9. Faith
CHAPTER NINE
Faith
By the time dinner rolls around, I’m pretty sure my bones are made of other people’s noise.
The good kind, mostly. The warm, layered kind that comes from kids and casseroles and brothers arguing about nothing. But still… noise.
It’s a lot for someone whose last few years have been spent making other people’s events look effortless, then retreating to a tiny apartment that never actually felt like mine.
Here, everything belongs to someone. Every chair, every fork, every dent in the table. I am very aware that I am the one thing in this house that doesn’t.
“Faith, honey, you want to slide down a bit? Make room for my heathen children?” Rose asks, balancing Wyatt on one hip and a basket of biscuits on the other.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say automatically, even though she’s only a couple of years older than me, and scoot along the bench until my hip bumps the thick center leg.
The McCoy dinner table is… crowded. That’s the only word for it.
In a nice restaurant, a table this size would hold maybe eight people and a tasteful centerpiece.
Here, we’ve got ten bodies crammed around it and enough food to feed half of Buckhorn, plus a centerpiece that’s just a jar of pinecones and a plastic reindeer that Ellie insisted on “because he’s the boss of Christmas. ”
I’m wedged between Rose and Dallas. Of course I am. The universe has jokes.
Lila is on his other side, pressed close, her small hand resting on his forearm like that’s its default setting. Clay’s across from me, Nash next to him, already reaching for the mashed potatoes. Boone’s at the far end, and Maggie has claimed the head of the table as a general surveying her troops.
“Pass the beef,” Nash says.
“I will if you sit still for two seconds,” Maggie snaps, swatting his hand with the serving spoon. “We have a guest.”
“I’m not a guest,” I protest quickly, flushing. “I mean, I’m literally a guest, but you don’t have to… uh… rein in the savages on my account.”
Nash looks wounded. “Savages? I am deeply offended.”
“You should be deeply seated,” Clay mutters. “Sit. You’re going to tip your chair again.”
“That happened one time,” Nash says.
“Three,” Maggie corrects without looking at him. “I have the dent in the drywall to prove it.”
Lila giggles. Ellie, perched between Boone and Rose, picks up on the mood and adds her own sound effects. Some kind of horse neigh laugh hybrid that makes Wyatt squeal in his bouncer.
I can feel my mouth tipping up. I can’t help it. This table buzzes with the kind of madness that used to make me plant myself here as often as my mom would let me. It feels the same and completely different all at once.
“Here you go, sweetheart.” Rose nudges the biscuit basket toward me, her hazel eyes bright and kind. “Mom made the good ones. Extra butter.”
Maggie sniffs. “They’re all good ones.”
“They’re exceptionally good ones tonight,” Rose amends quickly.
“Flattery will get you an extra,” Maggie says, a little hint of pleased in it.
I take a biscuit, the warm, buttery weight of it solid in my hand, and tear it open. Steam curls up, carrying the smell of yeast and comfort. My stomach growls, loud enough for Lila to glance up at me, eyes wide and delighted.
“You’re hungry,” she says, as if she’s just solved a mystery.
“Starving,” I admit. “Your Nana is a wizard.”
“Like in the book?” she asks. “With the horse that can fly?”
“Exactly like that,” I say. “Only her magic is butter.”
Dallas huffs a little laugh beside me, the sound low and under his breath. My awareness of him spikes, sharpened by how close we are. His shoulder is maybe three inches from mine. Four, if I’m being generous. I can feel warmth rolling off him. He’s his own personal space heater.
“Don’t inflate her ego,” Clay says around a mouthful of green beans.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Maggie fires back. “You’re going to choke, and I don’t have the time or patience to perform the Heimlich on a grown man.”
“She says that,” Nash confides to me in a stage whisper as he passes the mashed potatoes our way, “but she’d totally do it.”
“Not if she saw how much food you cram in there at once,” Clay says. “She’d let nature take its course.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll let nature take its course on your laundry,” Maggie says. “See how you like your jeans standing up on their own.”
There’s more laughter, another swirl of passing dishes. I reach for the bowl of mashed potatoes at the same time Dallas does.
Our fingers brush.
It’s barely a touch. The whisper of his skin against mine, knuckles bumping knuckles, the back of his hand grazing my wrist. Tiny. Nothing. An accident.
My heart slams against my ribs like someone flipped a panic switch.
Heat shoots from that point of contact up my arm, across my chest, down my spine. Ridiculous. It’s a hand. I’ve touched his hands before. We’ve shared gloves. Passed reins. Dug the same splinter out of each other’s fingers with a disinfected needle and grit.
This is… different.
I snatch my hand back like I’ve been burned and force a laugh that sounds only a little strangled.
