Chapter 9
Tessa had never been fishing in her life, and she was perfectly happy keeping it that way.
The plan was simple. Dillon was taking Makayla fishing at the lake on Saturday morning—something about testing whether June could handle a short trail ride.
But Tessa suspected the outing was yet another of his creative medical justifications for spending time with her daughter.
She was going to use the morning to reshoot a few gown photos in Mick’s workshop.
The lighting in them had been flat, and the New York boutique wanted everything submitted by Wednesday.
That was the plan. The plan was good. And it involved absolutely no hooks or worms.
And then Makayla had appeared in the kitchen doorway in her pink boots and braided hair—Dillon’s handiwork. He’d somehow learned to do it better than Tessa, which she was trying very hard not to feel envy about. “We’re going now.”
“Have fun,” Tessa replied cheerfully.
A pause. “Mom, you should come with us.”
“I have work to do, sweetheart.”
“You always have work to do.”
Makayla didn’t deliver it as an accusation, but it was painfully true. Thing was, work was how Tessa organized the world into manageable pieces and avoided the quiet catching up with her.
She heard the crunch of Dillon’s boots on the gravel outside, and her pulse leaped in anticipation.
Normally, she ran screaming from her involuntary reaction to him.
But this morning she looked into her daughter’s pleading eyes and made a snap decision before the rational part of her brain could intervene.
“Let me change my shoes.”
Makayla’s face lit up like the sun. She darted outside and yelled “Mom’s coming!”
Twenty minutes later, Tessa was sitting on the tailgate of Dillon’s truck at the lakeshore, watching Dillon attempt to teach Makayla how to fly cast.
June stood knee-deep in the shallows of Lake Stillwater dozing blissfully, while Makayla stood on the bank trying to cast her lure into the lake and hooking a clump of switchgrass behind her with impressive consistency.
Dillon stood behind her, adjusting her grip. “Flick your wrist at the top of the arc. Don’t muscle it.”
“I’m not muscling it.”
“You’re casting a fly line, not lassoing a steer.”
“How do you lasso a steer?”
“Completely different lesson. One catastrophe at a time.”
Tessa watched the line sail sideways and tangle in a willow branch overhead to Makayla’s right.
Dillon grabbed the end of the trailing branch, pulled it down within reach and patiently untangled the lure. Again. For at least the twentieth time.
She should have brought her camera. The light on the water was exquisite—morning sunrays slanted through the bud-laden trees along the shore and turned the lake’s surface into hammered copper.
The mountains across the lake were clothed in blue and purple and the ski runs at Valhalla were considerably smaller than last week.
Spring was coming to the Stillwater Valley.
She used to love to ski. But that was a thing she and Mick had done. She couldn’t bring herself to do it anymore.
It occurred to her, sitting there with her feet hanging off the tailgate and the morning sun warm on her face, that this was the first time she’d been to the lake since Mick died. It was nice. Really nice. The quiet lap of water on the shallow, gravel shore was deeply soothing.
Makayla’s lure finally sailed out over the water and sank below the surface. She shrieked and bounced on the bank, startling June into shying, her massive hooves smashing through the shallows and sending up a rooster tail of water that caught Dillon full across the chest.
He looked down at his soaked shirt, looked at the horse, looked at Makayla, and said perfectly deadpan, “I should have been a dentist.”
Tessa burst out laughing.
Dillon glanced over at her, surprised. She caught his expression before he could rearrange it—an unguarded moment of warmth and wonder that disappeared so fast she might have imagined it.
Except she was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined it.
Makayla and Dillon fished and Tessa steadfastly declined to touch any bait, tackle, or aquatic creature for the next two hours.
Makayla caught nothing. Dillon caught two fingerling trout and released them both.
June waded out until her belly touched the water and took a leisurely nap. She clearly enjoyed retirement.
It was kind of Fern to take in the draft horses and give them these years of relaxation and just getting to be horses.
Tessa loved the water. She loved watching Makayla’s complete absorption in something that had nothing to do with lessons or schedules or achievement.
The sound of the lake lapping against the shore soothed her.
