Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(74)

“Does it?” His eyes drift over the pile of cushions that I lean against. “Well, in that case . . .” He kicks off his running shoes and then dives down next to me. Tucking his shoes under the woodstove, he adjusts the few stray pillows and lies back, stretching out his long body.

From my angle, higher and slightly behind him, I can watch him shamelessly.

And I do.

“Was this ours?” He nestles his head against the cable-knit pillow.

“Yeah. Your mom’s very generous.” Meredith’s spring cleaning involved bringing perfectly good bedding and blankets and books over to my door—things to dress up the space, give it life, she said. Some of these things still had price tags on them. “Do you want tea?” I reach for the mug I was drinking. “I can’t make you one right now, but you can have mine if you’d like.”

I feel his eyes on my face and I wish we were facing the other way, so the shadows could hide what I don’t want him to see. Finally, he drops his gaze. “I’m not a tea drinker.”

“Coffee?” His single nod answers me. “Let me guess . . . black?”

The muscle in his jaw pulses. “What made you think that?”

I shrug. “Just a guess. You look like a black-coffee drinker.”

“And what does a black-coffee drinker look like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that. I guess you remind me of someone who drinks black coffee.” Now I sound even more stupid. “I watch people a lot, wondering what makes them who they are.” I watch what kind of food they load onto the conveyor belt at the grocery store, and what they order at Poppa’s, the local greasy diner that serves the best coffee in town. I watch the way some people dart across a busy main street while others wait for the light so they can use the crosswalk; the way some parents offer annoyed shushes to their children’s incessant chatter while others provide calm answers; the way a group of women will sit at a coffee shop table, their eyes circulating, their words laced with critical comments, while at the next table another group sits, oblivious to anyone else and just enjoying one another’s company. I watch and I wonder what makes people who they are. Is it the sum of learned behaviors and experiences? And if they, like me, can’t recall those experiences, would they still do those things in the exact same way? Or would they deviate?

How similar am I to who I once was? Would I have gotten excited stepping out of a thrift shop, my arms loaded with someone else’s castaways? Would I have willingly cooked meals for a crotchety old lady who doesn’t have the words “thank you” in her vocabulary?

Would I have turned my judgmental nose up at a “free spirit” like Dakota?

I think about these things. I think about the fancy dress and the diamond jewelry I was found with, my platinum-blond dyed hair, and how that girl ended up shoveling horse shit out of stalls. And loving it.

“That makes sense,” Jesse finally offers.

I giggle. “No it doesn’t. You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

The tiniest dimple pokes his cheek. “You look like a two-and-a-half-milks, one-sweetener kind of coffee drinker.”

“That sounds ridiculous.” He must be mocking me now. “I’m one cream, one sugar.” That was how the first cup Amber ever delivered to me in the hospital was made. I realize now that I’ve never tried anything else.

He shrugs. “It was worth a shot.”

A comfortable silence hangs over us. “Are you happy to be back home?”

A slow nod answers. “It’s where I belong. Nothing I want in Portland anymore.”

Not even that girl you wanted to marry?

He reaches forward to pick up my journal, lying on the floor between us. “What’s this?”

“Just . . . uh . . .” I fight the urge to grab it out of his hand as he flips it open to the latest page, where my pen is tucked in. “It’s nothing, just a journal I need to keep for my psychologist. She’s hoping there will be a pattern or maybe it’ll trigger something.”

I see “blueberries” in my circular handwriting and know that he’s on the latest page. I haven’t been keeping up with the process as well as I should.

“Why’d you cross my name out?”

Heat crawls up my neck. “Because that response was tainted.”

“Tainted?” Amusement dances along his profile. “I tainted blueberries?”

“You gave me the blueberries. Of course the first word that enters my head is going to be your name.”

“Right.” He flips through the other pages. “My sister’s helping you with these?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Your mom, too. Sometimes I quiz myself. Though it’s not quite as effective.”

When he reaches the page where I’ve written “Baby = Impossible,” he stops. “Is it? I mean, is that what my mom told you?”

I’m surprised he’s asking me this so bluntly—but then again, he doesn’t seem like a small-talk kind of guy. And for some reason, I don’t mind talking about it with him. “No. She said the exact opposite, actually.” My hand shifts to rest on my abdomen of its own accord. “I would have been about seven months pregnant by now.” I’ve caught myself doing the math often. Usually when I’m walking along the stream, or watching the horses trot by. Imagining what it would be like to raise a child out here. “I think I really wanted this baby.”