”
Perrie frowned slightly. He shouldn’t get attached.
Davey laughed, blue eyes shining. “A girl fish named Ermen—”
“Ermengilda.”
“I can call her Ermie.”