Page 16 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
“You don’t find it … isolated?” The nearest community is at least a thirty-minute drive down the mountain, and it didn’t seem like much of a town.
She shrugs. “No. I grew up in a very small town in rural Maine. This isn’t all that different.”
“Wow, really? Tristan did, too. Grow up in a small rural town in Maine, I mean.”
“Huh.”
“Where in Maine? The coastline is gorgeous. So wild and undeveloped.”
“You wouldn’t have heard of it,” Alex tells me. “It’s a little place on a peninsula—Windy Rock.”
My jaw hinges open. “That’s where Tristan’s from! What are the odds?”
“The odds of what?” Tristan asks as he clomps into the room.
“Alex is from Windy Rock, too. Can you believe it?”
My husband draws his eyebrows together and frowns. Not exactly the reaction I’m expecting. I turn to Alex. Her face is pale, almost translucent. Her freckles stand out, stark against her white skin. Her pulse throbs in her neck. She clasps her hands tightly in front of her. The two of them stand there in heavy silence for a long, awkward moment.
Finally, Tristan coughs. “We moved away when I was pretty young. My mom remarried a guy from Arizona. I haven’t been back in a long time, decades.”
This is true. We’ve vacationed in Maine, but never on the peninsula. He’s never shown any interest in stopping there. He says there’s nothing there to make the long detour worth it.
Alex finds her voice. “I think I’m probably a good bit older than you, too. So our paths wouldn’t have crossed.”
“But, isn’t it a really small, insular community?” I insist. “Wouldn’t your families know each other?”
“No,” Tristan says in a firm voice.
Alex shakes her head. “Nope.” Then she shifts her weight as if she’s ready to spring. “I should get back to the house. There’s a landline in the bedroom, Emily. Local calls only, I’m afraid. And there’s a notepad on the nightstand with my number if you need me.”
Before I can respond, she rushes from the cabin as if she’s being chased. The door slams shut, and she runs down the driveway to her truck. The engine roars to life, and the truck speeds off, sending up a spray of gravel in its wake.
I give Tristan a puzzled look. “That was weird, right?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s gazing out the window, gnawing on his bottom lip.
“Tristan?” I prompt him.
He blinks and turns away from the window. “Sorry, what?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine. What were you saying?” He shakes his head like a wet dog.
“Nothing important. Just … don’t you think it’s odd that Alex didn’t want to talk about Windy Rock?”
“You wouldn’t think it’s odd if you’d been to Windy Rock.”
He laughs. I join in, but my laughter is forced. There’s definitely something off about Alex’s reaction. Can he really not see that?
He crosses the room and wraps his arms around me. I lean into him and try to push aside all the questions tumbling around in my mind. He kisses the crown of my head.
I tip my chin up and study him. Something about his eyes feels wrong—distant and shaded. Like he’s keeping something from me. I shake the thought away. Tristan doesn’t keep secrets. That’s my specialty.
He strokes my hair, tucking a stray tendril behind my ear, then says, “I have to get on the road.”
“Already? Don’t you want to stretch your legs? We can take a walk around the property before you get back in the car.”
