CHAPTER 1 #3
"Stars," he said, and something changed in his voice. Warmth, small but unmistakable. "Mostly stars."
Wren looked down before he could see what that did to her. A man could be hurt and still tender. Both truths made the air harder to breathe.
"When do you pick her up?"
"Before six. Junie keeps a clipboard like she's running border control. If I'm late, I hear about it."
"Junie has always understood power."
"Beau needs the routine."
There was warning in that. Boundary, not cruelty.
Wren nodded. "I wasn't suggesting otherwise."
"No?"
"No."
He drove the tamping bar down once more. "People come through town and think children can be charmed on the way to somewhere else."
The rail bit into her palms. She deserved some of that. Maybe all. But not Beau. Never a child.
"I won't do that," she said.
Colt's eyes lifted to hers. The brim shadowed them, but not enough. "You won't be here long enough to do much else."
Wren's first instinct was to snap. Her second was to list every reason she had left. Her third was the worst: to tell him she had nowhere to go after three weeks unless she found work, sold something, or convinced her car to become real estate.
She swallowed all of it.
"I'm here for Della," she said.
"I know."
"And Sudie."
"She's at Fletch Calloway's until tomorrow."
"I know that too."
"Do you?"
This time she let herself look at him. "Is there a list of things I no longer get to know, or are we making it as we go?"
He stared at her, and the controlled mask cracked just enough for anger to show its bruised underside. "You tell me."
The cicadas filled the ditch. The post stood between them, not yet firm.
Wren could have apologized then. Not the full truth; she did not have it yet. There were old blanks in the story she had trained herself not to touch. Colt's letter that had never come. Odette's careful voice. Her own pride, which had found insult easier to carry than longing.
But apology required knowing where to begin. She only knew where the leaving had ended.
"I am sorry I hurt you," she said.
Colt's hand tightened on the tamping bar.
The words fell short. Of course they did.
"I've got about twenty minutes before I need to head to Junie's," he said.
Accepted? Rejected? Deferred? Wren could not tell.
"Then show me how to be useful for twenty minutes."
His gaze dropped to her palms. Cedar dust streaked the skin, and a thin red line had opened near the base of her thumb.
"You already are," he said, too low to polish into kindness.
The words shook her more than they should have.
He looked away first. "Hold steady."
So she did.
They set the post enough for the rail to hang straight, though the wire still needed tightening and the far brace leaned with a drunk's confidence. Half repaired, Wren thought. It might hold the evening if nobody tested it too hard.
Her car ticked in the weeds behind them. Her phone buzzed once with Della's promised list. Chapel at nine. Paloma after. Ribbon, signs, seating cards, pasture lights, guest table, emergency kit. Wren translated it into columns: task, supply, cost, time, who paid.
Cost snagged. Tomorrow she could ask Paloma if the signage was paid. An invoice, not a plea. She could stretch the granola bar in her purse until dinner, sleep at Sudie's under a roof that did not charge rent, and pretend three weeks was a visit rather than a grace period.
Colt collected his tools. "You should get that cut washed."
"It's nothing."
"Still should."
"Yes, foreman."
He shot her a look, and for an instant the years thinned. She saw him at nineteen outside the chapel, telling her she would fall if she climbed the bell rope stair in sandals. She had climbed anyway. He had stood below, furious and ready to catch her.
Then his face closed.
"Key's under the coffee can," he said. "Back porch step has a soft board on the left. Water heater takes ten minutes to remember its purpose."
Each detail landed like proof of a life continuing without her. Colt knew Sudie's cottage because he had been here, useful in all the places Wren had vacated.
"Thank you," she said.
He nodded once and lifted the toolbox.
She should have let him go. Beau was waiting at Junie's with star stickers, cattle needed moving off the brush pasture, and the south fence line had already taken more from both of them than Monday deserved. But fear made her reckless.
"Colt."
He stopped.
"Della's wedding is three weeks," she said. "That doesn't mean everything is simple."
"Didn't ask if it was simple."
"You asked if I was staying long enough to unpack."
"Are you?"
She looked toward the cottage lane. The late sun flashed on the old windows, too bright to see inside. "Tonight, yes."
"Tonight. " His voice stayed level, and the word cut all the same.
Wren wrapped her dusty hand around the fence rail because it was the nearest solid thing. Heat pulsed from the cedar into her palm.
Colt took one step closer, still leaving room enough for all the history neither of them had agreed to name. "Three weeks is all Dusthallow gets from you this time?"