“I’d never ask you to leave, Karen. It’s your house as much as it’s mine.”
“That’s not what the paperwork says.” She put her rifle back up to her shoulder. The deer was getting careless.
“Don’t worry about the fucking paperwork. As long as I’m alive you’ll always have someplace to go. Drop it.”
“Okay.” Karen shrugged, then relaxed her shoulders and took her shot. It was a clean one; the deer fell instantly and was still after a few tense moments of thrashing. She raised her voice to normal level as she strapped her gun onto her back and then dropped her long legs down onto the ladder. “My point is just that if you want to hook up with Nora, I guess I approve. Not that you care.” Her head disappeared through the trap door and Matt sat there a bit longer thinking. Did he really care that a twenty-year-old approved of any romantic prospects? This time, yes. Yes, he did. Nora was a “for keeps” kind of woman.
Matt sighed and strapped on his own gun to follow Karen down the hole and over to the copse of trees where she was assessing the deer idly fondling the hilt of her knife. “You want to dress it here or take it home?”
He looked at his watch. Nearly noon. They’d be there for another couple of hours at least, and he’d been thinking all morning about ways to show up at Nora’s without spooking her. The way she’d ran from him that day after returning from the swamps hadn’t sat well with him and he wanted to know what he’d done to scare her. Still, if she didn’t want to be bothered, he wanted to heed her wish. Only for a while, though. He didn’t want her to think he’d given up so easily. Giving up just like that would have meant he didn’t really want her in the first place, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Matt wanted her body, yes, but the more time he spent with the artist, he also wanted her companionship. She was the wife he wanted, if she’d have him.
Circuiting her kitchen the evening he’d fried fish for her had stirred something in him, and not of the primal sort. Being in her company felt right. Good. It was the casual awareness they had of each other. The ease of conversation. She was a woman he wanted to come home to every night. A woman who had something to say he actually wanted to hear.
“Let’s just do it here,” he said finally, pulling out his own sharper knife and handing it to her. “I’ll get the rope out of the truck.”
Nora’s newest painting had nearly been a disaster until she figured out how to anchor all that bland color. The green murk of the water, the faded tones of the tree trunks, and the leafless boughs of the swamp had made her canvas look like so much pea soup, even with the flower-colored houseboat prominent and its resident clearly presented. It wasn’t until she took a break to peel and cut the bag of bright red apples someone had left on her porch — probably Karen since they were in one of those plastic bags hospitals give patients to take their belongings home in — that she had an idea of what the painting was missing.
Nora painted a red velvet robe with an ermine collar onto the slumbering man, put gold buckles on his rubber boots, and propped a jewel-studded crown on top of his fisherman’s hat. She gave the tail-wagging mutt that sat at the edge of the porch a jeweled collar and a spiked tail, and instead of his mouth being open to merely bark, an anemic puff of smoke seeped out. With the peeling paint of the house and the amount of crap piled inside like some sort of floating junkyard, it was an odd juxtaposition, and that was Nora’s intention. She named the painting “The Swamp Is His Moat” and signed it with a flourish as soon as it was dry.
Nora knew she had Matt to thank for the inspiration behind the painting. She would have never considered paddling into the swamp on her own. Thoughts of the aftermath in his carport had kept her up all that evening — her skin prickling at the memory of his touch. Heart racing at a phantom echo of his deep voice in her ear. The thought of his strong body. Gentle spirit. The way he looked at her like she had some value. Then she’d run away like a coward because she didn’t know what else to do.
She took a picture of the large canvas and emailed it to Bennie. Bennie, still going on and on about Chad, enthusiastically asked when she should drive down to fetch it.
“Don’t worry about that,” Nora said when she called. Now that she had a roof and four walls to hold everything in, she could actually afford to leave the house without worrying about theft. “I’ll drive it up myself. I’ve got some things I need to get done in Baltimore.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“No, honey. I need to do this myself.”
