She smiled. “I believe that. Do you want to leave?”
It took him a moment to respond. “No.”
“I don’t want you to leave either.”
He took another sip, looking at her over the top of his cup, trying to convince himself that what he was doing was part of his investigation.
“You’ve never met a woman like me,” she said softly. He watched her lips, saw a flash of white teeth when she spoke.
“You’re right.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, cutting the words off, as if she’d planned to say more.
“I found Will’s last notebook,” he said.
“In the state cabin?”
He nodded.
“I looked for it afterward,” she said wistfully, breaking their gaze. “I’d hoped he brought it down with him. Where was it—under the mattress?”
“Yes. I saw your initial in the guest book. I recognized it from the invitation you sent.”
She smiled, and her eyes filmed over, as if remembering something that touched her. It wasn’t guilt, he thought.
“I wanted to leave some kind of record,” she said. “In case something happened to me. Or to both of us. You know that outfitter Smoke Van Horn? The one you shot? He saw us together up there. He didn’t approve.”
“I know.”
“He was the least of our worries, though. He didn’t realize I was trying to save Will.”
“Were you?”
“Obviously I didn’t do a very good job of it.”
Joe started to speak when Ed slid a big platter in front of him and handed Stella her bagel on a plate.
“These are on the house,” Ed said. “Enjoy!”
Joe looked up. “What’s the occasion?”
“This is my last day of business here,” Ed said, his eyes betraying his beaming mouthonly smile. “Jackson has plumb outgrown me.”
“Damn,” Joe said.
“I’d have done the same for Smoke,” Ed said. “He was a good customer too.
“See that up there on the shelf ?” Ed gestured to a garishly painted ceramic lion’s head. “That was in honor of Smoke, the Lion of the Tetons. Some of his hunters presented it to him at breakfast once, and he forgot it when he left. I put it up there and it’s been there ever since. He always said he wanted it back, but he never took it with him.”
Joe could feel Stella’s eyes on him, watching his reaction.
“It’s a shame,” Ed said.
“You mean Smoke? Or your last day of business?” Joe asked.
Ed turned back toward the kitchen. “Both, I guess,” he said over his shoulder.
Joe and Stella talked long after the dishes were cleared. He had drunk so much coffee he felt jittery. She asked him about what had happened at the cabin, and he recounted it all. She seemed fascinated by the story, but focused in on what he was thinking at the time, and how he felt after, not the details of the shooting. He was again taken by how comfortable he was with her, how easy she was to talk with. He wondered if Will had felt the same way. Then he answered his own question: of course he did. He’d said as much in his notebook.
“I don’t know what to say,” Joe said. “I’m talked out.”
“I think you do,” she said. “You’re just scared of the words.”
He looked up at her.
“Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can’t care for another just as much. It’s about context. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. You can have both.”
Joe felt his eyes grow wide, and squinted them back. He felt the ZING.
“I don’t know,” he stammered.
“I’m safe,” she said, leaning across the table toward him.
“You will never meet a woman as safe as I am. I have no agenda, and I don’t want either of us to get hurt. But I want to be with you, Joe, if only for a little while. As long as it’s real, and as honest as we can make it.”
“What about Don?” Joe asked, not even believing he had asked.
“Don’t ruin the mood,” she said abruptly. “Don thinks of me as part of him. And since Don is obsessed with the very idea and concept of Don Ennis, well . . .”
Ed appeared with the pot of coffee. Joe didn’t know whether to embrace him or send him away.
