Chapter 8 #2
He’d come by to check Chairman Meow’s blood sugar—it was finally stabilizing—and found Makayla on the porch with a plastic tablecloth spread over an upturned crate, four mismatched teacups arranged in a circle, and a plate of cookies she’d helped Grace O’Donnell make at her bakery in town that morning.
“Will you join me for tea?” she invited him in an ever so proper British accent.
He looked at the tiny setup. The chairs were Fern’s rocking chair—Makayla’s now—and three overturned buckets. Brown Dog was already seated beside one bucket, his tail thumping the porch. Captain lay beside another one with his chin on the bucket’s rim.
“I’ve got calls to make,” he said.
“Just one cup. Please?”
Her eyes were doing the thing. The enormous, pleading, brown-eyed thing that was identical to her mother’s and equally devastating, except that coming from a kid it bypassed every defense he had.
“One cup.”
He lowered himself onto the remaining bucket, which forced his knees approximately level with his chin. He looked like a grizzly bear perched on a thimble.
Makayla poured imaginary tea into his cup with great ceremony. He accepted it with equal ceremony and took a solemn pretend sip.
“Excellent tea,” he said, straight-faced. “Is this the Darjeeling?”
“Earl Grey.” She poured for Brown Dog next. The dog sniffed the empty cup and wagged his tail agreeably.
“Wait.” She disappeared inside and came back wearing a pink plastic tiara and holding something in her hand that turned out to be a matching plastic tiara, purple with fake jewels. She held it out to him.
He looked at the tiara. He looked at the child. He looked at the dogs, who offered no help whatsoever.
“Everyone has to wear a crown for tea,” she said. “It’s the rule.”
“Whose rule?”
“Mine.”
He took the tiara and placed it on his head, where it perched atop his dark hair with all the dignity of a paper hat at a birthday party. The plastic was cold. The fake jewels caught the afternoon sunlight and threw tiny purple spots across his hands.
“How do I look?”
“Regal.”
He drank his imaginary tea. He ate two of Grace’s very real and very excellent cookies.
He sat on a bucket with a tiara on his head and a three-legged dog at his feet and talked to an eleven-year-old about which chickens had the most personality—“Hattie is bossy, but Gertrude is sneaky, and the red one is just mean, Dr. Steele . . .”
He noticed with a start that the light had golden and the shadows were stretching across the porch. Good grief. Forty-five minutes had passed and he hadn’t thought about his schedule once.
That was also when became aware that he was being watched.
Tessa stood in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe.
He had no idea how long she’d been there.
Her expression was complicated—the one he’d started thinking of as her I don’t know what to do with you face.
Part wonder, part wariness, part something that looked suspiciously close to tenderness.
Her gaze moved from his face to the tiara on his head, and the corner of her mouth trembled.
“Not a word,” he said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Her voice was suspiciously unsteady. “The purple suits you.”
He removed the tiara with as much dignity as a man could muster under the circumstances, set it on the crate, and stood up from the bucket with a creak that came from both the bucket and his knees.
“Same time next week?” Makayla asked.
“I’ll have to check my schedule, Your Grace.”
They both knew that meant yes.
Hank showed up at the clinic the following morning with two coffees and the expression of a man who had received extremely entertaining intelligence.
“I hear you wore a tiara yesterday,” he said, setting a cup on Dillon’s desk.
Dillon closed his eyes. “Who told you?”
“Arlo told Rose, who told Walter Meeks, who told Ruth Sanger, who told approximately everyone.”
“Arlo was not present at the tea party.”
“Arlo has binoculars and nothing else to do.” Hank dropped into the chair across the desk and grinned wide enough to be visible from space. “I hear the tiara was purple.”
“Makayla asked me to stay for tea. I stayed for tea. There was a dress code.”
“Uh-huh. And the French braids?”
“How do you know about—” He stopped. “Ruth Sanger again?”
