Silent Words by Lisa Fenwick

Author:Lisa Fenwick [Fenwick, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-23T05:00:00+00:00

I spent the entire walk home beating myself up for telling Noah so much about myself and then just bailing on him, leaving him hanging like that.

“Just advertise your weird daddy issues!” I snarled at myself. “Drive him away.”

I felt Smokey’s pace change. I looked over and could barely make out his head, aimed toward me.

“It’s okay,” I told him, scratching the back of his neck. “Come on. Smokey, home.”

By the time I got back to the house, I wasn’t feeling any calmer. The last thing I said to myself kept on echoing in my ears. “Drive him away.”

Why was I worried about driving him away? He was just a guy that was renting my cottage. I’d known him for just a few weeks. I’d only been over to the cottage a handful of times, maybe spent four or five hours total with him. What feelings could I possibly have for him, or could he have for me?

It wasn’t like we had some sort of budding romance going on. He was just in Berwick for six months to sort his life out before going back into the big city. I had a home and a life here, albeit a somewhat solitary and isolated one.

The thing was, it coincidentally worked out very well for me to hide the fact that I could barely see here. I had learned to navigate the routes that I needed most, usually just to the cottage but sometimes other places. With Motier’s having such a good grocery delivery, I didn’t have to navigate my way through a grocery store. Anything else I needed was located within a couple of blocks.

Even if something absurd happened and Noah had a thing for me, he would be leaving in a few months. I adored my small town and its quiet life and the way that everybody just thought I was a weirdo and left me alone.

So why was I worried about driving him away? I unharnessed Smokey and took him to the kitchen to feed him and freshen up his water. He chomped his food and lapped up his water noisily. There was nothing at all subtle about an Irish wolfhound.

After Smokey finished and I cleaned up the kitchen floor a bit, I started my own lunch. I reached into my refrigerator, and by touch and general size and color, I could differentiate fruits and vegetables. The trust fund that Auntie Jean set me up with and the rent I made on the cottage freed me up from having to work, so I had all the time I needed to cook for myself.

My floors were all in dark colors. My furniture, the countertops, tabletops—any flat surfaces, really—were white or otherwise pale. My dishes, utensils, cookware, anything that I had to use in my hands, were all black or very dark. My whole “décor scheme” was built around high contrast between things, surfaces, and floors.

“Smokey, kennel,” I said. He dutifully tromped off to his big cage in the living room, so he wasn’t underfoot while I cooked.

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