Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The Call
Emma
Lilly slid into the booth across from me at the Lovelace Diner, and I’d already rewritten the words “frontier-era Lovelace” three times on my legal pad, managing to spill iced tea on one corner.
Hope, Lilly and Sawyer’s daughter, came with her—four months old, round-cheeked, and snug in a carrier on Lilly’s chest like a drooly little accessory.
“I swear she grew overnight,” I said as Lilly wrestled the carrier straps loose, shifting the baby into her arms.
“Oh, she did,” Lilly replied, dropping onto the vinyl bench with a sigh. “My back can confirm. Hey, Em.”
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile despite the knot of stress sitting under my ribs.
I nudged my notes out of reach of flailing baby limbs, desperately trying to look like a woman in control, one who had her life together and wasn’t just one bad sentence away from panic.
Hope gurgled, kicking her socked feet, then reached both hands toward my glass like she was on a mission to baptize herself in iced tea.
“Nice try, little girl,” I said, sliding the glass farther away.
Lilly laughed. “She’s advanced. Already going for caffeine.”
The waitress appeared with menus, but we didn’t need them. The Lovelace Diner changed about as often as the mountains did.
“Usual?” she asked.
“Turkey melt, extra pickles, side salad,” I said.
“Bacon cheeseburger, fries,” Lilly said, glancing down at Hope. “And a side of napkins. A mountain of them.”
The waitress grinned and left us to it.
I exhaled, rubbing my arm. “Thanks for meeting me. I need some moral support, and the fries felt like the right emotional support system.”
“So you came to the diner,” Lilly said dryly. “Where the distractions are louder and greasier.”
“Exactly,” I said, a hint of a smile breaking through the anxiety. “I knew you’d agree.”
Hope let out a little whine, starting to chew on her fist. “Teething,” Lilly said, shifting her on her lap and digging around in the diaper bag. “She’s been gnawing on everything that’s not nailed down, including Sawyer’s shirt collar this morning.”
“Poor Sawyer,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on my notes but failing as I watched Lilly with her baby.
The truth was that watching Lilly with Hope did something weird to me.
She made it look effortless, natural, like she’d been born knowing how to care for a child.
Meanwhile, the closest I’d come to childcare was helping my mom hang construction paper turkeys once a year in her first-grade classroom.
“How’s your mom? Still working on her quilts and volunteering at the hospital gift shop?” I asked, my mind flitting to the safety of familiar topics.
“Oh yeah. She’s living her best retired life—quilting circles, handing out gift-shop mints like prescriptions, and guilt-texting me if I go too long without calling.”
“Tell her hello for me,” Lilly said. “Now, talk grant to me. What are we working with?”
I slid my notes across the table, dodging Hope's reach. “The Foundation wants a revised proposal. They need more on community engagement and a frontier-era exhibit, and I’m drowning in grant jargon."
Lilly scanned my notes. "I like the frontier street idea. Boardwalks, storefronts."
"They want 'historically grounded,'" I said, frustration creeping into my tone. "Grant-speak for 'not Disneyland.'"
"No mechanical bulls. Got it."
Hope squealed, spitting her teething ring onto my notes with a wet plop. I handed it back to Lilly. "Nice aim, kid."
“Sorry,” Lilly said, chuckling. “She has opinions.”
I forced a smile, though anxiety crept up my spine like a vine wrapping too tightly. "It's fine. Grant writing with obstacles."
"Drooly obstacles," Lilly said, wiping Hope's chin before reaching for my notes. "What about asking for family photos? Old ranches, parades—those barn dances my grandparents never stop talking about. Build the exhibit around the families that made Lovelace."
I pictured it—walls covered in black-and-white faces, little plaques with names I knew and names I’d heard in stories, a timeline stitched through all of it. It did sound lovely… but did I have enough time?
“I actually really like that,” I said slowly. “I just don’t know if it’s what the Foundation wants. They’re obsessed with the frontier angle. We barely have photos from that period. Half of what we know is a paragraph in some rancher’s journal and a ledger with muddy boot prints on it.”
Hope's face scrunched, tiny fists clenching before she erupted into a full-body wail. Heads turned. Lilly bounced her, murmuring soft reassurances while I felt my shoulders tighten instinctively.
"It's okay," Lilly said, noticing my tension. "Just drama."
"Wonder where she gets that," I said, attempting lightness.
Lilly stuck out her tongue, and Hope hiccupped, screaming louder. The waitress delivered our food with a sympathetic glance before retreating.
"What if you combine them?" Lilly asked, taking a bite of her burger. "Frontier artifacts anchoring family photos. Past to present."
"That could work," I said, a flicker of excitement breaking through my anxiety. "Start with what little we have from the 1880s, then expand outward, so people see themselves in the story."
Lilly one-handed a fry into ketchup while balancing her daughter. "Only you could make 'community engagement strategy' sound casual."
“We’ll see,” I said, feeling the heaviness in my chest lighten a bit.
Hope kicked her foot against my hand. I looked down. Her eyes—Lilly’s hazel, Sawyer’s trouble—were staring straight at me, wide and wet. She let out a whimper.
“Do you…” Lilly nodded at her. “Want to hold her?”
Panic pinged through me, ridiculous and instant. “Oh, I—uh—I don’t think she wants—”
“She likes you,” Lilly said. “And my arm’s about to fall off.”
I wiped my hands on a napkin, heart thudding faster than I wanted to admit. “Okay. Sure. Yeah.”
Lilly shifted closer in the booth and passed Hope over.
