Chapter Two

Charlie

In the thin light of dawn, Charlie Matheson woke up gasping. The dream was an old, familiar haunt of meat and bones and loss, and he shook it loose like a spiderweb. It didn’t do any good to linger on dreams, good or bad.

Instead, he ran. Out his kitchen door and through woods springing to life after winter’s long spell. Up and up the rock-strewn path to the promontory, Lake Linea still half-frozen far below. Up here, the air was thin, and Charlie’s temples pounded with exertion. Up here, he was a dot, blasted to nothingness by immensity.

Not responsible for anything or anyone.

But as the sun crested the trees, Charlie couldn’t afford to be nothing anymore. He was responsible for things, so he made himself head for home.

Inside the kitchen door sat Jane, waiting impatiently for her breakfast. Her black and gray fur was ruffled like she’d just writhed herself awake, but the tufts at the tips of her ears stood straight up as always. She meowed at him, a sound like tearing metal, and he bent to offer her his hand. She twined herself around his ankles instead, rumbling a purr of welcome and demand.

“Hi, baby,” he cooed to the huge cat, and scratched between her tufty ears.

A drop of sweat dripped off his nose and landed on her paw. She looked up at him as if he’d defiled her.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he soothed, and Jane, placated, jumped onto the counter so she was at kissing height.

Charlie had never let anyone else see him do this. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d always imagined that the sight of a very large man exchanging nose bumps and whisker kisses with a very large cat might be cause for amusement. And Charlie and Jane took the ritual seriously.

Even on the counter, Jane had to go up on her back legs and Charlie had to bend down. They locked eyes, Jane’s glittering green to Charlie’s placid hazel, and Jane ever so slowly bumped Charlie’s nose with her own—a tiny, cool press, her luminous eyes so close to his own that Charlie imagined he might follow the rivers of color inside her. He slow-blinked once, and she slow-blinked back to him. Then she brushed her whiskers over his beard and he kissed the top of her furry head, right between her ears.

Ritual completed, Jane yipped—a sound very similar to her metal-tearing meow, but shorter and more demanding—and Charlie poured her food.

“I’m gonna take a shower and then get to the store,” he told her.

She crunched her breakfast.

“I saw a hawk out at the promontory,” he told her.

She crunched her breakfast.

“I’m gonna put you on a leash someday and take you out there with me,” he told her.

She crunched her breakfast.

“Okay, maybe I’ll just take you to the store and you can be a shop cat and get pet by strangers,” he told her.

Her meow of protest rang through the house and Charlie smiled as he stepped into the shower.


Matheson’s Hardware and Lumber opened at eight, and Charlie arrived by 7:30 to make sure things were in order. There was always something: the register was out of receipt tape; 12d nails had found their way into the 16d nail bin; the key-cutting machine was out of blanks; someone had spilled coffee in aisle three.

Charlie walked the store, plucking this screw out of that bin, straightening coils of wire, and sometimes just running his fingers over the shelves he’d installed and the inventory he’d ordered. He knew every inch of this place, and there was a comfort to its predictability, even if it sometimes smothered him.

Marie arrived as he was turning on the lights, carrying her blue camping thermos of coffee. She high-fived him, tied on her apron, and shooed him out from behind the cash wrap. She never spoke until a customer entered, saving every iota of energy for the day’s interactions.

He’d known Marie for ten years and she was the best manager he’d ever had. Also his best friend. Fine, his only friend. Marie didn’t lie and she didn’t sugarcoat—mainly because she didn’t say much. But when she did, it was considered, concise, and final.

Charlie spent the first few hours of business squeezed into the desk in his tiny office at the back of the shop. It had been a closet when his father ran the store, and Charlie’s broad shoulders barely cleared the walls. His father had done all his bookkeeping at home on the kitchen table—perhaps why, when Charlie took over the business, the books had been a hopeless mess.

He processed orders and filed receipts, answered a few emails and returned some calls. This part of the job wasn’t something he enjoyed, but it had to be done and he was the only one to do it.