*
In the early morning of the following Monday as he was walking out onto his deck, preparing to head to the fishery, Matt found Nora waiting on his steps. He looked at her with surprise, standing there dressed in slim black pants and a long burgundy sweater that set off the warm undertones in her skin. On top of her head she wore a brimmed cable-knit cap, but had neglected to push all of her hair up into it as one plaited lock tried to escape just over her ear. Matt’s gaze fell to it, fingers itching to touch her. She had taken the trouble to put on a bit of eyeliner and dab some shimmering blush on her cheeks that made her look radiant.
Matt opened his mouth to say something, but before he could spit out the apology he thought Nora deserved for his behavior after their outing, she said, “I have to be in D.C. by lunchtime to deliver a painting before the gallery owner leaves for his Thanksgiving vacation.”
“You finished another painting?”
She looked down at her black leather boots. “Yeah. Only Bennie has seen it.”
Matt nodded and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried not to feel hurt. “What’s it of?”
Nora met his gaze and cringed. “I’ll show you a picture when I get back. I should be home late tonight if you want to come over. I have heat now.”
Matt said nothing. He appreciated the invitation. It was a door he’d been wishing she’d open, but he was afraid of her tentativeness. He didn’t know what it meant.
“Hey, the reason I came over is to let you know if you wanted to hunt while I was gone, it’s fine with me. I wanted to thank you for taking me out on your boat.” She put her hand into the kangaroo pocket of her sweater and pulled out a tri-folded sheet of paper. “It helped me paint something I would have never thought of otherwise.”
Matt took the “Permission to Hunt” document and examined it quietly.
“I figured that as long as I’m not here, I don’t have to worry about getting shot through my windows,” she said, forcing a laugh.
Matt re-folded the paperwork and pressed it back at Nora. “I don’t want that.” When Nora didn’t immediately take it back, he pulled open her pocket and placed it inside.
Her face fell. “I don’t understand. I thought … ”
“Nora.” He gripped her shoulders gently and forced her to look up into his eyes. “I don’t want you thinking the only reason I want to spend time with you is so I can chase deer on the property line.”
Matt could see her struggle to swallow as she looked at her idling car or the empty fields or anywhere besides Matt’s eyes. “Isn’t it?”
“No!” he hissed, dropping his hands from her shoulders and using them to rake through his untended hair. “That’s what I wanted at first, yes. But that’s before I met you. Hunting’s not important to me right now. I don’t want you feeling unsafe.”
He reached a hand out to cup her chin, but Nora took a couple of steps back, the butter-soft soles of her flat boots making no noise as she retreated from him. Her face wore a fearful grimace Matt didn’t understand.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later?” She looked at him warily. Matt nodded and stood there on the deck, feeling utterly perplexed, fondling his truck keys as he watched her drive away.
*
“So, that’s it, then? It’s all through?” Nora asked the suited woman seated beside her at the table. People were filing out of the room and the entire procedure had taken surprisingly little time.
“That’s it,” her lawyer said, clicking the tabs on her hard-sided briefcase shut. “Smart of him to not try to get more of the money you earned during the marriage. That would have been shameful given his complete lack of support for your career.”
Nora let out a deep breath. “So, legally, I can drop his name now?”
“Yup. Go on and notify the DMV and Social Security Administration. You can use your divorce decree as proof.”
Nora’s maiden name was Fredrickson and although she took her husband’s name after they married at twenty-four, she still conducted business under her old name. Changing all those bills sent to Nora Gutierrez would be an onerous task, but one she looked forward to. Nora and Elvin had only been married for a year before he moved out of the home they shared, claiming that Nora wasn’t committed to the marriage since she practically locked herself up when working on her art. He started finding other ways to entertain himself and, more critically, other company to keep.
Nora was aware that her art was her greatest gift and also her biggest fault. When she visualized a painting, she needed to get it on canvas immediately for fear the imagery would leave her. She sometimes even ate while painting, and had more than once fallen asleep while at her easel. After they’d been separated for a couple of years with no desire from either party to reconcile, Nora finally filed for divorce. Due to the backlog in the court system, it took almost another full year to get a court date. Nora was glad to put it behind her. She could move on now and not feel so guilty about feeling a certain way about a man who most definitely wasn’t her husband. She hadn’t even told Matt she had a husband.
