Chapter 19
Tessa woke at five-fourteen in the morning, an hour before her alarm, because something was different.
She lay in the dark trying to identify what.
The bed was warm. The house was quiet. She sat up and swung her feet to the floor, listening.
Hamlet was a heavy snoring weight against her left shin — he’d claimed the beside her bed as his sleeping spot the night her mother’d called as if sensing she needed the company.
He’d refused to yield the territory since.
And honestly, she found his soft snores comforting.
Who’d have guessed a pig made such a great pet? He was smart and funny, perceptive of and sensitive to her moods, and always right there beside her whenever she felt sad or upset.
Outside, a single bird sent up a few tentative notes.
She’d found a CD of Fern’s labeled in Ferm’s loopy hand, Birdcalls of Montana, and had been listening to it while she cooked and did dishes.
She identified the early riser outside as one of the cardinals that had moved into the apple tree under her bedroom window last week. She hoped he got his proverbial worm.
As the cardinal’s song grew stronger and louder, knowing settled in her that nothing was wrong.
In fact, she registered a faint feeling of something being right.
As if something out of place had been put back where it belonged.
Odd. It must just be a delayed reaction to her decision to stay here.
Makayla had practically been floating around the house, singing and chattering non-stop since Tessa’d told her they weren’t leaving.
It was the right decision. She knew it all the way down to her bones. Right for Makayla and right for her.
She got out of bed carefully so as not to disturb Hamlet and padded barefoot down the stairs. She paused at the foot of the staircase. Something was different on the porch.
She crossed to the front window and looked out.
There were two chairs on the porch.
Makayla’s small blue rocker, where it had always been. And another, larger rocker beside it, sitting there naturally in the gray pre-dawn light as if it had spent years without number in that exact spot.
She stopped breathing.
She was vaguely aware of unlocking the door, of cold air on her skin, the rough porch boards under her toes. She ran her hand along the back of chair the way she had three days ago when she’d found it unfinished in Mick’s workshop.
It was not unfinished now.
She lowered herself into it.
It fit her exactly. The rockers were perfectly balanced. The arms held her elbows exactly where they wanted to be. The seat and back were scooped precisely to receive her body, the way a hand fits an old glove.
She rocked slowly, and a smile of wonder grew on her face. She sat there and watched the mountains across the lake shift from black to charcoal to gray. The willows glowed the color of fresh limes as the sky lightened overhead.
He’d come back.
He hadn’t knocked. He hadn’t called or texted. He’d simply put her finished chair onto her porch exactly where she always sat and disappeared the way he always did when something mattered too much for words.
She rocked some more and thought about the look on his face two weeks ago when he’d said, I should go, and walked off her porch with his hands in his pockets like a man trying not to run.
She thought about how this chair was not the one she’d imagined but something better because he’d built it with his own hands while she’d wrestled with her decision and finally called her mother to say no.
And he’d answered her with a chair.
As she sat here now, she didn’t know which she’d been more afraid of — that he would never come back, or that he would come back too soon, before she’d made the decision completely on her own.
She’d been afraid of both.
And somehow, he’d managed to return at exactly the right moment, by the only method that made sense, which was not words at all but something concrete. Real. He’d chosen action over talk, demonstration over declaration. He finished the thing he’d started making for her and brought it to her.
She rocked until the cardinals turned into a chorus and she heard Brown Dog’s toenails on Arlo’s porch as the old man came outside for his morning coffee.
She stood up, draped the old blanket that lay over the back of Makaylas rocker around her shoulders over her nightgown, slid her feet into her pink rubber barn boots that she’d left by the front door yesterday, and walked across the wet grass toward the property line.
Arlo and Brown Dog watched her cross the pasture.
“Mornin’.”
“Good morning, Arlo.”
“You found it.”
“I did.”
He nodded, his gaze locked on the lake.
She felt the wet him of her nightgown brushing the tops of her boots, and realized her hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders. But she asked the question anyways that she’d come to ask.
“Arlo. Would you build a third one?”
He took a slow sip of his coffee. “A third what?”
“Don’t be like that.”
His pale blue eyes glinted briefly with humor. “How soon you need it?”
“As soon as possible. Next week, if you can.”
“Mm. Be tight.” A pause. “What size?”
