54. Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Four
ELLA
“For the last time,” Rose says, jabbing the fire with a stick like it owes her money, “I am not texting Nate Sullivan to ask about the bourbon.”
“He sent it with a note,” Beth says.
“It’s an invoice.”
“It says thought of you.”
“It says thirty dollars.”
“Both things can be true,” says Cassie, and Rose throws a marshmallow at her head.
Firepit Meadow, Monday evening, and my whole family is arranged around the flames in various states of disgrace.
Dad’s at the grill doing sacred work. Mom’s directing traffic with a pie server.
The mountains are going purple behind the Tobacco Barn, the first fireflies are up early, like they heard there was a party, and somewhere around sundown this stopped being dinner and became a celebration, because news moves through this family faster than fire through dry wood.
Ben’s staying. Ben’s a partner. By two o’clock, Maggie knew. By three, the church.
By six, apparently, Tennessee, because that’s when the trucks started arriving.
Three of them, in convoy, Wild Briar plates, and Caleb standing in the bed of the first one before it stopped rolling, arms wide, shouting, “SOMEBODY SAID THERE’S A PARTY.”
There wasn’t. There is now.
So the meadow’s full of Callahans. Ethan and Josie, who hugged me for a full minute.
Luke and Amy, who brought four pies as a diner courtesy and started a quiet pie war with my mother that both of them are enjoying too much to end.
Maeve counting children by headlamp. Noah tuning a fiddle by the fire.
Little Grace asleep in a camp chair with a hot dog still in her fist, and Mason explaining to Faith, in great detail, everything she’s doing wrong with her marshmallow.
“You’re burning it.”
“I like it burnt.”
“Nobody likes it burnt.”
“I’m eighteen, I can like what I like.”
Faith’s phone buzzes against the cooler. She grabs it fast. Goes scarlet down to her collar.
“Who’s Tucker?” Mason asks the entire meadow.
“NOBODY.” Faith stuffs the phone in her back pocket. “He’s from college. We’re doing a project.”
“On what,” says Rose, delighted.
“Goats.”
“She’s eighteen,” Mom says, sailing past with the pie server, “and at eighteen every one of you was worse. Leave her be.” But she’s smiling at the pie.
I’m watching all of it from the good chair with cold coffee in my hands. Nobody’s showing Ben where anything is.
He’s just in it. Hauling the extra bench down from the barn with Maeve’s husband, Jack, before anyone asks.
Standing at the grill at Daddy’s right hand, being handed the tongs, which took Beth’s last boyfriend two years.
Refereeing the pie war with more diplomacy than I’d manage.
When Grace surfaces from her nap, confused and cross, it’s Ben she runs at.
He picks her up like he’s done a hundred times in another valley, in the life that’s now two hours up the road at the right distance for family.
Caleb drops into the chair next to mine and follows my eyes.
“Weird, right?” he says. “He doesn’t fit places. Never has. Motels, spare rooms, edges.” He points his bottle at his brother, who is now wearing a sleeping toddler like a scarf and arguing grilling times with my father. “Look at that. Fits like he was measured for it.”
“We didn’t measure,” I say. “The place just came in his size.”
“Keep him.” Caleb clinks his bottle against my mug. “But be warned. We’ll visit so much you’ll regret everything.”
Then Beth comes around the fire looking cornered, trailed by a tall roper in a good hat who I’ve barely spoken to but somehow know everything about, because my sister is wearing his jacket and pretending she isn’t.
“Everybody, Sam was passing,” Beth announces.
“Passing,” says Rose. “From two counties over.”
“I had a rope to return,” Sam Whitaker says, but does not appear to be holding a rope.
“Sit down, Sam,” says my father from the grill without turning around.
Cassie’s phone goes off next. She checks it, groans from her soul. “Foaling at the Hendersons’. The temporary vet’s asking me which end the foal comes out of.”
“He has not.”
“He’s asking me to assist. The guy has three degrees and cannot find his own truck keys.” She’s up, bag already on her shoulder, and it takes her two full minutes of complaining to leave. Rose writes something in the air with her marshmallow stick. Cassie flips her off from the dark.
When the food’s done, Dad stands up by the fire, and the meadow goes quiet for him.
“I’m not making a speech,” he says, which is how all his speeches start. “Ben. We’re glad you’re staying. That’s all I wanted to say.” He nods at Rose. “Give him the thing.”
The thing comes out from behind the woodpile, and it’s a chair. Adirondack, new-built, sanded smooth, and across the top rail somebody’s burned three letters deep into the wood.
BEN
“Rose did the letters at the bar,” Beth says. “Daddy built it. Faith supervised.”