“Sorry,” I say. “Mashed potato collision. My bad.”
“You’re fine,” he says.
His hand doesn’t jerk away like mine did, but I see the way his fingers curl around the bowl more tightly, tendons briefly cording in his wrist. He keeps his eyes on the potatoes like they’re suddenly fascinating.
So maybe it wasn’t nothing for him either.
Interesting.
Terrifying.
“Y’all gonna fight over spuds or share?” Nash asks, angling his fork toward the bowl like he’s willing to intervene.
“Behave,” Maggie warns.
“You say that like you don’t love this,” Nash says.
“I don’t love cleaning gravy off my ceiling,” she says. “And you’re testing fate.”
He subsides, making a “zip my lips” motion that lasts all of seven seconds before he opens his mouth again.
The conversation flows around me while I get myself under control. I concentrate very hard on cutting my ham into appropriate church potluck-sized bites, on not staring at Dallas’s hand where it rests on the table, on pretending my nerves aren’t fizzing like they’ve been dropped into soda.
“So, Rose.” Boone leans back slightly, looping an arm around the back of her chair. “You talk to Mrs. Chambers today?”
Rose’s face brightens.
“Yeah,” she says. “She called right after lunch. Wants to book me for her son’s algebra next semester. Apparently, word’s gotten around that I’m the ‘math whisperer.’”
“Of course you are,” Nash says. “You helped me pass geometry. That’s practically sainthood.”
“I helped you remember that if you don’t show up to class, you can’t pass the test,” Rose says dryly. “Not the same thing.”
“Semantics,” Nash says. “Point is, I’m not in remedial trig because of you.”
“Trigonometry is your personal hell,” Clay mutters.
“Everything that requires you to sit still for more than ten minutes is his personal hell,” Boone puts in.
“Anyway,” Rose says, but she’s smiling, “I’ve got the Chambers boy, the Ramirez twins, that girl from Lawson Ranch—”
“Traitor,” Clay stage whispers.
“And three more parents on a waiting list who want me to help their kids next semester,” Rose continues, ignoring him.
“I’m pretty much full until May. It’s perfect for right now—a couple afternoons a week at the kitchen table while Wyatt’s still a barnacle.
I don’t have to stick him in daycare or jump straight back into the kind of full-time job I had in the city. ”
“Proud of you, sweetheart,” Maggie says, and her tone makes my chest ache a little.
Quiet pride. Support. No strings.
“When he’s a little bigger,” Rose says, glancing down at the baby snoozing in his portable seat, “I might talk to Miss Millie over at the school. Maybe take on a full classroom again. I loved parts of what I did before, but this works for this season. Maybe math. Maybe special ed. I don’t know. Just more of this.”
“You’ll be great,” I say before I can stop myself.
All eyes flick to me, like they forgot I can speak, and this is thrilling.
“Sorry,” I add quickly. “I just… you will. Be great. At it. The kids already love you.”
Rose’s smile shifts, softens.
“Thanks, Faith,” she says. “That means a lot.”
It does something in my chest, too, to say it out loud. To picture her in a classroom with a whiteboard and too many sticky notes, to imagine Wyatt toddling around a school hallway after hours.
“What about you?” Ellie asks suddenly, stuffing a bite of biscuit into her mouth and speaking around it anyway. “Are you a teacher too?”
I choke on my water.
“No, baby, she’s—" Rose starts, but I shake my head, swallowing hard.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s a good question.”
Ellie looks at me expectantly, crumbs clinging to her chin. Lila has paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, eyes fixed on my face. So has Dallas. I can feel that, even if I’m not looking at him. A change in air pressure.
What am I?
“I was an event planner,” I say. The words taste strange. “In the city. I worked for a company that puts on big corporate things. Conferences. Galas. Holiday parties.”
“Fancy parties?” Ellie asks, eyes going round.
“Very fancy,” I say. “Lots of sparkly dresses. Lots of tiny appetizers that nobody can pronounce.”
“Do you like it?” Lila asks.
The simple question lands as a small stone dropped into a still pond.
Did.
Past tense.
I pick at the edge of my biscuit, rolling a crumb between my thumb and forefinger. Do not look at Dallas, I instruct myself. Do not look at Dallas.
“It’s complicated,” I say, aiming my answer more at my plate than at anyone. “It can be fun. I like the parts where I get to make things beautiful, where I organize everything. I like making sure people have what they need, even if they never know I’m the one who made it happen.”
That part is true. I’ve always liked being the glue in the background. The one who notices the empty coffee pot, the nervous speaker, the kid at the party who needs someone to sit on the floor and talk about horses instead of stock prices.