Chapter 30 #2
She threw her arms around me. Her face pressed into my chest and the sound she made, a sob that was not sad but was the opposite of sad, vibrated through my ribs and settled somewhere near my heart.
I held her with my good arm and let her cry and did not say anything because some moments did not need words. They just needed presence.
“Thank you,” she whispered against my chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You are getting snot on my shirt,” I said.
She laughed. Pulled back. Wiped her face. Looked at all of us with the kind of expression that made the four in the morning wake-up and the egg on the floor and the throbbing shoulder worth every second.
“Okay,” she said. “I want cake for breakfast.”
“That is the plan,” Dollie said.
“And I want the piece with the dinosaur.”
“That is my dinosaur,” Emma protested.
“It is my birthday.”
Emma weighed this with the gravity of a judge presiding over a constitutional matter. Then she nodded.
“You can have half the dinosaur.”
“Deal.”
Josh cut the cake because I could not with one arm and Dollie claimed she would eat it before she could serve it and Emma was too short to reach across the table.
The cake was chocolate. Dense and slightly uneven and frosted with more love than skill, and I watched Chloe take her first bite and close her eyes and I knew that if I never built another thing in my life, this cake, this ridiculous lopsided cake made at four in the morning with one arm and a six-year-old decorator, would be my greatest achievement.
“Who made this?” Chloe asked with her mouth full.
“Papa did,” Emma said proudly. “He woke up really early. He broke two eggs on the floor. Dollie said a bad word.”
“I said fudge,” Dollie corrected.
“You did not say fudge.”
“Emma Matthews, I said fudge and that is the official record.”
I ate my cake and watched Chloe. Watched her laugh with frosting on her fingers.
Watched her lean into Dollie when Dollie made a joke.
Watched her look at Emma with the kind of love that made the air around them glow.
And I felt something settle inside me, something that had been restless for a very long time, clicking into place like the last piece of a joint fitting flush.
Dollie had brought gifts. A scarf she had knitted, blue wool with an uneven pattern that she called artistic.
A romance novel with a shirtless lumberjack on the cover that she presented with a grin and a pointed look at me.
I looked at the cover. Looked at Dollie.
Held her gaze until she started laughing and Chloe nearly choked on her cake.
Josh gave her a framed photograph. The mountains at sunrise. On the back: Welcome home.
Emma’s gift was a drawing. Three figures in front of a house. The tall one frowning. The medium one smiling. The small one holding a dinosaur. Above them: MY FAMLY.
“That is Papa being grumpy,” Emma explained. “That is you being happy. And that is me being awesome.”
Chloe held the drawing against her chest and her eyes filled again and she said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She meant it. I could tell because her voice did the thing it did when she was telling the truth about something that mattered, going soft and quiet like the words were too important to say loudly.
My gift was last. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wooden box I had carved at the mill before the shooting. Small. Smooth. Hours of careful work because Chloe deserved careful work.
She opened it.
Inside was a key. Silver. Attached to a wooden keychain carved into the shape of a house.
“It is the key to the cabin,” I said. “When it is rebuilt. Which it will be. I am going to rebuild it, and when it is done, it is yours. Ours. Home.”
The tears came again. She held the key in her palm and looked at it like it was made of something more valuable than silver, and when she looked up at me the expression on her face was the reason I was put on this earth.
Not the war. Not the mill. Not the survival.
This. This woman. This moment. This life that I had almost lost and was now holding onto with everything I had.
“Sawyer Cole,” she said. “You are going to make me cry on every birthday for the rest of my life.”
“That is the plan.”
She leaned across the table and kissed me. In front of everyone. Dollie cheered. Josh looked away with a smile. Emma covered her eyes and groaned with the theatrical disgust that I was learning was her signature response to our affection.
We spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen.
Dollie told stories. Josh told quieter ones.
Emma performed a birthday concert for Sir Chomps-a-Lot that rhymed happy with snappy and cake with lake.
And I sat beside Chloe with my good hand holding hers under the table, my thumb tracing circles on her palm, and I looked at her every few minutes because I could not help it.
She was twenty-eight years old. She was wearing my shirt. She had frosting on her chin and tears drying on her cheeks and a key in her pocket and a lopsided cake in front of her and a family around her that would burn the world down to keep her safe.
She was mine. She was home. And this was the best morning of my life.
I was never going to tell anyone that. But it was true.