Page 39 of The List
“I’ll bet you were adorable.”
“Adorable,” she repeats as though the word is unfamiliar to her. “I don’t know about that. I didn’t have much in common with my sisters. We had a tough time playing together sometimes.”
“How do you mean?”
“They wanted to play with Barbies, and I wanted to bury Barbie in the dirt to see if she’d decompose.”
I laugh and take a sharp left turn as Cassie points me onto another dirt road. The patches of snow are getting thicker, and I’m almost disappointed to know we’ll stop driving soon.
“So, what does a soil scientist do, exactly?”
“All kinds of things,” she says. “I evaluate soil and interpret the data for agricultural purposes or for environmental quality. Farmland and forests and mining operations and urban land—all of it has soil, and all of it tells a story.”
“I never thought of it like that. That’s really cool.” I’m not sure if I mean the dirt trivia itself, or Cassie’s enthusiasm. Either way, it’s true.
I’m loving how brainy she is. How fucking smart and passionate and excited about a career that’s so utterly unique.
“Sounds like you ended up in the right profession, then.”
“For sure,” she says. “I love my job.”
“I love mine, too.”
I see her head swivel to look at me, and I worry I’ve opened Pandora’s box.
“How long have you been working at Hot Swap?”
“Eight years,” I tell her, which is true. I started the company from scratch when I was twenty-two years old.
“I didn’t realize it’s been around that long.”
“Yep. It’s one of the fastest-growing companies in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Business magazine named us the top employer in the state last year, and Forbes is running a feature on us in the next issue.”
Shit, that sounded way too braggy, at least for a guy who mans the front desk. I open my mouth to try and cover my mistake, but Cassie points a finger out the window.
“Here!” She gestures to a section of dirt below a copse of frost-fringed evergreens. “This is a good spot. You can pull over in that little clearing.”
I ease the truck onto a flat patch of dirt, marveling that we’re the only ones around. True, it’s late winter in the middle of the woods at five thousand feet above sea level, but I’m amazed no one else has discovered this place. The air smells fresh and clean, and the sky overhead is stunningly blue. It’s like we’re two million miles from the hustle of Portland traffic, even though it’s less than two hundred.
Cassie pulls on a puffy gray jacket and jumps out of the truck, her boots landing in a patch of snow that’s a couple inches deep. I zip up my own coat and walk around the truck to join her. She’s tugging on a pair of red wool gloves and staring at the trees like a kid with a new puppy.
“Wow,” Cassie says. “That’s the biggest Pinus contorta I’ve ever seen.”
“Wait till I take it out of my pants.”
That quip earns me a swat on the shoulder and an eye roll that makes me want to annoy her again just to watch those beautiful green eyes in motion.
“Very funny,” she says. “Pinus contorta is a lodgepole pine. That guy right there.”
She points to a twisted evergreen with densely clustered needles and pinecones the size of eggs. It’s a beautiful tree, and I’m not the kind of guy who normally admires trees. There’s something about being here with Cassie that makes me marvel at everything. From trees to rocks to the empty Starbucks cup on the ground—it’s all somehow picturesque with Cassie standing next to me.
Junie would love it here.
The words almost tumble out of my mouth before I can think them through. I clamp my teeth together, not willing to go there. No sense introducing Cassie to the idea of my kid sister. Ensuring the two never meet—that Junie never has a chance to get attached to another woman who won’t be in the picture long—is crucial to my sister’s happiness.
“So, did you bring a blanket?” I ask.
The question seems to startle Cassie “A blanket?”