“I chose the wood,” Faith says. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m grateful,” Ben says.
“And we’re grateful you’ve stayed,” says my father. He sits back down, and that’s that.
Ben looks at the chair for a long moment, running his thumb over the letters the way he checks a sanded edge. Then he carries it around the circle and sets it down next to mine, arm to arm. He sits. Dolly immediately lies down across both our boots.
The Callahans get the instruments out of the trucks, and Noah’s fiddle starts something slow with Luke’s guitar walking under it. Ethan sings low, Maeve coming in on the high line. Mom pulls Daddy up to dance in the grass in his grill apron.
Fireflies are everywhere now. The mountains have gone black-blue. Grandma’s quilt lies over the back of the empty chair Mom always sets.
Ben’s hand finds mine in the dark between our two chairs, and I lace my fingers through his. We stay like that a long time, not talking, watching everything we’re now in the middle of.
“So this is my life now,” he says eventually.
“Most days, yes.”
“Good,” he says.
I wake up the next morning in our cabin, and his side of the bed is cold, which after one night should not feel like a loss, but it does.
The note on his pillow says: Barn.
I pull on his flannel over mine, whistle up Dolly, and walk down through the early mist with the mountains doing their smoking trick. The Tobacco Barn doors are open to the meadow. Golden light inside. Radio low.
Ben’s at the workbench with two coffees. The one for me is still hot, because he heard the porch door and made sure I was greeted properly.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi yourself.” He slides the mug over. Then he slides a piece of paper after it. “Made a list.”
There’s a list. There was always going to be a list. But this one’s not like the old ones. No checkboxes marching down the margin like a firing squad. Just his neat carpenter’s hand, numbered.
1. Deck the creek overlook for spring ceremonies.
2. Heat the barn for winter bookings. (Ask Silas re: propane guy.)
3. Honeymoon cabin: new porch swing. Two-seater.
4. Build Ella an office so she stops doing invoices on the tailgate.
5. Plant more wildflowers. Ditch varieties. She’d want the stubborn ones.
6. Fix the loose board on the cabin porch. (Leave one loose. History.)
7. The other question. (Soon.)
I read it twice. My eyes get hot at five and stay hot through seven. When I look up, he’s watching me over his coffee with that steady look I ran from all summer and now get to keep.
“It’s a long list,” I say.
“It’s a start.” He taps the paper. “I figure fifty years, working steady. Longer if you keep interrupting me.”
“I’m going to keep interrupting you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I come around the workbench and fit myself under his arm. We stand there with our coffee in the morning light, looking out the open doors at the meadow, the creek, the cabin with its curtains open, the mountains still smoking, all of it awake and waiting.
Something Blue has a full calendar, a second pair of hands, and a list that runs fifty years.
Blue Ridge Ranch is just getting started.
And so are we.
* * *
Chapter One
BETH
Loving a man who’ll only ever see you as his athlete is bullshit. And it means I have to concentrate ten times as much as I should to get the job done.
Jolene’s hooves scuff the dirt below us. This morning she’s wound like a spring and it’s making me nervous.
“No need to stress, baby, this is only a practice run.” Her ears are pricked at the chute so hard they’re nearly touching at the tips, but they flicker back when I speak. “That’s it, that’s better. Good thing Sam didn’t offer me any of that coffee I can smell, or I’d be as wired as you.”
My hand drops low on her neck, trying to stroke in some calm.
Behind the chute, Faith leans on the lever, breath fogging, waiting on me.
Cassie’s perched on the panel above the calves, running through an invisible health checklist because she can never switch off.
They didn’t have to come, but they’re here anyway, on a frosty pre-dawn morning supporting me because that’s what Lockhart sisters do.
And then there’s Sam, on the fence, top rail, right where he always is. I feel him there without needing to look. Hat down. Flannel collar up against the cold. Stopwatch in his fist, an old beat-up silver thing he’s had longer than he’s had me.
Had me as an athlete, I mean.
I settle deep in the saddle. My loop’s built. The calf shifts in the chute, and Jolene’s body draws up underneath me.
I nod.
The gate bangs. The calf breaks and JoJo fires out hard.
Three strides, her ears flat, the world narrowed down to a running calf and a swinging loop.
I throw. It goes out clean and closes around the calf’s neck.
I pitch my slack and the string snaps off the horn with that little pop I would bottle and drink if I could.
The calf trots off wearing my rope. Jolene slides to a stop, blowing. Behind me, my sisters are cheering, but as much as I love them, it’s not their reaction I care about.
I look at the fence.