“Bigger than mine. Sturdier in the seat. For someone, say, six-foot-two with broad shoulders.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Will you do it?”
“Reckon I will.”
“Thank you.”
“Heard there’s a talent show today.”
“It’s at three.”
“Mm.” He picked up his coffee again. “Fern would’ve gone. Thought I might go in her place.”
“Arlo.”
“Hm?”
“Thank you. It’ll mean the world to Makayla . . . and to me. I think of you as family, you know.”
“Don’t go gettin’ all mushy on me. It’s too early for that.” He waved her off. “Go put on real clothes. You look like a ghost lady hauntin’ my yard.”
She laughed and walked back across the wet grass toward her own porch, where her rocking chair waited for her in the peachy glow of sunrise.
Makayla came downstairs at six-thirty wearing her white blouse with the Peter Pan collar and the white, pink, and baby blue plaid wool skirt Tessa had given her for her birthday. But instead of the patent leather Mary Janes that went with the outfit, Makayla wore her pink cowboy boots.
Tessa stopped pouring coffee.
Makayla saw her notice the boots. “I want to wear them,” she said. Not defiant. Not pleading. Just stating a fact, the way she stated facts to Dillon about chickens. “My recital skirt goes to the floor anyway.”
Tessa thought about the girl who, two months ago, folded her hands in her lap at the dinner table and said please and thank you and ma’am or sir to everyone. She looked at the girl her daughter was now and smiled. “They look great with that outfit.”
Makayla’s whole face lit up. “Really?”
“Really. Fashion should be an expression of who you are, and that outfit is you, through and through.”
Makayla threw he arms around her and gave her a big hug, burying her face against Tessa’s neck. “Love you, Mom.”
“Love you back.” She was writing this moment down in her journal tonight to remember for all time.
The school auditorium had cinder-block walls, a stage with red velvet curtains faded mauve at the hems from age, and a lingering smell of gym mats and tempera paint.
Tessa walked Makayla to the backstage hallway, kissed the top of her head, and told her to break a leg.
The music teacher shooed the parents out so the kids could focus.
Tessa walked into the auditorium which was filling with parents milling around and stared, startled.
Charlotte was here.
Her kids were both in kindergarten and too young to perform in today’s talent show . . . which meant she was here for Makayla. For her.
Charlotte kissed Tessa’s cheek, murmuring, “A little birdie told me you could use your family around you today,”
“Is Ruth Sanger telling tales about me again?”
“Not Ruth.”
Tessa frowned. “Did Reno call you?”
“Nope. Dillon. He said you could use a reminder of who your real family is. And he’s right. To heck with those awful snobs who call themselves your parents!”
“Charlotte. You didn’t have to do this—”
“It’s already done. And I brought reinforcements.”
Tessa looked where Charlotte pointed and saw the WoWs walking in together. All of them. Jenna and Natalie, Rose and Bonnie, Molly and Grace.
Tessa was abruptly afraid she was going to cry in the middle of the auditorium in front of half the town. “Thank you,” she managed.
“You’re welcome.” Charlotte tucked Tessa’s arm through her own. “Now let’s go find seats before all the good ones are taken.”
The WoWS filled an entire row.
Tessa took the center aisle seat beside her friends, her heart full to overflowing.
These women truly were a family. They’d supported one another through thick and thin and been there for one another through the worst loss any of them would ever go through.
They loved one another like sisters—maybe more than most sisters—and they always had one another’s backs.
She saw Arlo come in wearing a clean, freshly pressed plaid shirt and his go-to-church cowboy hat. He nodded at her and took a seat near the back by Cal Hendricks, whose granddaughter was performing today in a skit of some kind.
Tessa looked around surreptitiously as people continued to file in, trying to spot Dillon. She’d thought he might show up today given how close he and Makayla had been. But there was no sign of him.
A bell rang, signaling five minutes to show time.
She faced the stage, more disappointed than she cared to admit.
But he’d finished the chair and put it on her porch, after all.
She ought to have more faith in him than to assume the worst. He must’ve been called out on an emergency.
On impulse, she slipped out of her seat and went over to Iris Green, the elementary school secretary who, today, was fiddling with a video camera on a tripod in the center aisle near the stage.
“Hi Iris.”
“Hi Tessa. I’m looking forward to hearing what Makayla plays for us this year. She’s getting so good on that violin of hers.”