Chapter Six: He Looks Like He Is Losing

I got to the school in four minutes.

Fenne was at the gate. Small, auburn haired, standing with her arms slightly out like she had already decided she was not letting anyone through without a conversation first. Her soft green eyes were not soft right now. She had placed herself between the gate and the yard without making it obvious that was exactly what she was doing.

"Where is he?" I said.

"Both of them left about two minutes after I called you." She kept her voice low and level. "Got back in the car and drove north toward the main street."

"There were two of them."

"Yes. The second man — he wasn't staff. Didn't move like someone who had any reason to be there." She paused. "He was looking at the children through the fence."

My stomach went tight.

"Did he approach anyone?"

"No. The moment I came to the gate they both went back to the car." She looked at me carefully. "Eli never saw them. He was at the far end of the yard the whole time."

I looked past her. Eli was exactly where she said — far end of the yard, completely absorbed in something involving two sticks and an elaborate argument with another boy about the rules of whatever game they had invented. Completely safe. Completely unaware.

I watched him for a moment longer than I needed to.

"Ivy." Fenne touched my arm. "He's fine."

"I know." I made myself look away. "Thank you. Keep your phone close. If you see that car again you call me before you do anything else."

"Of course."

I collected Eli at three fifteen. Held his hand the entire walk home. He talked about the stick game for twenty straight minutes and I listened to every single word and laughed in the right places and asked the right questions and by the time we got home I had decided three things.

I would not run.

I would not hide.

And I would be completely ready when he came.

Thursday arrived grey and cold. I was up before six. Had Eli's breakfast on the table before he came downstairs. Walked him to school with Talia beside me and stood at the gate until the door closed behind him.

No car. No dark coat.

Nothing.

Talia walked back with me. "Maybe they went back."

"No," I said.

"You don't know that."

"I know him," I said. "He doesn't come this far and go back."

She went quiet. That was how Talia handled the things she couldn't argue with — she went quiet and stayed close, which was the most useful thing a person could do.

I opened the workroom. Sat down. Picked up a hem. Put it back down. Picked it up again. My hands were steady but my mind was doing the thing it did when something was coming — running the same short track over and over, checking for gaps, looking for the thing I hadn't prepared for.

Talia called at half past ten.

"There's a car on the main street," she said. "It's been parked outside the post office for twenty minutes. Engine off."

I set down my scissors. "Same car?"

"I think so. Dark. Expensive." A pause. "Someone's in the driver's seat. Just sitting."

I went to the front window.

The car was at the far end of the main street. Too far to see clearly. But I could see it — dark, long, completely still among the ordinary morning traffic of Maplewood Hollow like something that did not belong there and knew it.

"Talia," I said. "Is there anyone else in the car?"

"I can't tell from here." Another pause. "Wait."

I waited.

"Someone else just got out," she said. "Passenger side. He's — Ivy, he's standing on the pavement looking up the street."

I looked.

Even at this distance I could see the coat. Long. Dark. The expensive kind that moved wrong against a Maplewood Hollow morning. And the way the man stood — completely still, hands in his pockets, the particular stillness of someone who had never once in his life been in a hurry because he understood that whatever he was moving toward would not leave without him.

Not Rhys. Rhys was broad. Built wide.

This man was taller. Leaner. Different.

"Ivy." Talia's voice dropped. "He's walking. Coming up the main street."

My phone buzzed again immediately.

He stopped. He's looking at your cottage.

I stood in the middle of my kitchen.

Five years. Five years of this town and this cottage and this life I built from the ground up with my own two hands. Five years of Eli's grey eyes and his dinosaurs and his bedtime questions. Five years of a locked room at the back of myself that I walked past every morning without stopping.

The locked room had found me.

I went to the front door.

I put my hand on the handle.

He was at the end of the garden path — standing there looking at my cottage with an expression I could not read from here. The climbing plants on the front wall. The muddy boots on the step that belonged to his son. The small, warm, completely ordinary life of a woman he had discarded and never once looked for.

He raised his hand to knock.

I opened the door.

The knock never came.

We stood looking at each other across the garden path and five years of silence and everything that had ever been said and everything that should have been and his hand was still raised and his mouth was slightly open and whatever he had prepared for this moment had left him completely.

He looked terrible. Thinner than I remembered. Shadows under his eyes that had nothing to do with a bad night's sleep. A careful way he held himself that spoke of a body being managed — rationed, almost.

He looked like he was losing.

My heart did something I refused to name.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Then I felt it — the small warm weight behind my leg, the tiny hand finding the doorframe, the curious face appearing at my hip drawn by the open door and the cold air and the complete inability to stay out of anything interesting.

Eli.

Cyrus looked down.

And the world stopped being about me entirely.