When Marie took her lunch break, Charlie went into the store to do what he liked more: helping customers find the right tools for their projects. He listened carefully to what they wanted to achieve, then walked with them, gathering the things they’d need and explaining different ways they might proceed. He loved problem-solving; the more arcane the project, the better he liked it.

He was just walking Bill Duff through replacing his garbage disposal when he heard a clanking and scraping sound from outside.

Through the glass front door, Charlie saw an ominously smoking car grind to a halt in the parking lot. It looked like it had originally been a late-eighties two-door Chevy Beretta but had since been Frankensteined of multiple vehicles’ pieces, many of them different colors and some of them clinging desperately together, helped only by electrical tape and grime.

Charlie winced, fingers itching to put the car together properly—or, perhaps more practically, drive it to the junkyard and put it out of its misery.

Marie was bagging Bill Duff’s purchases when the door burst open. In stepped a man Charlie’d never seen before.

He certainly would have remembered.

Long, dark hair fell messily over his shoulders. He was slim and angular, with a slinky walk that made him look like he was made of hips and shoulders. The cuffs and collar of his long-sleeved T-shirt were worn rough and the knees of his jeans blown out. He looked like ten miles of dirt road.

Charlie raised a hand at the newcomer.

“Welcome to Matheson’s. I’m Charlie. Can I help you find anything?”

The man’s light, kohl-lined eyes darted around, as if Charlie might be talking to someone else, then, looking confused, said, “Uh. No.”

He hurried off down aisle one and Charlie let him alone. Some people didn’t want help or attention while they shopped, and Charlie was just glad of a new customer—and a young one at that. Business was okay, but with each passing year overnight shipping and Amazon ate further into his profit margin, particularly with customers under forty.

The stranger walked up and down the aisles, muttering inaudibly, swearing audibly, and consulting his phone every minute or so, as if the answers he wouldn’t accept from Charlie lay there.

After the better part of half an hour, he approached the register, arms full, though there were baskets and small carts available.

“Find everything okay?” Charlie asked as the man dumped his purchases on the counter.

“Uh, sure.”

He sounded distracted and was glaring at the items he’d chosen.

“You need any help with...” Charlie gestured at the hardware equivalent to marshmallows, cheese, and spaghetti before him.

The man raised a dramatic dark eyebrow but didn’t say anything. His eyes, Charlie could see now, were gray, and his skin was pale, as if he were a black-and-white image in a color world.

That pale glare lanced him, and he looked away, ringing and bagging things up.

The man swiped his credit card like he was ripping something in half and had to do it again when the machine didn’t get a read. He glared at it.

When Charlie handed him his bags he couldn’t help needling the man a little.

“Need any help getting things out to your car?” he asked, as he’d ask anyone.

The man glared down at the bags he was holding, then up at Charlie.

“No,” he said, like the word was his favorite one and, in his mouth, capable of expressing every feeling and thought he had.

“Okay, then,” Charlie said, purposefully cheery. “Have a good one.”

The man narrowed his eyes like there was a barb hidden in the words he simply hadn’t found yet.

“Uh-huh,” he said, and wrinkled his nose suspiciously, backing out the door.

“Who was that?” Marie asked. Charlie turned to see her lurking in the doorway from the back room.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said.

But he was damn sure gonna find out.


The glarer was back the next day, bursting through the door in a palpable huff. Marie elbowed Charlie subtly—as subtly as a pointy bone to the ribs can be administered, anyway.

“Welcome back,” Charlie said. “Help you find anything?”

The man shook his head, glaring, and walked to the back of the store. After that, Charlie didn’t see him for long enough that he got concerned and went to make sure he hadn’t impaled himself on an awl or stumbled into the band saw.

When he turned the corner on aisle six, though, Charlie didn’t see any carnage. What he saw was the man’s back, messy hair tumbling around his shoulders, and his phone screen as he watched a YouTube video that appeared to be about framing in a wall.

