I'm sorry for the longer wait in-between chapters this time, everybody! The last chapter will probably be up on Thursday, and it will be accompanied by a special postscript section with just my thank-yous, plans, explanations, random thoughts, and so forth... So I won't waste your time with any of them today. On to the story!


Chapter Thirty-Nine

He wasn't really sure why he was avoiding her, but it was impossible to deny that he was. After he'd unloaded the rest of the groceries and put them away, he'd gone outdoors with the pretence that the leaves needed to be raked and burned. Although he'd never once bothered to do this before, and it had made no difference to him whether or not they rotted and decomposed where they fell, the idea of raking them had occurred to him today with the urgency of desperation, and he had latched onto the notion with grateful relief.

It wasn't only that he felt he needed distance from Kate. It was just that, after all the emotional upheavals of the morning, he was glad for some excuse for mindless, tedious physical labor. The house seemed stifling, and although he was mentally exhausted, his body craved a release in exercise. He worked inward toward the house, starting at the furthest border of the woods and making his way nearer and nearer to the porch on the east facade, purposefully avoiding the side where his bedroom was, where he assumed Kate remained. He hoped she was sleeping, but he had his doubts. In order to avoid thinking about it, or about anything else, for that matter, he raked with a violent fury, tearing up grass and rocks along with the leaves, forcing them all into growing piles that he intended to set ablaze.

When he finally reached the point where he was ready for fire, he noticed, to his amazement, that it was early evening, and the sun was already going down. He'd lost track of time. In a certain sense, he'd lost track of more than just time. It now occurred to him that he hadn't seen or heard anything from Kate since he'd left her holding the pregnancy test in the early afternoon. The realization made him feel guilty as well as a little worried. It was unusual for her to isolate herself for such a long period of time, even when they weren't on the best of terms (which was often.) Letting the rake fall to the ground with a dull metallic thud, he walked toward the house, trying to keep a slow pace.

The kitchen was silent and dim, with no lights on and no sign of any food preparation in evidence.

"Kate?" he called out sharply. And then, because he couldn't think of anything else, "I could use some help out here, you know!" His voice echoed hollowly through the rooms. There was no response.

She must be in the shower, he thought with deliberate casualness. He climbed the stairs heavily and checked the bathroom, although he knew, before he even reached the top, that there was no one in there.

"What'd you do, go back to bed?" he asked loudly, moving toward his bedroom and praying that she would be in bed.

She wasn't.

But the west window was open, the drapes carelessly pulled all the way back, drifting in and out of the wide-open space in the slight breeze. A chill immediately descended upon him, effected by more than just the cold air circulating through the room.

He stood still for a second, taking in the unfamiliar sight of the open window, allowing himself a flood of sensations unrelated to any kind of rational thought. Then, taking a few steps toward it, he leaned out with both hands on the sill, forcing himself, despite the sickening protest in his gut, to look down. His eyes scanned the ground below, detecting nothing out of the ordinary, but relentlessly double and triple-checking every inch of space.

"I'm up here."

Her voice came from what seemed like just a few feet away, sounding almost amused. He swung his head around in confusion. She was sitting, with apparent ease and nonchalance, on the peak of the roof, leaning back comfortably against the chimney. "Did you think I jumped?" she asked wryly.

He let his breath out in irritated relief, shaking his head. "Hell of a joke, Freckles."

She looked away, out into the distance, with a slight smile.

"What do you think you're doin' up there?"

"I'm watching the sunset," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to watch the sunset from the top of a roof. "You should see it from up here... it's amazing."

"I've seen sunsets before," he replied, still annoyed.

"Not this one," she said, with a slight raising of her eyebrows.

"You're like a goddamn monkey, you know that? You remember what happened the last time you went climbin' around on shit... how well that turned out?"

She rolled her eyes, but didn't answer.

After a minute, she said coaxingly, "You're missing the best part."

"Forget it."

She looked down at him with exaggerated sympathy. "Oh... I didn't realize you were afraid of heights."

"Afraid..." he stuttered indignantly, "You think I'm afraid of heights? Just because I don't have some hidden desire to be a circus performer, like you apparently do?"

"It's okay," she said supportively. "It's a really common phobia. You don't have anything to be ashamed of."

He narrowed his eyes at her with contempt, easily detecting the mockery in her tone. He considered for a few seconds, and then, slowly, muttering angrily under his breath, he lowered himself out onto the shingles that sloped down from the window. A primitive kindergarten impulse had kicked in. No girl was going to call him afraid.

"Careful," she warned. "Make sure you keep both your hands on the surface for balance."

"I know that," he said scornfully. He slowly inched his way up the incline and then moved over to the other section where she was sitting.

