Page 27 of Befriending the Bear (Forestville Silver Foxes #6)

CALLOWAY

T he moment the door closed behind Fraser, the protective walls I’d spent years constructing felt all too fragile. I’d thought I was safe, that I had protected myself against ever getting so deeply hurt ever again. Yet here I was.

Alone in the sudden silence, my mind replayed our conversation, dissecting every word, every pause, looking for where things had gone wrong. I had tried to be supportive, but inside, fear clenched around me like an iron fist.

His life had once been expansive, filled with adrenaline and camaraderie.

A life so far removed from mine that it seemed inevitable he’d feel its pull again.

And this four-week stint could be the catalyst. Sure, he seemed content here now, but he’d needed that time to recover, to accept who he had become.

But he still had strong ties to the life he’d led.

What if he realized he missed it too much to stay away?

It wasn’t the prospect of him leaving for four weeks that haunted me. No, it was the specter of permanence, the fear of becoming a footnote in Fraser’s life story, a brief interlude in a town he might eventually see as too small to contain his zest for life, for adventure.

The fear was an old one, woven into the fabric of my being since Marcus died.

Love had been a safety net, and then suddenly, devastatingly, it had been pulled away.

In the years since, I’d learned to live without the net, taking cautious steps to ensure I didn’t topple into the void of longing and loneliness.

And then Fraser had come crashing into my life, steady and patient, revealing that I had been holding my breath for years.

Maybe I’d been foolish to think this time could be different, that someone as remarkable as Fraser might find contentment in the quiet life I’d built for myself in Forestville. He was the wildfire, dynamic and unpredictable. I was the controlled burn, safe and contained.

The thought lodged itself in my mind, ugly and insistent.

What did I honestly have to offer someone like Fraser?

His stories, those tales of camaraderie around campfires, of facing down infernos and taming wild landscapes, spoke of a life I couldn’t comprehend, a life filled with meaning and purpose.

Could the sheltered corners of Forestville really compare to that?

Fraser might talk of small life, of seeing the beauty in simplicity, but sooner or later, he’d hunger for more.

The nightmare scenario played out in vivid detail: Fraser returning to a world he belonged in, where he’d be surrounded by others who understood that world, who shared that language.

He’d have purpose again, the kind that didn’t involve basics like researching hikes or setting up library book stalls.

No, it was easier to acknowledge that I still wasn’t ready to build my life around someone who could so effortlessly flicker away, leaving me more hollow than before.

As the evening shadows crept across the room, wrapping me in familiar solitude, I recognized them as the oldest companions.

Dreams were permitted to others, but my reality coiled tighter around restraint and self-preservation.

I returned to the kitchen, boxed up the rest of the risotto, and washed the dishes with a determination that bordered on manic. Scrubbing out the pot somehow felt like erasing the evening. If I could just get the pan clean enough, maybe I could pretend none of it had happened.

That I hadn’t felt a surge in my chest when he said his life included me now. That I hadn’t flinched at the idea of him leaving. That I hadn’t shoved him away because I was too scared to believe he would stay in Forestville and then realize I wasn’t enough.

But the kitchen still smelled faintly of garlic and wine, and his plate was still on the counter, crumbs he hadn’t finished like fossilized evidence of the connection I was currently trying to sabotage.

I left the kitchen and walked slowly through my house.

The quiet felt heavier than usual tonight.

Maybe because I was alone again. Fraser’s presence had crept in like warmth through windowpanes—gradual, comforting, unnoticed until gone.

His jacket still hung over the back of the armchair, where he’d tossed it yesterday.

I touched the sleeve, then pulled my hand back like it might burn me.

This was what happened when you hoped. This was the price I paid.

Maybe Mary Oliver could offer some comfort. I sank into the couch, the corner that still held his shape, and opened to a dog-eared page. But the letters refused to become words, the words refused to make meaning. Nothing made sense.

Poetry wasn’t what I wanted tonight. Not metaphors, not rhythm. I wanted Fraser. His stories. His laugh. The way he made me feel like I wasn’t someone to be endured, but someone to be chosen. And I’d told him to go. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of being left, so I’d beaten him to it.

