“Muir, I’m not going to let you— I know my own mind and my…I’m not just going to walk a million miles in the forest with you, and have a bunch of great sex with you, and want to tell you before anyone else whenever something good or bad or hilarious happens, and watch you eat toast and jam every day, and put up with my jealousy for the obsession you have with goddamn Terry Johnson—who’s still pretty indifferent to me, when all I’ve ever been is good to that guy; I helped save his life and still he barks at me—and I know I can never know what your life has been, but I want to know what it is now and what it will be. And you can’t know mine, but I’d never blame you for that because you want to and you try so hard and you know what? I lied. I do want you to depend on me. Because you can. I want to take even the smallest part of this weight you carry every second, I want to take apart how every adult in your life has screwed you over and replace it with me doing right by you. And so does Kira. And so do her parents. And more than anyone, so does Francine. She wants to be your family and make it so you are never alone, and you can go to school and be a wilderness ranger or whatever the hell you want to do or be, because she knows you could be anything, and so do you. She wants to help you have the life you deserve, and I think you should let her because the only reason she wants it is because she loves you and, okay, maybe that is selfish, but the thing is, she loves you for you. She didn’t expect to, but there it is, with no agenda, nothing wanted in return. In fact she can’t help it and life would be easier if she didn’t but it’s too late now and it’s making her sick to imagine you leaving. She loves you.”

He grabbed his water bottle and walked away, fast, to the lodge.

Then my heart wasn’t still at all. Now it just felt broken.

—

“So you’re not really sick? Or you are and pretending not to be?” Kira demanded, arms crossed, standing beside my Blackbird table where I sat sulking over tea and toast. “Because you look not great. You look like you’ve been crying.”

“I have.”

“So you are sick.”

“I feel awful. I told Jane I was sick so I could leave, but I’m not, like, flu sick.”

Her arms relaxed. “Okay.”

“I’m sick of being mad.”

“Maybe you should go home and sleep?”

“Not home,” I said. “Francine’s house.” I put my head on my arms.