Page 14 of Silent Threat
Again, he looked at her with that peculiar expression, as if reassessing her.
She would love to know the result of his assessment, but she didn’t ask. They walked in silence for a while.
When they reached her meadow, Annie meant to walk past. The practice of quiet listening would have to be skipped for Cole. But then she changed her mind, strode into the calf-high grass, and turned to him. “I usually stop here.”
“Is this when we hug a damn tree?” he grumbled. “Forget it. I’m drawing the line.”
“We’ll work up to tree hugging.” She put some mock censure in her gaze. “You can’t just walk up to a stand of unsuspecting oaks and start touching. They’d think you’re getting fresh with them.”
He was ... not exactly smiling, not even thinking about smiling. But he was maybe thinking about someone he’d seen smiling at breakfast in the cafeteria.
Annie decided to count it as another tiny drop of success.
The grassy clearing was around a fifth of an acre. If she lay down in the middle, she would still be able to see a ring of treetops in her peripheral vision. She was happy anytime she could see, hear, or touch her natural surroundings. All three at once was perfect.
She walked to the trampled spot where she usually communed with nature. “Why don’t you lie down, be still with the world for a while, and then tell me what you think.”
He lay down on his back, feet apart, arms open to the side, spread-eagle. He looked up at the sky. Then at her. “Are you going to lie down?”
“No.” She had an idea. “I’m going to step back and stand guard. You can close your eyes. Stay as long as you want. Breathe in the forest. You pay attention to that. I’ll pay attention to everything else.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think you can lull me into some false sense of safety and sneak in some ecotherapy unnoticed. I know what you’re trying to do.”
She wouldn’t fight him. “Good. I like smart people. Makes conversation so much more stimulating.”
When he ignored her comment, she said, “We’re going to relax.”
“I can’t relax.” He looked as if he was maybe swallowing a curse. “I stayed alive for six months as a POW by never, ever relaxing. Never, ever letting my guard down. If they caught me unprepared, if I gave them a single second to do that, they would have broken me. I wouldn’t have made it back.”
The stark truth lay between them like a hand grenade with its pin pulled.
For a moment, she let herself imagine his life in captivity. The images in her head were unbearable. She wanted to cry for him, but tears weren’t what he needed.
“You’re not a POW anymore. That’s what you’re here to learn.” When the tension in the air refused to thin, she added, “I’m going to go to the end of the clearing and sit on a stump.”
The turbulence in his eyes held her in place. Slowly, slowly, the tension ebbed. She could fill her lungs at last. Then she lost her breath all over again when he gestured to the ground at her feet. “Sit here.”
His voice was studiously neutral. Too studiously. Which meant that for some reason this was important to him.
Annie sat, cross-legged.
He left his hand stretched out, moving an inch so the back of his hand touched her bare knee. She waited. If he put his hand on her, she’d turn it into a teaching moment about what was and wasn’t appropriate between them. But he didn’t make another move.
He asked, “What do you hear?”
“A bee buzzing around your toes. Birds are calling out overhead. I can hear Broslin Creek, faintly, in the distance.”
The music of the earth filled her heart with joy and peace, and her chest ached at the thought that Cole couldn’t fully experience this sacred moment.
“I like thinking,” she added, “that the forest sounds the same as it did millions of years ago, and it will sound the same millions of years from now. I find the endlessness comforting. It puts my small problems into perspective. Like looking at the stars at night and realizing that everything I worried about all day is utterly insignificant compared to the vastness of the universe.”
He closed his eyes. A couple of ants crawled up his arm. She leaned forward to brush them off.
Without opening his eyes, he said, “Leave them.”
So she did.
Sensory perception.He was missing one sense. Maybe the ants tickling his skin made up—in some small way—for the silence in his ears.
