Chapter 6 Small spaces

Scarlett pov

The thing about living with Dale was that the good days were almost worse than the bad ones.

Good days, you let your guard down. Good days, you made the mistake of thinking maybe this time was different, maybe the move had reset something in him, maybe Ashveil was going to be the place where he remembered she was his daughter and not just a inconvenience he'd been saddled with. Good days lulled you into forgetting that the bad ones were always coming.

Today had been a good day. Which meant Scarlett came home cautious.

She stood on the porch for a moment before going in, listening. Television on, that was neutral. No raised voices, no particular silence that had weight to it. She could smell something that might have been microwave soup. She turned the handle and went inside.

Dale was on the couch, mostly upright, which was better than yesterday. The television was showing a game she didn't recognise and he had a beer in his hand but only one on the coffee table beside him, which by their particular mathematics was practically sober.

"There's soup," he said, without looking at her.

"Thanks." She set her bag by the stairs.

"How was school."

Not a question, quite. More like a sentence he'd heard other parents say and was attempting. She'd learned not to read too much into it.

"Fine," she said. "It seems okay."

He grunted. She took that as the end of the conversation and headed for the kitchen.

She was heating soup and reading the back of the crackers box for something to do with her eyes when he appeared in the doorway. She registered him with the peripheral awareness she kept running whenever he was in the same room, not looking directly, just tracking.

"You make friends?" he asked.

"Maybe. There's a girl called Maya."

"Don't get too attached." He leaned against the doorframe, beer dangling from two fingers. "We're not staying."

Scarlett kept her eyes on the crackers box. "You don't know that."

"I know it every other place we've been."

"You've also made it every other place we've been," she said, and regretted it immediately. Not because it wasn't true. Because timing mattered and she'd miscalculated.

The shift was subtle but she felt it. The temperature of the room changing the way it did when Dale went from neutral to something else.

"What did you say."

"Nothing." She turned the hob off. "Forget it."

"No, go on." His voice had taken on that particular quality, too level, too careful, the calm before. "Since you've got opinions. Go on and share them."

She put the saucepan in the bowl and picked it up and turned around because she'd learned that looking down or away made it worse. She met his eyes steadily. "I just meant that a fresh start needs two people to actually try."

"I try," he said. The word came out jagged. "You think this is easy? Dragging us both across the country trying to find somewhere that" He stopped. Pressed his mouth into a line. "You don't know anything about what I carry."

"I know," she said, keeping her voice even. "I know it's hard."

"Don't patronise me, Scarlett."

"I'm not."

"You're standing there with that face"

"I'm just standing here, Dale."

He looked at her for a long moment with something in his expression she could never quite decode, not quite anger, not quite grief, something tangled up between the two that had her mother's absence wound all the way through it. She'd stopped trying to unpick it years ago.

"Just," He made a short gesture with the beer. "Stay out of my way tonight."

"I always do," she said quietly.

He went back to the couch. She stood in the kitchen for a moment, bowl of soup in both hands, and made herself breathe slowly until her heartbeat came back down to something normal.

One hour at a time.

She took her soup upstairs.

She was sitting on her bed an hour later, journal open, pen not quite moving, when her phone lit up.

Maya: we're doing movies at mine friday. you're coming. this is not a question.

Scarlett looked at it for a moment. Then:

Scarlett: noted

Maya: caden asked if you were coming

Maya: I told him probably

Maya: he said good

Maya: just thought you should know

Maya: for no reason

Maya: totally no reason

Scarlett put her phone face down on the duvet and looked at the ceiling and did not smile.

She smiled a little.

She picked the phone back up.

Scarlett: you're the worst

Maya: 😇 friday. 7pm. I'll send the address.

Scarlett set the phone down again and looked around her small room — the books on the windowsill, the journal in her lap, the fog pressing soft against the glass. She thought about Maya's easy laugh and the way Caden had fallen into step beside her after lunch like it was the most natural thing in the world, talking about nothing in particular, and how she'd had to keep reminding herself not to lean into the warmth of him.

Don't get too attached, Dale had said.

She picked up her pen and wrote at the top of the page, in small careful letters:

What if I'm tired of not getting attached to things.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she closed the journal without writing anything else.

Outside on the street below, at a distance that was close enough to hear and far enough not to be seen, Caden stood with his hands in his pockets and his jaw tight and his wolf very, very quiet.

He'd caught her scent on his evening run and told himself he was just checking the boundary line that happened to run past her street. He'd heard the television, the low conversation, the shift in her heartbeat when Dale's voice changed. He'd stood there in the dark and listened to a girl talk herself back down from something that shouldn't have needed talking down from at all and had felt something cold and furious settle into his chest like a stone dropping into still water.

He didn't move until her light went off.

Then he stood there a little longer anyway.

Friday, he thought. Maya's.

He'd make sure she laughed. Properly, not that almost-smile she rationed out like she wasn't sure she was allowed to use it. He'd make sure she laughed at least once and it was going to be the best thing he'd heard in his life and he already knew it.

He turned and walked back into the dark