Chapter Eighteen
~ Newton ~
Some mornings, when the sunrise hit the fields just so, the world didn’t feel like something you had to survive. It felt like something you’d earned.
I stood barefoot on the porch, coffee mug cupped in both hands, and watched the sun muscle its way over the eastern ridge, splashing gold across rows of barley so precise you’d think Harlow had used a ruler to plant each seed.
The air smelled like dew and horse sweat and the ghost of last night’s campfire, and I let it fill my lungs to the bottom.
The old me—last year’s model—would have been counting heartbeats, cataloguing threats in the chicken yard or checking the perimeter for any sign of the Bridger DNA. Today, I just let the chill bite at my ankles and enjoyed the show.
The farm was quiet, but never still. Late June meant every living thing was wound tight and humming, from the bees torpedoing the clover patches to the sheep out back, plotting their daily mutiny.
I leaned against the porch post and watched a crow pick its way along the fence line. It hopped, cackled, then made off with something shiny from the grass—a washer, probably, lost from the equipment shed.
I grinned at the bird’s audacity and took a sip, letting the bitter drag of black coffee remind me I was awake and alive, and not likely to die today.
This was the first time in years I hadn’t woken up already bracing for pain. No night sweats, no icy hand squeezing my chest. Just the mild, persistent ache of a body that had learned how to belong to itself.
Knox had told me once, in his best drill sergeant voice, that “routine builds resilience.” I’d thought he was just being an asshole about morning chores, but he was right.
There was a pattern to the days here—a rhythm that started with the hush of sunrise and ended with the low, warm chorus of family at the table, everyone’s voices blending until you couldn’t separate one from the next.
The fields shimmered, alive with promise and bugs, and I let my gaze drift to the barn. The old beast had been cleaned out two weeks ago, scrubbed top to bottom in a blitz led by Ma and enforced by Harlow’s backhoe-level determination.
It looked a decade younger now—doors hung straight, new hinges, the hayloft no longer a black hole of disaster but a tidy, sunlit space where you could actually find the damn pitchfork.
The tractors, which had once looked like survivors of a mid-western war crime, now gleamed. Quiad had painted the old Massey Ferguson fire truck red. It was so bright you could spot it from the edge of town.
I’d argued for a more traditional color, but the boys had outvoted me, citing “branding” and “fuck you, it’s awesome” as their primary logic. So now the Ferguson glowed like an open wound against the green, and I had to admit, it did look pretty badass.
There were other changes, subtle but everywhere. The ledger books in the kitchen were up to date, not a single page missing. The new irrigation system—planned on my laptop, installed by every able McKenzie plus a rotating cast of in-laws—worked so well you could hear the crops sigh with gratitude.
And, most surprising of all, the farm was solvent. Not just surviving, but turning a profit for the first time since the Bush administration.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d written it in ink and made me sign in blood. But here we were, living the dream. Or at least my version of it.
The door behind me creaked open and I didn’t flinch. I’d unlearned the flinch. It had taken a solid six months, but I’d replaced it with something better—a bone-deep awareness of who I was and who was coming for me.
Knox stepped out, shirtless, coffee in one hand and the other rubbing the sleep from his face. His hair was a disaster, beard three days old, and he looked at me like he hadn’t seen anything better in his life.
Sometimes I wondered if he realized he was still staring at me that way, or if it was just a reflex now, the same way he checked the weather or counted fence posts as he drove.
“You’re up early,” he said, voice like gravel and honey.
I shrugged. “Sunrise doesn’t wait for the weak.”
He grunted, which was McKenzie for “that’s my boy,” and crossed the porch in three strides. I felt his hand come down on my shoulder, heavy and warm, and instead of bracing for the impact, I just leaned back into it, let him steer me until my spine was flush with his chest.
It never got old, the way he fit around me—like a straightjacket or a life preserver, depending on the day. I could feel the solid weight of him, the slow, measured breathing against my neck. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
The first time he’d touched me from behind, months ago, I’d stiffened so hard I nearly chipped a tooth. Now, it was a comfort, a promise, a reminder that I was safe even when I wasn’t looking.
My body had learned him by heart.
The porch groaned under our combined weight, but the view was worth the risk of structural collapse. We stood like that for a long time, just taking in the morning.