Charlie snuck back to the cash wrap without the man seeing him. He helped another customer, sent Marie to cut the wood for Ms. Mackenzie’s decking order, and organized an endcap of gardening tools, seeds from the local seed company Kiss Me Kale, fertilizer, and seed starting soil. He was adding hose nozzles to the display when the man walked to the front of the store with a pack of common nails, a hammer, an axe, sandpaper, and two flashlights, even though he’d bought one the day before.

“Do you sell wood?” he asked. “Like, cut wood?”

Charlie nodded. “Yup, any dimensions, cut to any length you want. We don’t have everything in stock, but I can get it for you. What do you need?”

“Um, I’m not sure yet.”

“Okay. Well, just let me know, and we’ll take care of you.”

The man nodded, eyes narrowed, and piled his purchases on the counter.

Everything in Charlie wanted to make sure the man had used an axe before and knew how to do so safely. Every year vacationers chopped off bits of themselves thinking that chopping wood meant whaling on a stump they found in the woods. But given how this guy had responded to a simple friendly greeting, Charlie doubted he’d take well to being questioned.

This time when the man left the store, his shoulders were a little lower than before.


Two days later the man arrived just as Charlie opened the store. His hair was messier than ever, and his clothes even more rumpled. There were dark circles under his eyes, and instead of a glare, his face was fixed in a nostril-flared pinch.

“Morning,” Charlie drawled.

“Hey, um, can I get that wood?”

“Sure. Tell me what you need and I’ll see if we have it or if I need to order it.”

The man took out a faded, spiral bound notepad from his back pocket. “I need, uh, 2x4s. About nine feet each.”

There were unspoken question marks after each statement.

“And how many of them do you need?”

“Oh, uh.” The man squinted, as if picturing the project. “Ten. No, twenty... Uh, yeah, twenty.”

“Twenty 2x4s at nine feet each?” The man nodded. “No problem. I can cut those for you right now.”

“Okay, cool.”

Charlie cut the boards quickly, forcing himself not to ask the questions he so badly wanted to. This guy obviously didn’t know what he was doing, and Charlie yearned to get involved.

When he went back out front, Marie was ringing the man up. For the first time, Charlie took a moment to watch him. He was a bundle of energy, fidgeting and biting his lip as he waited. But the longer Marie went without speaking to him, the more he relaxed. His shoulders dropped and his chin lifted, and Charlie saw his nostrils flare as he took a deep breath.

Charlie also saw that he was beautiful. Utterly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Without the glare, his light eyes framed by dark lashes were tempestuous and deep; his cheekbones and chin were delicately pointed; his nose was strong and straight. And his mouth—cruelly bitten red—was a luscious pout, painted more brightly than the rest of his coloring.

He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, as he had been the last two times he’d come in, and the lines of tattoos snaked out of his cuffs and collar. Today he also wore a gray bandanna tied around his neck as if to pull over his mouth and nose, and Charlie wondered what DIY abomination the man was attempting that would require such a thing.

“Hey, Charlie,” Marie called, jerking him out of his reverie. “Are we sold out of those blue plastic tarps?”

“Yeah. But we’ll be getting more in next week.”

At least they would be now.

The man shook his head.

“‘S fine,” he muttered.

“Depending on what you want it for,” Charlie ventured, “I have one in the back. It has a small tear in the corner and some paint splatter, but you’re welcome to borrow it.”

“Oh, um. Okay,” the man said. “Yeah, thanks.”

Charlie got the tarp and loaded the cut wood onto a cart. He wheeled it to the parking lot, where it was immediately clear that it wouldn’t fit in the death trap parked there.

The man came outside, purchases in hand, and Charlie said, “I’ll follow you with this in my truck, all right?”

“Oh, it’ll fit,” the man said.

Charlie raised a doubtful eyebrow as the guy tried to shove one of the 2x4s diagonally through the passenger door and between the seats. It didn’t fit.

“I can just drive with the door open,” the man said, biting his lip. “No one’s ever around here anyway.”

He jammed another 2x4 in the same way. All twenty were obviously not going to fit. After he shoved in three more, he kicked at the ground, nostrils flaring, and crossed his arms.

“I can make another trip...”

“Three more trips,” Charlie corrected. The man glared. “Why don’t you just let me follow you in the truck?”

