Free Reach For the Spy by Diane Henders

didn’t eat
much.”
    “No. Eddy’s spoiled
me,” I mumbled.
    “Are you okay to
drive?”
    I sat up straighter and
shook myself. “Yeah. Good night. See you tomorrow.”
    The fifteen-minute
drive home seemed interminable.
    When I arrived at the
farm, I parked the car and climbed the hill above the house again,
unable to face the thought of being enclosed even by my own house.
I stood for a long time on the brow of the hill, soaking up the
open space and letting the wild wind tear at my clothes and
hair.
    Movement caught my eye,
and I glanced over to see Tom silhouetted on his horse again. I
sighed, feeling sorry for myself and for him. That had been a
shitty way to end things. He seemed like a nice guy.
    I sat down and rested
my head on my drawn-up knees in the long red beams of the sunset,
feeling melancholy and still unwilling to go indoors.

    “Aydan.” The soft voice
jerked me awake. “Are you okay?”
    A gentle hand lifted
the hair away from my face, and I rolled over to peer up at Tom’s
frown in the twilight.
    “What...?” I frowned
back at him, disoriented.
    “Are you okay? Do you
know where you are?” he asked anxiously.
    I sat up as he squatted
on his heels beside me. His horse snuffled placidly a few yards
away.
    “Can you tell me your
name? Do you know what day it is?”
    I shook my head
vigorously, my brain gradually rebooting when I recognized classic
first-responder orientation questions.
    “Sorry. I’m fine. Yes,
I know where I am. I just fell asleep.”
    “Tell me your name,” he
repeated patiently.
    I laughed. “It’s okay.
My name is Aydan Kelly. It’s Sunday evening. I’m sitting on the
hillside above my farm, outside Silverside, Alberta, and I really
just fell asleep.”
    The tension eased from
his shoulders and he gave me his crooked smile as he sat down on
the ground beside me, stretching out one long leg. “You scared
me.”
    “Sorry. What are you
doing here?”
    “I was out riding.
Just... thinking things over. I saw you up here, so I went the
other way. I didn’t want to intrude. But you were out here so long,
and when I looked over, I saw you kind of collapse onto the ground
and lie still. I was afraid something was wrong.”
    “Thanks for watching
out for me. I just had too long a day, I guess.”
    “Aydan... since I’m
here anyway, I owe you an apology. I was out of line last night.
You said you were widowed, and I never thought to ask if you were
involved with someone. I’m sorry. I owe your boyfriend an apology,
too. I didn’t mean to poach.”
    I drew up my knees and
rested my chin on them while I stared out over the long vista
fading in the twilight. “It’s okay. And Arnie’s not my boyfriend.
He wouldn’t care one way or the other.”
    “But... you said he was
your lover.”
    I sighed and glanced
over at him. He really deserved the truth. Or at least as much of
it as I could tell him. “Can I be really blunt?”
    He nodded. “Might as
well be, I’d say. You don’t owe me any tact.”
    I stared out over the
fields again. “Arnie and I are good friends. Neither of us wants to
get involved. With anybody. Including each other. We get together
from time to time. We have a few laughs. We have sex. If he walked
in and found me in bed with another man, he’d probably apologize
for not calling first. I’d do the same for him if I walked in on
him with another woman. I know it might seem weird, but it’s what I
want right now.”
    “Oh.” He sat in silence
for a while. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”
    “I try not to.”
    After another short
silence, he spoke again. “I don’t think your relationship is
weird,” he said quietly. “After my wife died, I went through a time
like that.”
    I turned to him in the
half-light. “I’m sorry. I was so absorbed in my own drama, I didn’t
even think to ask if you’d been married.”
    He shrugged. “It’s
okay. It was twenty-five years ago. It’s old news.”
    “Twenty-five years?” I
peered