After a while, I felt him nuzzle the side of my head. “You know what day it is?” he murmured, lips close enough to tickle.
I did. “Sunday. That means pie.”
He snorted. “You’re such a child.”
“And you’re the one who keeps sneaking whipped cream before breakfast.”
He tightened his arms, a quick squeeze. “Don’t rat me out. You know how Ma gets.”
Ma’s pies were legendary, but her temper when it came to kitchen discipline was the stuff of cautionary tales. She’d banned Ransom from the kitchen for life after he’d eaten a raw apple crisp off the cooling rack and blamed it on the cat.
I sipped my coffee, hiding my smile. “I won’t tell. If you let me lick the bowl.”
He made a low, approving noise. “We’ll see.”
The peace of the moment was interrupted by a crunch of tires on gravel. I turned my head, and Knox’s chin settled on my shoulder, both of us watching the approach.
It was the Sunday ritual—extended McKenzies arriving for breakfast, three generations of cousins and hangers-on, each in their preferred mode of transport.
The convoy usually started with Bodean’s battered pickup, which always lost a hubcap at the bend by the river and had to be reassembled in the yard. That was followed by Aunt Georgia’s old Subaru, bright blue and driven at speeds that terrified the local wildlife.
This time, Bodean brought a passenger—his latest “project,” a skinny city boy with dark-rimmed glasses and the haunted look of someone who hadn’t realized rural Oregon meant “no Starbucks within thirty miles.” The kid clutched a foil-covered casserole to his chest like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
I shot Knox a look. “Ten says he lasts a week.”
“Give him three days. Bo’s taste is worse than his judgment.”
We watched the trucks and cars roll in, parking haphazardly under the elms. Kids exploded from the backseats, chasing each other across the yard. I recognized most of them; they’d all grown two inches and acquired new scars since the last gathering.
Ma stepped onto the porch, apron already on, and started directing traffic with her trademark blend of scolding and love.
I set my mug on the rail and stretched, feeling the satisfying pop of vertebrae. Knox kept his arm around my waist as we went inside. We were a unit now—inseparable, indivisible, the kind of team that people envied or hated, depending on how often we beat them at horseshoes.
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be waking up on a McKenzie farm, not just alive, but in charge of the books and making plans for the next five years, I’d have called you a liar and then passed out from anxiety.
But here, in the golden hour between chaos and breakfast, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Knox squeezed my side as we crossed the threshold. “Ready for the mob?” he asked.
I grinned. “Bring it on.”
We joined the tide of bodies, the noise and the warmth, the living proof that it was possible to build something from nothing and make it last. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t worry about what came next.
I just wanted seconds.
The kitchen at McKenzie headquarters was designed to seat eight, but like everything in this family, it ignored its limits and just kept expanding until someone broke a window or spilled a pot of coffee on the floor.
I ducked under Harlow’s arm as he rotated a tower of pancakes from the griddle to the warming tray. The plate, a vintage Pyrex emblazoned with dancing cartoon chickens, was so overloaded I worried it might snap in half.
Harlow caught me staring and grinned, a flash of teeth and dimple, then winked as he set it down with the delicacy of a man handling radioactive material.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I glanced at the pile. “For pancakes or the impending cholesterol spike?”
“Both,” he said, then added, “Save me the maple. You know how I feel about that corn syrup garbage.”
Across the table, Ma was in full general mode, orchestrating the breakfast rush with a wooden spoon and a glare that could curdle cream.
“Bo! I swear to the good Lord if you bring one more stray into my kitchen, you’re sleeping in the woodshed!
Ransom, put the jam on the table, not in your mouth! Harlow, more bacon, less chatter!”
Bo—Bodean—stood by the coffee maker, pouring for the new kid. The boy looked like he might be plotting his own escape, but Bo had him boxed in, one arm braced on the counter, the other already loaded with a stack of pancakes the height of a small child.
Ransom, ever the agent of chaos, was smearing homemade blackberry preserves across an entire loaf of toast, then folding it into a monstrous sandwich. “Efficiency, Ma,” he argued. “It’s all gonna end up in the same place.”
“That place better not be the bathroom before breakfast is done,” Ma shot back. “Last time you clogged the septic and we spent a week bailing the cellar!”