Then there was another one, two weeks old. He grimaced. And played it.
Griffin, it’s Mallory. I’m just calling to make sure you’re still alive. I really wish that you would keep in touch better. Mom and Dad want to make sure you’re doing okay. But they don’t want to pressure you. I think you could do with a little pressuring. He clicked the voice mail that had come a week before it.
Griffin, it’s Mallory. I was just calling to wish you happy birthday. And tell you that I love you. I guess you don’t have to call me back. It had been his birthday.
He hadn’t really remembered. But then, it didn’t really matter what time of year it was. He didn’t mark it by number dates on the calendar. He marked it by the way the air felt. By how long the sun stayed in the sky, how early it rose. By whether or not the underlying feeling in the air was crisp with a sharp bite, or if the coolness had an overlay of warmth that seemed to coat your skin. That was how he could tell the changing of the seasons. He didn’t need anything half so literal as a calendar.
Poor Mallory.
He did feel guilty. But he also wasn’t in the mood to deal with his sister when she was mad at him, and given how mad she was in the last message, she was going to be even madder when he actually did call.
He would wait for another time. Maybe until he went down into town, which he did have to do sometimes. He couldn’t get everything delivered.
Though, with Iris, he was a lot closer to being able to get everything delivered.
He shrugged off the guilt, and it rolled off his shoulders easily as he stepped off the rock and headed back toward the cabin.
Guilt was easy to shift from where it sat on the mountain of grief that rested on him. A mountain he didn’t have the strength to move.
A mountain he wasn’t sure he wanted to move.
Guilt. Hunger. Everything had to contend with that. And none of it could ever be quite so crushing as that real burden that he carried.
He might feel bad for his sister. But not enough to change anything.
And if that made him an ass, so be it.
He was a whole lot of things he didn’t want to be.
Not being nice was the least of them.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE WONDERED IF Griffin would like pancakes. And also wasn’t sure if she should come up to the mountain that early. Or what she might find there.
They hadn’t discussed the time frame. Which made things difficult.
But he had really appreciated the food that she had brought yesterday. Far and away above anyone else she had ever fed.
They hadn’t discussed it, and he hadn’t really particularly thanked her. But she had heard it. That deep, guttural sound he made when he bit into the sandwich had been evidence enough.
She had to wonder what the man was subsisting on up there. She had had a look around the cabin, and as far as she could see, the only foods he had were of the canned variety. And beyond that, there wasn’t much of anything else.
He was...he was a strange man.
And when he’d made that noise, that strange, grunting growl when he bit into her sandwich, her stomach had turned over. And she had realized something else. She had been hung up on the fact that he was big. And, as a woman, that was something of a concern when dealing with an unknown man.
But she was starting to realize he was something more.
He was big. Muscular.
And behind that beard, he was beautiful.
His eyes were a deep blue, like denim. She hadn’t ever seen eyes like his before. His nose was straight and sharp, his lips beautifully formed. The beard kept him from being pretty. But she could imagine that as a younger man he’d been stunningly beautiful.
She had spent way too long thinking about that on her drive down the mountain.
He was also weird. Which she had reminded herself multiple times whenever her mind had strayed that direction.
She had been thinking, as she had trudged up the mountain, that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be a virgin who lived at home, and she wondered if her brain was inescapably trying to solve both problems at the same time.
Even thinking that as a joke made her face get hot.
She had never thought seriously about a man in that way.
Well, she had tried to think about Elliott that way. She had tried to imagine kissing him. But it had not made her warm. It didn’t make her cheeks light up like a beacon. Didn’t make her heart beat faster or her stomach stretch and twist like a ball of bread dough being kneaded.
Just thinking virginity and Griffin in the same sentence made all those things happen to her. Plus, she was sweaty.
And no closer to coming to a consensus on what she was going to do about her pancake idea.
She was standing in the kitchen considering it when Rose bounced into the room.
“What are you doing here?” Iris asked.
“I’ve been up working for hours,” Rose said. “I came to see if there was food.”
“And you couldn’t see if there was food at your and Logan’s house?”
“I was closer to here. Plus, Logan was out working too, so he wasn’t cooking me breakfast.”
Iris scowled. “Well, neither was I. In fact, I have to head to work.”
She grabbed the bag of pancake mix, a mixing bowl and her griddle, completely laden down with things.
“Wait,” Rose said, “you’re going to make pancakes for somebody else?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because I am trading for those pancakes. The pancakes are a form of payment. You don’t pay me. You just expect there to be pancakes.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Rose said.
But Rose never meant anything any way. Iris loved her sister so much. She had basically raised her. But only basically. Rose wasn’t her daughter. And Iris hadn’t been an adult. She had been a sad fourteen-year-old girl who had lost her mother, and had found some solace in playing mother to her desolate little sisters.
Because there was no one there to comfort her. So somehow, becoming strong and being the one to offer the comfort had... Well, it had felt like getting it herself.
But that kind of emotional surrogacy just didn’t last. Because now everybody was moving on and leaving her, and she was just this object. Someone who seemed comforting and warm and easy to everyone around her.
When she felt nothing like that inside.
She had pushed her own grief down. Kept it away. Had done her best not to deal with that at all, while she had poured herself into fixing things for other people.
And the added bonus had been hiding away.