"Scoot up," he ordered her, his teeth gritted in anxiety. She complied, and he eased himself into the vacated spot against the chimney, grateful for something solid behind his back. Grasping her at the waist, he pulled her back against him, then latched his arms around her midsection. He breathed out, resting his head against the bricks, not willing to look down quite yet.

They were both silent while he got his bearings. He was also trying to figure out how to begin this conversation. The fact that she was up here told him more about her state of mind than she probably thought it did. For one thing, he knew with instinctive certainty that if the results of that test had been different, she never would have risked something like this. It was both a celebration and a mourning at the same time. He didn't know which of the two made him sadder.

He wanted to apologize for the way he'd left her, for the lack of support he'd shown throughout the entire ordeal. He thought he owed her that, at least. But he couldn't seem to form the words. Instead, he was forced to settle for something more neutral.

"You all right?" He spoke quietly, thankful that they were both facing the same direction so that she couldn't see his face.

She waited a few seconds before answering, almost as if she was trying to decide. "Yeah," she finally said. "I think so. How about you?"

"I just spent five hours raking up about a decade's worth of leaves. So you be the judge."

"Raking," she said, nodding slightly. "I thought I heard something weird. I was afraid to look."

"Yeah," he muttered. "Well, at least it wasn't life-threatening."

She smiled. "Haven't you ever been up here before?"

"Once," he said, after considering. "I musta been about six. Never tried it again after that."

"How come?"

"Because," he explained, with a smile in his voice. "My grandma was waitin' for me with a hickory switch by the time I got back down. Hey, there's an idea," he said slyly. "Maybe that's what I oughtta try with you."

Kate laughed. "Yeah... If you want to end up in a wheelchair."

Grinning, he leaned down and brushed his lips lightly against her neck, glad that he could at least still make her laugh, if he could do nothing else.

She kept her eyes fixed on the far horizon, watching for the muted, subtle gradations of color as the sky shifted from daylight to dusk. The brilliant orange of a few moments ago had transformed itself into a bright, almost gaudy pink, tinged a deeper rose that faded into violet and then blue towards the east. It caused the few remaining brown and scarlet autumn leaves to stand out with even greater distinction against the dark, unchanging green of the spruces and pines.

"I'm sorry," Kate said softly, without turning her head.

"What are you sorry for?" He sounded tired again.

"For what happened earlier. For what I said. But that doesn't mean anything is different," she hastened to add. "You know that everything I said was true."

He was silent.

She angled her head back toward him. "Sawyer? You do know that, right?" She sounded almost pleading, as if she needed him to confirm it for her.

He finally spoke, with words that weren't anything like what she had expected to hear.

"I ever tell you I got a girl knocked up in high school?"

"What?" she asked incredulously, turning her body so that she could see his face. She'd hoped it was a joke, but his expression clearly ruled that out.

"Barely even knew her," he went on, not meeting her eyes. "She was just some rich girl tryin' to piss off her parents by hangin' around with the bad boy. And you know me... I was happy to oblige," he said bitterly.

Kate waited, not knowing what to say.

"So when mommy and daddy found out, they sent her off somewhere to have it taken care of. When she came back a few weeks later, she wasn't pregnant anymore. Never spoke to her again... and she never came near me. It was right before I dropped out," he added.

"Oh my God, Sawyer," Kate said slowly, in a tone of concern.

"Don't waste your pity," he said, a little harshly. "It wasn't no soap opera.. It was just two stupid kids who made a mistake and were lucky that someone was rich enough to fix it."

He paused for a second, and then went on, in a calmer voice. "Can't remember the damn girl's name... I wouldn't even be able to tell you if she was a blonde or a brunette. Hell, she might have been a redhead, for all I know. But you want to know what's funny about the whole thing? I think about the kid sometimes. Or what would have been the kid. Never even existed, and that's the part I still think about." He laughed silently, derisively. "Bet you never thought you'd hear that from me. Pretty pathetic, right?"

Kate closed her eyes against a wave of emotion that nearly made her dizzy. "No," she whispered, placing her hand on his where it pressed against her stomach. "It isn't."

He could hear the understanding and empathy in her voice, and he wished he hadn't told her. It wasn't something he'd ever planned to share with anybody, and now there was no taking it back. It would go into the slowly growing mental file she kept on his life, causing the impression she had of him to shuffle and reassort itself to incorporate the new detail, the same way everything he learned about her blurred or clarified what he already thought he knew. He supposed that it was the same with anybody you encountered in life, but the simple process of letting someone get to know him had never meant so much before. It made him nervous that he couldn't seem to censor his words the way he had with other women. The longer he was around Kate, the more he wanted to talk about his past, and there was still a part of him that rebelled against this in terror.