In the kitchen, tea steeped in silence, untouched. I managed to write four lines in my journal, each one a hollow echo. I erased them.

Could I talk to someone? Eleanor came to mind, but it was her night with the grandkids. Jamie, maybe, but what could I even say? Ours wasn’t a friendship based on words, on sharing feelings. It was a quiet one, grounded in mutual understanding and acceptance.

Besides, this wasn’t the kind of loneliness that could be put into words, even if I could find them and get them past my lips. This was the kind that settled in the chest and pressed, quiet and constant.

It was the silence that did it. Not just the quiet of the house, but the silence after connection. The silence after someone has made space for you in their life, and you’ve stepped back from it. The silence of the phone that didn’t buzz. That I’d told not to buzz.

At ten-thirty, I found myself in the spare room. I turned on the reading lamp and stared at the blank page of my memoir document. The same one I’d opened and closed a hundred times.

Then I started typing. The words flowed out of me as I remembered myself at the farmers’ market, trying to choose the right tomatoes, blissfully ignorant that my husband lay dying.

Finding him. Hysterically calling 911, stuttering so badly I could barely make the operator understand me.

Watching as the paramedics worked on him, knowing it was useless, that he was gone.

And the days after, the waves of grief that slammed into me, one after the other.

Having to rely on friends to help make the arrangements for the funeral because my words wouldn’t come.

That horrible, horrible day when I kissed him for the last time and watched as they lowered his body into the ground.

And then…silence.

I kept writing, kept pouring my heart out.

After.

I was writing the After .

When Marcus died, everyone told me not to make decisions too quickly. Everyone said wait. Wait a year. Wait until the grief isn’t so loud. What they don’t tell you is that the grief isn’t loud. It’s quiet.

It’s the sound of a bedroom door not opening. It’s the silence after the tea kettle shuts off. It’s the click of your own voicemail message because you couldn’t pick up the phone.

I’ve been telling myself for seven years that this quiet is peace. That this loneliness is a choice.

But maybe it’s not.

Maybe it’s just fear wearing logic like a coat.

Maybe it’s not about choosing solitude, but about convincing myself that no one else could choose me. That if I never reach, I can’t fail to grasp. That if I never ask, I can’t be told no.

For seven years, I’ve made grief a sanctuary and a prison. I’ve lit candles to it. Built habits around it. Whispered apologies to a man who no longer needs them, just so I wouldn’t have to speak aloud to the world again.

But now there’s someone who waits through the silences. Who doesn’t flinch when my voice catches or trails off. Who holds my hand like it’s not an inconvenience but a privilege.

And tonight, I sent him away.

Not because he did anything wrong, but because he did everything right.

Because he offered me a future, and I looked it in the eye and told it I wasn’t ready.

But that’s not true. Not really. I am ready.

I’m just afraid. Of losing again. Of failing again.

Of being happy, even briefly, and then having to survive the absence of that happiness.

But I’m more afraid of returning to the quiet I used to call enough. Of closing the door and pretending I don’t hear someone knocking on the other side of it.

I don’t want to be a ghost in my own life anymore.

I want to be someone who dares the echo to answer.

I want to be someone who answers the knock.

And then the tears came. Quiet ones, at first, gently drifting down my cheeks, blurring my vision.

On their heels came the deeper ones, the kind that pull from your chest and make your breath catch.

And then the violent sobs arrived, like I’d cried in the days after Marcus had died.

They seemed endless, bottomless, senseless, yet they tore through me, one after the other.

When the tears finally stopped, it was nearly one in the morning. I sat in the middle of the spare room rug, legs folded beneath me, laptop cooling beside me, my sleeves soaked through with tears.

Outside, the town had long since gone quiet. No more distant car doors or porch lights flicking on, no more dogs barking at shadows. Just the hush of Forestville wrapped in November’s chill, and me, sitting in the center of a silence I no longer wanted to live in.

I hadn’t cried like this since…since…

I’d lost count. Somehow, sometime in the last few weeks, I’d lost count, and I had to do the math. Seven years, five months, and eight days since Marcus had died.

So why did it feel like it had happened yesterday? Why was the pain back in all its brutal vengeance?