The baby felt heavier than she looked—warm and solid in my arms. I tried to remember everything I’d seen other people do—support the head, gentle bounce, don’t drop the precious human.
I murmured hello to Hope, whose tiny fingers curled around my thumb.
"You're a natural," Lilly said, watching us with a soft smile.
"I am absolutely not. I did zero babysitting,” I protested. "She's so... small."
"And loud. Don't let her size fool you."
Hope cooed, patting my chest with a damp hand. Something fluttered in my ribs—half panic, half something I didn’t want to name.
"Can I ask you something?" Lilly said, her expression suddenly serious. "Do you ever think about having kids?"
I choked on air. "Wow. Jumping right to the existential stuff."
She shrugged. "You're great with Hope. I just wondered if you've ever pictured it. Someday."
My brain short-circuited. I had always envisioned a straightforward life—education, career, saving local history. Kids had been a hazy footnote. “I…” I stared at Hope's tiny fingers curled against my arm. “I don’t know.”
“Really?” Lilly looked surprised.
“Between trying to keep this town’s buildings from crumbling and my disastrous dating history?” I tightened my grip instinctively around Hope. “I killed three succulents last year. Not exactly mother-of-the-year material.”
Lilly’s expression softened. “That’s fair.”
“I’ve never been the girl with secret baby names picked out,” I said, attempting humor. Hope gurgled, and I raised an eyebrow at her. “You don’t get to judge. You’re new here.”
Lilly grinned but then sobered. “You’d be a good mom, though. If you wanted it.”
The words landed heavier than I expected. “I’m good with spreadsheets and artifacts,” I said quietly. “I don’t know if that translates to this.”
“You don’t have to figure it all out now,” she reassured me, studying my face. “Just don’t count yourself out.”
“Noted,” I said, swallowing hard as I handed Hope back. Lilly managed the one-handed-mom-eating thing while I tried to recall what my notes had said before they got covered in baby drool and mild existential dread.
We made little progress—circling “family photos” as a maybe, underlining “frontier narrative” twice. Hope fussed, settled, and fussed again. The lunch crowd thickened, then thinned. By the time we cleared our plates, my brain felt like someone had shaken it in a snow globe.
Lilly tipped the last of her fries into her mouth and wiped her hands. “So,” she said casually, “have you seen Easton lately?”
I took a big drink of iced tea at the exact wrong time and almost inhaled a piece of ice. “Define ‘lately.’”
She gave me a look that said she’d been waiting all lunch to ask this. “Like…since the photo shoot thing.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “Maybe…”
Her smile turned smug. “So that’s a yes.”
“I saw him this morning,” I admitted. “He stopped by just to…check on me. And he mentioned he might have some photos from his grandfather’s era that I might be interested in… the other day.”
Lilly’s brows lifted. “Just to check on you and family memorabilia?”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said quickly. “He had to leave. Bruce texted. Chrome emergency.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, studying me. “And how did that make you feel?”
“Like I should never get emotionally attached to a man who can be summoned away by shiny motorcycle parts,” I said lightly, but my breath caught anyway.
Lilly watched me, too perceptive for her own good. “You like him.”
“I like him,” I conceded. “Which is why I’m not going to do anything stupid with him.”
“And by ‘stupid’ you mean ‘fun,’” she said.
“Exactly,” I said, forcing a smile, though a tightness remained in my chest.
She laughed but let me off the hook, and as we left the diner, I felt the weight of the conversation linger in the air between us.
We parted on the sidewalk with hugs and promises to text later.
I walked back to the Historical Society with my notes under my arm and my head buzzing with babies and grants and one particular man with a motorcycle and a ridiculous smile.
The afternoon settled into its usual rhythm—emails, research, the soft creak of the old building settling around me. I spread my notes and the Foundation’s letter across my desk, trying to hammer my half-formed ideas into coherent sentences.
The cursor on my screen blinked accusingly.
“Frontier Lovelace,” I muttered. “Give me a sign.” The universe, unhelpfully, gave me a motorcycle instead.
The low rumble drifted through the wavy glass windows and straight into my nervous system.
My fingers froze over the keyboard. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I told myself, already standing.
I walked out into the main room and peered through the front window. The bike slowed in front of the fire station, then turned into the lot.
Not Easton’s dark, familiar Harley. Bruce’s.
He parked, swung off, and jogged toward the open bay doors, helmet under his arm like a man with somewhere important to be.
“Okay,” I said under my breath. “So he’s back. Which means…”
Which meant Easton was probably back, too. Somewhere. Maybe at home. Maybe thinking about me.
Or maybe just polishing whatever new chrome they’d risked their lives over on the highway to Billings.
I pressed my hand flat against the cool glass for a second, then pushed away. “Focus,” I told myself again. “You have a grant proposal to rewrite, not a biker to daydream about.”
I returned to my computer, checked my notes, and coaxed a few more paragraphs into existence. Slowly, the pages filled with words about exhibits, timelines, and educational outcomes. I wasn’t sure any of it was brilliant, but it was something.
By the time the wall clock ticked past four-thirty, the afternoon light outside had gone softer. The building felt extra quiet. My phone buzzed on the desk. I grabbed it, half expecting spam, half terrified that I was hoping for something too specific.
It was a text.
EASTON: Are you still planning to come over tonight for one of my famous grilled cheese sandwiches?
My pulse went wild. My first instinct was to type back yes, followed by a string of heart emojis I would absolutely deny ever using.
I didn’t text back. Instead, my thumb hit the call icon before my brain could vote.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
My breath caught somewhere between my ribs.
For one suspended moment, I hovered between possibility and disappointment.