He could tell she was trying to think of something to say, something related to the topic, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs. Raising his eyes to take in the yard, he quickly sought a distraction.

"You see that pile of rocks out there, at the edge of the woods?" He made his voice even, almost light.

Kate kept her eyes on his face for a few seconds, not willing to make the transition quite so suddenly, but eventually giving in, for his sake. She turned in the direction he was gesturing and followed his gaze.

"Yeah. What is it?"

"It's what's left of the original well, from when the house was first built."

She raised her eyebrows slightly, interested in spite of herself. "The one your grandma threw herself down?"

"That's the one," he said with a half-smile. "After that, they filled it in... broke the stones up, just in case anybody ever got the urge to try it again."

"We must have walked by it twenty times on the way to the lake," she mused. "I never even noticed it before."

"It's hard to see at night." Sawyer paused, in thought. "Crazy woman... Only reason she did it was because my uncle messed up all her big plans for him."

"By getting married?" Kate asked, confused.

"She spent her whole life tryin' to get out of these mountains," he said quietly, looking toward the distant peaks with something like disdain. "Never made it. So, she decided that if she couldn't get out, at least her sons would. Trouble is, neither one of them had any desire to go anywhere. My dad ended up right back here at the house, and John and Meg were just a few towns over that way. When she gave up on them, I was her last resort. Always made me promise her I wouldn't stay here... and I didn't. Though I doubt she'd be too happy with the results," he finished in an ironic tone.

Kate kept her eyes fixed on the mountains too, longingly. She shook her head, as if something puzzled her. "It's funny how... some people spend their whole life trying to escape from a place without ever making it, and other people would give anything, just to be able to stay somewhere." She paused, and then went on with a bitter detachment. "Maybe nobody ever really gets what they want."

"I wouldn't say that," Sawyer said meaningfully, giving her an intent look.

She turned to meet his eyes and her expression softened. They stared at each other wordlessly, both feeling, as always, the invisible current of something like electricity that passed between them whenever their gazes locked. It was a kind of drug that couldn't be overindulged without the threat of falling into the abyss.

Kate looked away first, obviously with something on her mind. She took a deep breath and let it out, waiting before she began. "I've lived in so many different houses... More than I can count. And nothing has ever felt as much like home as this place does. But it's not just the place," she corrected herself, feeling a knot in her throat. "If anything..." She stopped, then started again. "If anything ever happens to me, I just... want you to know..."

"I don't want to hear it," he interrupted her, speaking quickly.

She shut her eyes briefly in annoyance. "Would you please let me finish?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because," he told her, "Whatever you're about to say, I don't want to listen to it." He paused, then added in a quieter voice, "Nothing's gonna happen to you."

"Sawyer." She looked away, then sighed. "We can't do that."

"Do what?"

She turned back to him. "We can't... live in that fairytale world, where everyone has a happy ending." Shaking her head, she whispered, "That's not our world. Why is it so terrible to be prepared?"

His face hardened against the logic of her words. "Some things there ain't no use preparing for," he said in a dark tone. "And I don't want to hear it," he repeated with emphasis.

She continued to watch him, trying to detect any weakness in his emotional facade, but he wasn't going to crack. "All right," she said, giving in. "You win. We won't talk about it."

He looked at her sullenly, now feeling a twinge of regret. Why did all their interactions have to be so fraught with psychological danger?

Pulling her closer, he kissed her as a way of thanking her for dropping the subject. Kate prudently broke away when it threatened to become too passionate, which was a good idea, since they were suspended on the peak of a roof nearly thirty feet off the ground, where excessive movement wouldn't be wise. This was one section of the property that would not be making it onto the checklist.

With her body still angled sideways to his, she formed her lips into an O and breathed out, watching as a faint white vapor rose in front of her and distilled itself into the air. "It's getting colder," she remarked. "You can see your breath."

He tried the same experiment, watching his own vapor fan upwards and disappear. "Makes me want a cigarette," he muttered.

"I think you've had enough for today," Kate said sardonically. Then something seemed to catch her eye in the opposite direction from which they'd been gazing. "Look at those clouds coming in... Looks like a storm system."

"Comin' from the southwest," Sawyer said.

Kate bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. "Actually, that's the northeast," she said gently.

He was silent for a second, mentally calculating. He shot her an irritated look. "You just love those moments, don't you?"

"I really do," she nodded, unable to hold back the smile now. He rolled his eyes, but she could tell he wasn't truly annoyed.

To allow him to regain some dignity, she gave him a chance to pass on information that she didn't already have. "Does it ever snow this far south?" she asked.

