Chapter 10: On Her Terms

I did not take the owner's cottage.

I took a staff bungalow behind the laundry, with a bed, a cot, a fan and a porch.

It was the farthest place from the ops room I could find.

The head housekeeper put clean sheets on both beds without being asked and left a plate of rice and fish on the table.

She did not say a word about Damon.

She squeezed my arm once on her way out, hard, and I nearly cried.

By nine that night Tilda was asleep in the cot with the rabbit under her chin.

One fist was thrown up over her head, and I stood in the doorway and watched her breathe.

The shirt was in its paper bag at the back of the wardrobe.

I had not decided what to do with it, and I had decided not to think about it until morning.

Fraser sat on the porch with his boots off, drinking tea from the housekeeper's second-best mug.

He had showered somewhere. His hair was wet and his beard looked darker.

I sat down on the top step beside him.

"She's asleep," I said.

"Good."

"I haven't been this tired since the night she was born."

"That's saying something."

"It's a different tired. That one had a prize at the end."

He laughed, a short breath through his nose, and the tea slopped in the mug.

We sat there while the generators hummed and the sea moved against the beach.

Far off I could see a few lights on Little Brooks, small and white, where the pad shelter used to be.

"I keep seeing the roof come off," I said.

"I know."

"I designed that pad. I put four posts on it."

"You designed it for a good day."

"I designed it for a short wait. For someone with a bag, waiting for a helicopter that would be there in ten minutes."

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