Page 52 of Fluffed and Folded

“Huh,” he said.

“Good huh, or bad huh,” she said, ever fearful that he was about the judge her for the boring smallness of her life. She was learning, though, that Eli lacked judgment about anything. He was fair and, above all, kind.Gracious, was possibly a better word. Her choices and life were just that to him, hers, and he didn’t fault her for them, didn’t put the weight of his expectations on her. That, Darby was learning, was an incredibly rare trait to find in a person.

“Just huh. Here’s what I gleaned from that: you value peace, autonomy, and security. You’re a self-starter who would prefer to be her own boss.”

“You got all that from I like coffee and money?” she exclaimed.

He laughed. “Yep. You forget, I manage people for a living. I’ve learned to parse through what people say to what they mean, and I’m pretty good at seeing strengths and weaknesses.”

“What are my weaknesses?” she asked, biting her lip in trepidation.

“You tell me,” he said.

He must be an amazing manager, because he got her to think about her weaknesses without an emotion, through the lens of a prospective employer. What would make her a valuable asset? What would make her a liability? “I’m afraid,” she croaked. “So afraid.”

“Of what?” he asked gently, coaxingly.

“Of being a burden on someone, of someone being a burden on me.”

Eli nodded, absorbing that. “But, as humans, aren’t all of us a burden on someone, at some point? You can try your hardest not to be, but eventually life catches up with you. You have a tumor, for instance,” he gave her a pointed glance. “Or maybe you make it through midlife unscathed. Age still has its way. Every day I deal with people who have no one in their corner, no one to root for them, support them, care for them. Instead they pay my company, a group of strangers, to oversee their care. I do my level best to make certain that care is top notch, but it’s nothing compared to the oversight of people who know you, who love you, who really have your back.”

Darby didn’t want to cry again, but she certainly felt like it. Everything he said was true, all of it, but what was she to do? She was completely isolated from humanity. “Do you think I should get a job?”

“Do you want a job?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Not even a little. But connecting with people is so hard.”

“So is not connecting with people. It’s all hard. You have to choose your hard. One way leaves you vulnerable, open to rejection or exhaustion. The other leaves you lonely. Which way, Western Woman?”

She eked out a little half laugh. It was Eli’s specialty in life to lighten the mood of any heavy situation, and he was good at it. Suddenly everything seemed possible, even leaving the safe littleshell she’d created for herself. “Practically speaking, how does one leave the bubble and make friends? I would pretend I’m asking for a friend, but we both know I don’t have one.”

“You could join a book club, a yarn club, I saw the blankets you made. You could volunteer. Also, what are you talking about? Of course you have a friend.” He linked his arm with hers. “Tristan is your new bestie.”

She bent over laughing at that one. Besides asking her a thousand questions, she hadn’t heard Tristan utter more than three syllables, nor had he looked at her, minus the calculating stares that tried to figure out if she was victim or perpetrator.

“The point is that you are young. You have an entire life left to live. You can change it in any way you want, to suit your needs. Take it from the guy who got braces at an advanced age. You are one decision away from changing everything.”

She shuddered because, though he meant that in a good way, it could also go really wrong, as proved by what her tumor-adled subconscious did to her when she was unaware. “I wish I could remember my connection to Asher,” she said, calling them back to the question he’d asked her the previous night. She had no recollection of saying anything about Asher in the hospital. Had she really been afraid of him? She assumed so, but why? “You told Tristan about it, right?”

“Yep.”

“What did he say?”

“We had a really chatty discourse about it. He gave me deep thoughts and insights about his inner workings,” Eli said.

“Let me guess, he said, ‘OK,’” Darby said.

“Just ‘K. You give him too much credit,” Eli returned, and then shrugged a shoulder. “He ponders things, though, takes them all in and lets them ruminate, then he’ll bust out with something deep and unexpected.”

“What if the something deep and unexpected is that I killed Asher?” Darby asked, tense all over again. Tensing up tugged her stitches and she made a conscious effort to relax as Eli led her up to the porch swing. He waited to speak until they sank into the swing.

“Not possible.”

“How do you know?” she asked. “I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”

“Right mind, wrong mind, you’re not a killer,” he assured her.

She stared up into his kind, warm eyes. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

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