Stay by Nicola Griffith Page B

we were driving through the beginnings of Pisgah, and the air began to smell like home.
    An hour later we drove into Asheville and I parked in more or less the same place I’d parked when I got my hair cut, and when I climbed out of the truck into the slanting afternoon sun, I had the absurd urge to drop into the Heads Up Salon and see if Dree was there.
    Tammy was trying to get out of the truck and pull off her sweatshirt at the same time. She managed both, then just stood there holding the sweatshirt in a bundle in front of her, as though it were something dirty.
    “Is your house near here?”
    “No. It’s… some distance outside Asheville. We’re here to pick up food, and clothes for you.” She might be staying with me, but she wasn’t going to wear my clothes. “Bring your money.” She rooted around in her purse, then hesitated, still clutching the sweatshirt. “You won’t need that. It’ll stay warm for another hour or so.” Somewhere between the sidewalk and the first hanging garments, Tammy’s body language changed; her brows arched disdainfully; she sighed and shook her head dramatically at the offerings, then fingered a slippery rayon dress.
    “T-shirts and shorts and boots would be more appropriate for where we’ll be; some jeans; a sweater for the cool nights.”
    She swung the hair back from her face and eyed me sullenly, now the perfect teenager. Infant to child to teen in one day. With any luck she’d be dead of old age before we reached the clearing.
    “Your money, your choice.” It would only be for a day or two, anyway. And if she bought all the wrong things she could either suffer or drive herself back here. Nursemaid was not part of the job description.
    Tammy remained in teenage mode as we drove north and west along secondary roads which narrowed to gravel, and then took an abrupt turn left and hit the unpaved track up the mountain.
    “Where are we going?”
    “My cabin.”
    She sighed heavily and pulled her sweatshirt back on. After another ten minutes she rolled up the window.
    I took the last half a mile in second gear. Judging by the mess alongside the road, hogs had been through recently, and tree debris indicated high winds sometime in the last couple of days. For some reason my heart was beating high as we pulled into the clearing.
    It was all there, as I’d left it, cabin roof still on, tarps snug and tight across windows, trailer fast shut, but different. Forest litter from the wind or storm lay everywhere, and foliage that had been green had faded to yellow, what had already been yellowing was now gold, and the elder and dogwood and maple leaves had deepened to rich, winelike hues. I parked and just sat there for a moment, drinking in the smell, which was loamier, wilder.
    “Yes.” Even I heard the smile in my voice.
    “What happened?”
    “A storm. The wind must have really ripped through here while I was gone. We can use the deadfall for firewood.”
    “No. I mean the house. It looks… scabby.”
    “I’m rebuilding it,” I said shortly, and climbed out of the truck, but I looked at the cabin again, at the different colors of the old and new wood—that could, I supposed, look leprous to the uneducated eye—and the messy tarps, the gables. “It will look better when the windows are in and the new wood’s had a chance to weather.” But I wondered, which made me angry. “Did you pull the wings off flies, too, when you were little?”
    Her face changed abruptly, the same look a child gets when she breaks a parent’s favorite ornament and looks up, too frightened to even cry out that it was an accident.
    “This place means a lot to me. If you don’t have anything good to say about it, keep quiet.”
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”
    “You weren’t to know. Let’s get unpacked. We’ll be sleeping in the trailer.”
    We unloaded the food, then her things. I showed her where to stow her clothes, handed her sheets, which she accepted wordlessly, and