"'Course it snows," he said, as if the answer were obvious. "Not this early in the year, though."

She looked out over the yard again, her eyes sweeping down toward the shed and the lake. "I'd love to see this place when it snows," she said softly.

"You will." He watched her face.

She didn't meet his eyes. Smiling sadly, she whispered, "Yeah."

After an interval, Sawyer sighed. "Have you had enough sunset for tonight? Think maybe we could get back inside?"

She glanced around at him. "Okay." But she still didn't move.

"You waitin' for a helicopter extraction?" he asked, trying to urge her on.

She seemed to shake herself out of a reverie. "For some reason, I just had this crazy wish that we could stay up here forever."

"Sorry to disappoint you, shortcake, but my ass is already sore." He gestured down toward the window. "Ladies first."

She cast one more amused smile in his direction as she expertly maneuvered down the steep pitch of the shingles. He watched tensely, holding his breath, until she ducked into the open window. Leaning out, she brushed her hair out of the way and looked back up at him. "You coming?"

He moved slightly and then stopped again, wishing she wasn't watching him. He'd climbed a damn cliff on the island, hadn't he? So why was this so nerve-racking?

"You want me to come back up and help you?" Kate called playfully.

Glaring at her, he turned around and inched down the roof with painful slowness, grateful when he was finally able to lower his legs over the windowsill. He stood up inside the room and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, feeling the blood course through his veins.

"Did that get your heart rate up?" she asked, her arms crossed in front of her, still enjoying this.

With a quick, unpredictable movement, he grabbed her and lifted her up against him. She locked her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, instinctively, surprised into silence for the moment.

"That ain't the only thing," he murmured against her ear, with a wicked arch to his eyebrows.

"Oh my God," she groaned, throwing back her head and laughing. "You're so disgusting."

She didn't put up much of a protest, however, as he carried her the few feet to the bed and dropped her onto it.


Sawyer was confused when he opened his eyes. It took him a few seconds to realize that, in the gray morning light, he was seeing his room from the wrong angle. They were both sleeping with their heads at the foot of the bed, and at first he couldn't recall why that was, until he felt the stiff unyieldingness of the Monopoly board underneath him, causing the events of last night to reassume their sequence in his mind.

They'd both been too exhausted to bother with cooking, so they'd scavenged the kitchen for whatever they could find, eating without really caring what anything tasted like. It had been a hell of a day, and Sawyer was all for turning in early before another emotional catastrophe could descend upon them, but Kate had slept for fourteen hours yesterday, and she had other plans. She'd attempted to wrangle him into another Monopoly game by using the argument that they still hadn't managed to finish one, and that she was determined to bankrupt his ass. When he didn't take her bait, she declared that she would simply play by herself, a decision he'd greeted with a sarcastic snort of derision. As she'd unfolded the game board onto the bed, they'd both noticed that one corner was chewed off, encircled by a row of tiny, suspicious canine teeth marks. The look of sadness on Kate's face had convinced him to join her, although not without some leftover annoyance. It was almost like she'd planned that.

But apparently she'd been more tired than she thought, because he didn't think they'd gotten very far into the game before they both must have passed out right on top of the board. Damn it, he thought. I was winning, too.

Dragging himself up from the bed, he peeled off a few real estate cards that had stuck to his arm. He stumbled toward the bathroom, glancing at the window, but then stopped and looked out with more attention. Rubbing his sleep-bleary eyes, he looked again, thinking that maybe his eyesight was getting worse. But the scene didn't change with increased focus.

"I'll be damned," be breathed.

Moving back over toward the bed, he nudged Kate's shoulder. "Hey."

She jerked defensively, as she always did when someone woke her up, and then looked pissed when she saw him. "What?" she muttered, closing her eyes again.

"C'mere and look at this."

Without opening her eyes, she stretched a little and breathed in deeply. "Mmm..."

Impatiently, he hooked his hand under her elbow and pulled her up.

"Sawyer," she protested, irritated. "What are you doing?"

She dragged her feet as he led her over to the window. Once there, however, her attitude changed, just as his had. As she raised her eyes to the glass, her body grew very still, and she gasped softly. They both stood looking out.

It wasn't exactly snow - or at least not the kind of thing most people thought of when they heard the word snow. It was more like a very heavy frost, or at most a light, powdery dusting of flakes, just enough to barely coat the surface of everything, making the entire scene - the grass, trees, and roof - glitter with hard-edged, crystal brilliance. The early rays of the sun, finally breaking through the cloud cover, made the shimmering light refract and mirror itself in a thousand different directions.

"It's beautiful," Kate whispered.