The guy was either incapable of gracefully accepting help or he was worried about Charlie knowing where he lived. As a big guy, Charlie knew quite well that sometimes people equated large with menacing.

“Or Marie can follow you?”

But the man just rolled his eyes, so Charlie didn’t think it was fear. After kicking at the ground again, he sighed, “Fine.” Then, as if it were physically painful for him to utter, “Thanks.”

Charlie hadn’t heard a more grudging Thanks since his younger brother, Jack, had broken his leg the year before and needed Charlie’s help around the house.

“No problem,” Charlie said easily, a spark of satisfaction flaring inside him that he got to intercede on behalf of this total disaster.

“Marie,” he called in the door, “I’m gonna drive this wood to—What’s your name?” he asked the man.

“Rye.”

“—to Rye’s house. I have my cell.”

She raised an eyebrow that said Can’t wait to hear how that goes, and saluted. Charlie loaded the wood into his truck, taking the 2x4s that Rye had put in his car out so the passenger door could close.

“I’ll follow you,” he said.

Rye’s nostrils flared again but he just nodded. The car started after two attempts and Rye set off down the road, car clanking and coughing exhaust. Charlie let a bit of distance grow between them so he didn’t have to breathe it in and enjoyed the clear, sunny day.

The window of Rye’s car rolled down and Rye stuck his arm out, elbow resting on the door, fingers trailing through the air. The wind whipped strands of his hair out the window too, where it flapped like dark wings.

He turned left on Lennox, right on Oakcrest, and then swung onto Owl Creek Road. It was the route Charlie took to his brother’s house. He decided he’d text Jack later and invite him and his boyfriend Simon over for dinner next week. Simon liked a lot of notice for social plans; it eased his anxiety if he had time to mentally prepare.

Rye slowed at the turnoff just before Jack’s. Crow Lane was a long dirt path through the trees that terminated in a clearing and a house. A house that looked like the before shot in a home renovation show where a home was saved from demolition.

Had Rye bought the place to fix up? To flip? Certainly not, when he clearly had no experience with construction.

Rye got out of his car swearing at it, shoved his hands in his pockets, and glared at Charlie.

“My brother lives about a half mile south of you,” Charlie told him, nodding in that direction.

Rye nodded. He started pulling the lumber out of the truck and carrying it to the dilapidated house. Charlie followed him, dropping his own armload beside Rye’s, on the front stoop.

“Did you buy this place?” Charlie asked, when no explanation seemed forthcoming.

“Inherited it,” Rye said.

Charlie’s stomach clenched. Had Jack’s neighbor been Rye’s parent?

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss,” Charlie said haltingly.

Rye waved him away.

“I didn’t even know him. My grandfather. I dunno why he left it to me. No one else to leave it to, I guess?”

And he walked past Charlie to get another load of wood from the truck.

“Are you going to live here once it’s fixed up?” Charlie asked.

“That’s the plan.”

“Where are you staying until then?”

Rye raised an eyebrow. “You ask a lotta questions for a total stranger out in the middle of the woods.”

Charlie raised his hands, palms out.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry. Just, we don’t get that many new people moving to town. I was curious.”

“Well, I’m not gonna murder your brother in his sleep or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I am now,” Charlie muttered.

For the first time, Rye’s mouth quirked into a smile, revealing sharp, slightly overlapping teeth and a dimple.

A mew came from behind Rye.

“I better...” He gestured to the house and the lumber.

“Sure.”

“Thanks. For the tarp and the help.”

Charlie knew he should just nod and leave but he couldn’t help himself.

“This looks like quite the job. Do you have people helping you? Experience in demo and construction? Because if you want—”

“Either you’ve got a mad hero complex or you’re bossy as hell, man,” Rye said.

Charlie drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t insignificant.

“Who says it isn’t both?” he said. “I’m Charlie, by the way. Charlie Matheson.” Then he winked and walked back to the truck.

He only let his eyes flick toward Rye for an instant as he threw the truck into gear, but he thought the man was smiling.