“It’ll get chilly down here after sunset. I’ll light the fire then.”
She didn’t speak, but he sensed the anxiety his words caused her. He inhaled slowly
. “I might as well tell you this now—I won’t be able to keep the fire going for very long. There’s a limited supply of flammable material down here. I’ll light a fire long enough for you to fall asleep tonight, but I’ll have to put it out soon after that.”
“It must be going on six o’clock,” she murmured after a tense silence.
“Yeah. We’ll have sunlight for another hour or so.” He paused, feeling the urge to say something else, but coming up short. Since when had he regressed to being an awkward teenager?
Since you got trapped in a hole with a fantasy come to life, he answered himself, amused.
“Does anyone ever come to your house?” she asked.
“Yeah, Sherona. But she only comes every Tuesday. She won’t know I’m missing for three days.”
He heard her hiss of disappointment. “Who’s Sherona?” she asked after a moment.
“Sherona Legion. She lives in town. Runs the Legion Diner. I pay her to bring supplies up the hill.”
“You must get lonely, staying up here in these woods all by yourself.”
“It’s nice to get away for a couple weeks. And I have Enzo.”
She laughed softly. His mouth twitched at the sound. “Enzo is a dog.”
“He’s better company than a lot of humans I know.”
“Really? I’m sorry.”
He clamped his mouth shut. She hadn’t sounded pitying when she’d said it, but to his own ears, he’d sounded pitiful.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“You’re full of questions, aren’t you,” he muttered.
“What else have we got to do but talk?”
Her question hung in the cool, dank air.
“I’m divorced. Two years ago this summer.”
“Kids?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The marriage only lasted three years.”
“Why so short?”
He opened his mouth to tell her to mind her own business, but paused. Something about the honest simplicity of her queries made it difficult to take true offense. “We probably shouldn’t have gone into business together.”
“Your ex-wife is a chiropractor too?”
“No. She’s an orthopedic surgeon. We owned a multidisciplinary orthopedic practice. Big mistake to go into business with your spouse. We spent too much time together. The mystery faded, I guess.”
“For you?”
“No,” he said tightly. “For her. She fell in love with one of her patients. He had a bum knee but a great set of eyes.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” she murmured after a pause.