“Nope. Makayla showed Bonnie Watson at the post office. Bonnie told Grace. Grace told Charlotte. Charlotte told approximately everyone.” Hank leaned back and crossed his arms. “Let me get this straight. You’re buying this kid clothes.
You’re teaching her to ride. You’re braiding her hair.
You’re attending formal tea functions in costume. Her drawings are on your refrigerator.”
Dillon huffed. “She’s a good kid.”
“She is. And you’re a good man. Which is why I need you to hear what I’m about to say.” Hank’s grin faded into seriousness.
Dillon braced himself for a truth bomb. His older brother only took this tone when had heavy news to tell a patient.
“You’re not babysitting that girl, Dillon. You’re fathering her. The braids, the boots, the riding lessons, the tea parties—that’s not what a family friend does. That’s what a dad does.”
The word landed in the center of Dillon’s chest and detonated.
“I’m just her mom’s vet.”
“Vets don’t learn how to do French braids.” Hank stood, drained his coffee, and set the cup down. “Look, I have a daughter. I wasn’t around nearly enough when she was little, but I did my fair share girl-dad stuff like you’re doing now.”
A girl-dad? Was that what he turning into? Honestly, the thought didn’t scare him nearly as much as it ought to.
Hank continued, “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you what you’re already doing because you’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”
After Hank left, Dillon sat at his desk, stared at his case files, and didn’t see a single word.
Instead, he thought about Makayla throwing her arms around his neck after the braid.
About her singing harmony to country songs in his truck.
About her sitting tall on June, heels down, grinning like the sky had opened up and poured gold into her lap.
He thought about Tessa. Not the polished version from the funeral.
The real one. The one who mucked stalls in ruined t-shirts and patched fences with bleeding hands and applied Dolly’s medicine three times a day because twice wasn’t enough if the animal was suffering.
The one who’d called him that first day with her pride in shreds because the cat needed insulin and that mattered more than her dignity.
He’d watched her learn to give Chairman Meow his shot with her hands shaking. She’d done it again, and the morning after that, until her hands didn’t shake anymore and the Chairman merely grumbled instead of hissing at her.
He’d watched her negotiate a business contract on the phone with one hand while stirring pig supplements with the other, speaking in a voice that was precise and confident and completely at odds with the woman who’d stood frozen in front of a goose a few weeks ago.
He’d seen her photograph Charlotte’s wedding gowns at sunset with an artist’s eye for light and composition, then drive straight back to the farm to swab Dolly’s mange and check June’s feed bucket for uneaten pills.
She was building two lives simultaneously. The business with Charlotte was taking shape—he’d overheard enough phone calls to know it was going well—and the farm was slowly, grudgingly yielding to her stubborn refusal to fail at it.
She was exhausted. He could see it in the shadows under her eyes and the way she leaned against the barn doorframe she thought he wasn’t looking. She didn’t complain. She just got up at five-thirty every morning and did what needed doing.
She was clearly terrified of the animals, of the responsibility, of the foreign-ness of it all.
But she stayed anyway. Not because she had to—she could’ve walked away from Fern’s will and stayed in her careful, controlled city life.
She stayed because of Makayla, and Tessa loved her daughter more than she loved her own comfort.
His phone buzzed. Makayla had texted him a photo—a drawing she’d made in school.
It showed the porch of the farmhouse with three rocking chairs on it.
In the small chair sat a girl with a pink hat.
In the middle chair sat a woman with brown hair.
In the large chair sat a man with a cowboy hat and a very big smile.
Underneath, in careful eleven-year-old handwriting, she’d written: My family.
He all but dropped the phone on his desk.
He picked it up and looked at it again.
He put it down once more, opened a case file, and tried to work for a long time before giving up entirely.
He drove home that night in silence, pulled into his driveway, and sat in the dark because it was easier to hold on to crazy ideas alone in darkness. And he had one now.
What if Lexi was wrong?
He didn’t have an answer yet. But the question itself—the fact that he’d finally let himself ask it—broke something open in him that had been sealed shut since the day Lexi walked out.
He didn’t know what to do about that, either.