She lazily registered the clean, mineral smell of the water and the way the mountains reflected upside down in the glassy surface near the bank.
If she was being honest with herself in a way she generally avoided, she also loved the sound of Dillon’s low voice coaching her daughter and how his laughter danced across the water like a skipping stone.
Whereas Mick had been all eager energy, excitement, and constant motion, Dillon had a calm about him that she soaked up like a parched plant soaked up rain—
You are not in the market for a man.
But if she were, it would be a man like Dillon. Smart, steady, thoughtful, witty—
Stop, already!
She redirected her attention to the landscape because it didn’t have blue eyes or broad shoulders or an infuriating habit of being exactly the kind of man she had no business wanting.
That afternoon, with Makayla upstairs practicing her violin and the animals fed and medicated, Tessa did something else she hadn’t done in a very long time.
She cooked a meal from scratch.
Not the functional cooking she’d been doing since they moved to the farm—reheating soup, assembling sandwiches, boiling pasta with jarred sauce because those were the meals of a woman running at full speed between a store, a photography business, and a barnful of animals.
This was different. She found a recipe card in Fern’s kitchen drawer, written in her mother-in-law’s loopy hand on a stained index card. Chicken and Dumplings — Mick’s Favorite.
She stood at the counter holding the card and felt the familiar press of grief against her ribcage.
This was Mick’s favorite? How come he never told her?
Had she been so busy being the opposite of everything her parents expected that she’d never stopped to learn this small, ordinary thing about the man she married?
She put the card on the counter and went to the store.
The recipe was simple—a whole chicken, vegetables, broth, and the dumplings themselves, which were nothing more than flour, butter, milk, and baking powder dropped by spoonfuls into simmering broth. Fern’s notes on the card’s back side were characteristically blunt.
Don’t overwork the dough or the dumplings will bounce like rubber balls.
Get a rotisserie chicken from the store and claim I cooked it myself.
Use a whole stick of butter because we’re not put on this Earth to diet.
It’s ready when it smells so good Arlo knocks on the door. Don’t let him in.
She smiled at her mother-in-law’s dry humor. She wished she could’ve gotten to know this side of Fern. Maybe the two of them would have gotten along better if they’d figured out how to share their senses of humor with each other.
While the chicken bubbled in its broth, she stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the afternoon light on the pasture.
Biscuit and June stood together in their paddock, dozing.
Loretta was mouthing a weed by the fence as if deciding whether it was edible or not.
Captain and Maple lay together by the barn door, the goat’s head resting on the dog’s back.
From upstairs, Makayla’s violin drifted down through the floorboards. A Bach partita, technically flawless, each note placed with the mathematical precision of a child who’d been trained to play perfectly since before she could read.
And then the music shifted. So subtly that Tessa almost didn’t catch it.
The Bach melody bent—a slide between notes that didn’t belong in the score, a slight rhythmic looseness that made the phrase swing instead of march.
It lasted only a few measures before snapping back to the written music, as if Makayla had caught herself straying and quickly corrected.
Tessa frowned. She wasn’t a musician herself, but she’d listened to enough of Makayla’s practicing to know that deviation from the score was not something her daughter did accidentally. Makayla was meticulous. If those notes had bent, it was because she’d bent them on purpose.
The thought floated through her mind and kept going, unexamined. She had dumplings to make.
She mixed the dough the way Fern’s card instructed—gently, with a fork, until it was shaggy and rough and nothing at all like the smooth, uniform textures Judith had demanded of every recipe in the Northcott kitchen.
She dropped spoonfuls into the simmering broth and watched them puff and rise, pale and lumpy and exactly right.
The kitchen filled with a smell so warm and homey it made her heart ache.
Makayla came downstairs drawn by the smell, eyes wide. “You cooked?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. I am capable of feeding us something that doesn’t come from a can or a box.”
“Since when?”
She rolled her eyes as set two bowls on the table. “It’s Granny Fern’s recipe. Chicken and dumplings.”
Makayla sat down, tucked a napkin in her lap, and took a bite. Her eyes closed. “Mom.”
“Oh no. Is it terrible?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve eaten in my entire life.”