So, Nora killed two birds with one stone. She dropped her painting off in D.C., received gushing accolades from Spence, who was thrilled to finally meet her in the flesh, and then made it north to Baltimore by two-thirty for her court appearance.
She walked away from her lawyer in a curious state of half-joy, half-terror and cried there in the parking lot for half an hour before starting her car. After a short pep talk to herself, she started her car and drove to the house she’d shared with her now ex-husband for a year. He’d won the house, only because Nora didn’t fight for it, but there were a few objects in the attic she wanted to retrieve.
She stood there on the stoop, forcing her key into the lock when the sound of cracking ice on the sidewalk behind her made her turn. There Elvin stood: tall, dark, and thin and wearing an expression of utter arrogance Nora had once found sexy but now found pretentious. Nora wanted to knock that cocked eyebrow right off his face, and she probably could do it. He’d taught her how.
“Changed the locks,” he said.
“That fast?”
Elvin shrugged. “You were gone.”
Nora fidgeted her keys in her hands and ground her teeth. “I just want my grandmother’s frame and the paintings in the attic.”
Elvin walked past her and put his back to the door. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll ship them to you, if they’re even there.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
Elvin rubbed the little soul patch beneath his bottom lip and narrowed his nearly black eyes at her. “Had to clean up.
Pizarra limpia
.”
“You cleaned the slate every time you left the house when we were married. Janelle. Arianne. Marla. Who else?” Nora forced the house keys off the ring and flung them in the general direction of Elvin’s head, one by one. He swatted them away.
“There’s your fucking clean slate,
pendejo
. Send me my shit.”
Elvin scoffed.
Nora stormed down the steps. The confusion she’d felt earlier had dissipated. Now she was just pissed. It was about time.
*
When Nora turned into her gravel driveway at nearly midnight, spent from the long day, she was happy to see her porch lights shining and craved the softness of the new sheets on the bed inside the house. When she stepped out of the car, she noticed a faint light shining through the trees, flickering as the holder ambled closer. When Matt got close enough to see Nora’s eyes he turned off his flashlight. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, you want to come in?” Nora asked tiredly, assessing his thin tee shirt and the flannel pants he’d obviously put on for bed. It was so late. She wondered, briefly, if he’d stayed up waiting on her. After her encounter with Elvin she needed a calming presence around her. One that didn’t make her feel inadequate with every stare.
Matt cringed. “I can’t stay, baby, though I’d like to stick around and have a beer with you. I gotta get up early for work. I just wanted to find out what happened.”
Nora felt the blood drain from her face, although thankfully she knew Matt couldn’t tell in the dim light. “What happened?”
“With the painting. Did they like it?” He smirked, obviously noting the confusion she wore on her face.
“Oh,” she said, feeling her eyes widen. “Yes. They liked it a lot. The first painting doesn’t go up until January sixteenth, so I can ease up a bit now that I have two in. It’ll be nice to spend some time getting the house fixed up for the holidays and getting my luggage unpacked.” She chuckled and relaxed her shoulders. “Maybe I’ll actually find my nightgown in this mess.”
He smiled. “Maybe. Hey, speaking of the holidays, that’s why I came over,” he said, fixing the collar of Nora’s wool coat so it lay flat. Nora resisted the urge to caress his hand with her chin like a cat. If she touched him, she knew she wouldn’t want to stop, and she had to stop or it would all end badly. Again.
“You want to go to the Edenton Christmas parade with me?” He shone the light of his flashlight in his face so Nora could see him wink. “I get a special seat.”
“Christmas?” Nora climbed her porch steps and wriggled free the exterior paint swatch cards the contractor had left shoved into her screen door while she was out. “Isn’t it a bit early to be thinking about that?”
Matt looked down at his large hands and studied his nails. “Well, not exactly. The parade is the second weekend in December and after this Friday I’m going to be out of town for three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Nora didn’t see much of Matt, but she’d always taken for granted he’d be around if she wanted to.