CHAPTER 1 #2
"Near, as in almost there, or near, as in parked somewhere pretending you don't see my name on your phone?"
Colt returned to the post, but Wren felt his attention sharpen.
"Those are hurtfully specific options," Wren said.
"Wren."
Under the impatience, Della sounded tired. Happy, yes, but stretched thin. Wren softened. "I'm at the south fence. There's a post down."
"Already? I told Ruston that whole stretch looked ready to quit. Is the handyman there?"
Wren looked at Colt's bent head, the sweat-dark line between his shoulder blades, and the competent hands working the broken cedar loose.
"Colt's here," she said.
The line went quiet one beat too long.
"Oh," Della said, and in that one syllable Wren heard every conversation they had not had. "I didn't know Junie would call him."
"Small towns contain surprises."
"Small towns contain exactly no surprises.
" A rustle came through the phone, paper against paper.
"Listen, I could use you tomorrow morning if you're really here for the whole run-up.
Paloma Reyes is short on hands, the chapel ribbon order came in the wrong color, and Odette wants signs that look handmade but not homemade. "
Paid work could hide inside that sentence if she handled it right. Charity had no place in it. Work.
"I can do signage," she said. "And ribbon triage."
"You just arrived."
"I've worked events on four hours of sleep and bad coffee. I can manage ribbon."
"Are you sure? Because I know you said three weeks, but I wasn't sure if that meant three weeks or Wren-weeks."
The rail shifted. Wren adjusted, palm scraping over a rough patch. Heat and cedar dust bit into her skin.
Colt had gone still.
There it was, then. The deadline said aloud, right where he could hear it. Three weeks. A visit with an expiration date.
Wren opened her eyes. The brush pasture blurred in the heat beyond Colt's shoulder.
"I'm here until the wedding," she said carefully. "All three weeks."
Della exhaled. "Thank you."
The gratitude made Wren feel worse than suspicion would have. "I mean it."
"Good. Because I love Ruston more than sleep right now, and if Odette says heirloom elegance one more time, I may hand her the extension cords."
"Cruel, but effective."
"Tomorrow at nine at the chapel? Or Paloma's flower chaos first? I need to check."
"Text me the list."
"You always say that like lists are medicine."
"They are. They come in columns."
Della laughed.
Then Della said, softer, "I'm glad you're home."
Home.
Wren looked at the cottage roofline beyond the bend, the porch half hidden by overgrown lantana, then at Colt, whose jaw had gone hard while he levered the post free.
"I'm glad I made it before the car died," Wren said, because honesty needed smaller steps than that.
"Your car is dying?"
Colt's head came up.
Wren turned slightly away from him. "No. It's engaging in expressive protest. Text me, Della."
"I will. And Wren?"
"Yes?"
"Please do not let Odette make you think you owe her calm more than you owe me presence."
For once, Wren had no neat answer. Odette Pryce had a gift for making everyone else look less prepared.
"I will be there," she said.
She ended the call before her sister could hear anything fray.
The quiet after was not quiet at all. A cicada buzzed from the ditch. Somewhere beyond the brush pasture, cattle bawled in thin complaint. Colt set the old post aside, reached for a fresh cedar post lying in the grass, and did not look at her.
"Three weeks," he said.
Wren slid the phone back into her pocket. "Della's wedding is in three weeks."
"I heard."
"Then why repeat it?"
"To see if it sounds different when you're the one saying it."
The rail weighed more by the second. Her palms burned. "It doesn't."
Colt carried the fresh post to the hole, lowered it in, and checked the line by sight. "I have to get this fence set before I move cattle off the brush pasture. South line opens, they'll find it."
Ranch work. There was mercy in practical things. Wren seized it. "Tell me where to hold."
He studied her for a moment, then pointed. "Keep that rail lifted while I set the post. Don't wrap your fingers around the wire."
"Because I never met wire before either?"
"Because if it snaps, it'll cut you."
The blunt concern touched a place she had no right to offer him. Wren changed her grip.
They worked without speaking. Colt tamped dirt with a metal bar, each stroke dull and solid.
Wren held the rail while sweat slid down her spine and cedar dust caked along the lines of her hands.
The labor steadied her in a way the road had not.
Too easy, that thought. Too pretty. She distrusted it immediately.
"Where's Beau today?" she asked, because she needed Colt to become someone other than the boy she had left.
His tamping slowed. "With Junie after preschool."
"She's five now?"
"Five."
The single word carried a whole world Wren had not been here to witness: first steps, fevers, bedtime stories, hard questions about her mother. Harlow Duvane had been kind in Wren's few memories, and Wren would not let her own ache turn Harlow into a shadow.
"Junie must be in heaven," Wren said. "A captive audience for feed-store wisdom."
"Beau likes the sticker drawer."
"Naturally. Stickers are a sound investment."