Sawyer now turned to watch her face. Her hair was messy and tangled, her eyes still puffy from sleep, but her cheeks were suffused with a delicate pink flush that seemed to radiate from beneath the skin, somehow. There was a dented impression just above her jaw on the right side, and he raised his fingers to it, experimentally.

She turned toward him with a questioning air.

"I think you slept on the battleship," he told her with an amused look.

She laughed, then looked over at the scattered remnants of the game spread out on the bed.

"I guess we're O for 3."

"We'll get it finished one of these days," he said.

Nodding slowly, her expression became more serious. She leaned against his chest, turning her head to gaze out the window again, feeling the way the heat from his body emanated through the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

After a few seconds without moving, she said simply, "Thank you."

"What... you think I did that?" He looked down at the frost.

"I meant.. Thank you for letting me stay here." She pulled back and looked up at him. "I can't remember if I ever told you that or not."

He swallowed, not sure what to say. "Yeah, well... you pretty much just invited yourself, Freckles. Not like I had any choice."

Smiling as if this was exactly what she'd expected him to say, she reached up and kissed him, leaving her hands at her sides so that only their lips touched.

"I think I'm gonna go take a shower," she told him as he opened his eyes again. "I didn't take one at all yesterday."

"Good idea... I'm pretty sure you're startin' to draw flies," he said teasingly.

"You really think any flies could survive in a house this cold?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

He made an exaggerated sound as if she'd deeply wounded him, causing her to laugh.

"I gotta get some more wood in, smart-ass."

"You know, you could just get the heater fixed," she hinted.

"Yeah, but the wood's free." He cocked his head and grinned at her as she rolled her eyes. "I got some out behind the shed ready to go, I just need to haul it around and split it."

Kate turned and started toward the door. "All right. After I get cleaned up, I'll come out and help you stack it."

She was in the hallway when something caused him to call her back.

"Hey!"

Putting her hand on the doorframe, she assumed a listening air. "Yeah?"

Sawyer looked at her intently for a few seconds, trying to decide what it was he wanted to tell her. Ducking his head boyishly, he raised his hand to the back of his neck in defeat.

"Forgot what I was gonna say," he muttered, almost shyly.

Kate smiled understandingly. "Well, try to think of it. You can tell me later."

He watched as she turned and headed down the hall again. The door closed and he heard the water start running.


He loaded the wood briskly onto the truck bed, as if it had no weight at all. He felt strangely invigorated, although he hadn't even bothered to brew coffee before he came out here. It was an energy that was all-natural, partly from the crisp, chill air of the early morning, but partly because of something else that wasn't even definable. Maybe it was simply an effect of the altered weather, but everything felt new, somehow. He was filled with plans for the winter, and his thoughts extended into the spring and following summer as well.

He would get the heater fixed, obviously. He'd only been messing with her - it would be essential for when the really cold weather came. There were other things, too. The dock needed to be replaced, maybe with a bigger one. The house itself badly needed a coat of paint. And he was also toying with the notion of putting up a fence around the perimeter of the entire property, for extra safety. They could even have a locked gate at the end of the driveway. He thought of all this with an edge of excitement as he took deep breaths of the cold air, billowy puffs rising from his lips as he worked.

When he'd gotten the un-split log sections onto the back of the truck, he hopped in the cab and started the engine, then edged slowly around the shed and over to the corner of the house near the kitchen. As he got out and slammed the door, his attention was distracted by movement off to the side, on the porch.

Standing by the front door, attempting to peer in the window, were two middle-aged men in dark suits.

Sawyer froze, all the muscles in his body immediately becoming tense and rigid. He could actually hear a dull roar of blood in his ears as everything seemed to come to a stand-still.

"Can I help you with somethin'!" he called out loudly in an irritated voice, desperate to get them away from the house.

They turned, and upon seeing him, glanced at each other. One nodded briskly, and they slowly descended the steps and walked toward him. He gripped his hands into fists, digging his own nails into his skin, trying to jolt himself enough to restore some kind of composure. Please, God, let them be Jehovah's Witnesses, he prayed silently. Hell, I'll even let 'em convert me, if that's what it takes.

"Are you James Ford?" one of them, the taller one, asked. .

"Yeah," he said, willing himself to sound less startled than he felt. "What do you want?"

"Mr. Ford, my name is Robert Callahan. FBI." He quickly flashed a badge from his wallet, and Sawyer gave up his last hopeful delusion with a sinking feeling.

"This is my partner, Phillip Reed." He looked at Sawyer shrewdly, suspiciously.

"We were wondering if we might ask you a few questions about a woman we have reason to believe you may have been in contact with."