He Sent the Helicopter for Her Dog novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Power Cut

The storm came over the ridge on Tuesday night, the first rain since June.

It came with wind, and the wind took down the power line along Larch Ridge Road before the first real drops hit the porch roof.

Gran's kitchen lights died in the middle of a sentence.

"That's the transformer," Jonah said.

He had been fixing the latch on the mudroom door for an hour, because I had never asked him to stop and he had never asked if he should.

I found two oil lamps in the pantry and a box of matches, and he lit the stove in the front room and fed it split apple wood.

Rain came down hard on the tin roof, and the whole house smelled of wet earth and smoke.

I sat on the floor in front of the stove with my back against the couch.

He stayed standing by the door, with his bandaged hand flat against the wall.

"Sit," I said. "You're making the lamps nervous."

He sat on the far end of the couch, a long way from me.

For a while we listened to the rain.

"It's Wednesday," I said.

"It's ten past midnight."

"Then it's Wednesday, and you said Saturday."

"Hannah."

"You said you wouldn't touch me until Saturday." I turned around on the floor to look up at him. "I'm saying the rule has a hole in it. The power's out. Nobody can see us, and nobody can hear the tape."

"That isn't what the rule is for."

"What's it for, then?"

He looked at the stove instead of me.

"I flew away from you," he said. "That's what I am to you. I'm the man who turned north with the light still on, and every time you look at me you'll see that. I want to be somebody else to you. I don't know how, and I'd rather wait than be the one you use to forget."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"I think I'd let you."

"Jonah."

He finally looked at me.

"When I hear your voice," I said, "I hear you tell a dying woman you're sorry, a mile away, with the rotors going. I hear you say it three times. I heard a man who couldn't hang up."

His jaw moved.

"I don't hear a stopwatch. I don't hear him. I hear the one who waited at the cedar tree until I was ready."

"You could still change your mind."

"I could," I said. "I'm not going to."

The rain came down on the roof.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the floor on his knees, slowly, and stopped with his hands on either side of mine on the boards.

His face was very close.

In the lamplight I could see every grey hair at his temples, and the scar through his eyebrow, and a pulse beating hard under his jaw.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

"No."

He kissed me, and it wasn't like the barn.

In the barn he had held back, and now he had decided not to.

His mouth was warm and certain, and one hand came up under my hair and held the back of my head.

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