Chapter 21 #5
“My mom called,” Riley announced, checking her phone as they gathered near the cars.
The air was cooling rapidly, and Mia could see her breath starting to fog.
“Sunday dinner is officially happening. She’s making her famous pot roast, which I should warn you is a religious experience.
And she says,“ Riley paused, reading the text. “She says Garrett already agreed to help with the kennel construction, so we should discuss timelines while we’re there.”
Mia looked up from her notebook. “Garrett’s going to be at dinner?”
“Apparently.” Riley’s expression did something strange as fondness and worry and something else Mia couldn’t name flitted over her features. “He doesn’t usually come to family dinners anymore. This is... this is good. I think.”
“What’s he like?” Mia asked, then immediately wished she hadn’t.
She didn’t care what Riley’s brother was like, not really. He wasn’t a client she’d help set up with the love of his life.. He was just a contractor, someone who was going to help them build kennels, and Riley clearly had difficulties with him.
Riley tilted her head, considering the question.
“Quiet. Patient. Stubborn as a goat… that’s a family trait, I’m afraid.
He’s better with animals than people, honestly.
Has this dog, Summit, a German Shepherd he adopted after—“ She stopped abruptly, edited herself. “He’s been training Summit for search and rescue for two years. Dad said it isn’t going well.
The dog has anxiety issues, won’t bond properly, keeps failing the certifications. But Garrett won’t give up on him.”
“He sounds...solitary.”
“That’s an understatement.” Riley’s phone buzzed again.
She glanced at it and huffed out a small laugh.
“Mom says he’ll be here tomorrow morning to assess the barn.
She’s sending him over with breakfast pastries, and I quote, ’so those girls don’t starve while they’re out there all by themselves. Try to act surprised.”
Tomorrow morning... Mia’s stomach did something annoying. Probably just hunger. They’d skipped lunch somewhere around Bozeman and she was running on coffee and gas station trail mix. It was not anticipation about meeting a quiet, complicated mountain man with capable hands and a troubled dog.
If anything, she was excited about meeting the dog. Not the person.
“We should get inside,” Sloane said, always practical. “I’ve gotten it mostly livable in the two days I’ve been here. It’s getting dark, and I don’t know about you gals, but I need a shower and fourteen hours of sleep.”
“Seconded,” Jazz agreed, rubbing her arms against the chill.
But Mia lingered for a moment, looking at the sky. The sun had fully set now, and the first stars were appearing, impossibly bright without Seattle’s light pollution to dull them. The Milky Way was visible, a river of light spilling across the sky.
She hadn’t seen stars like this since she was a kid, camping with her parents, the three of them folded into one tent, her father naming the constellations wrong on purpose just to hear her correct him, her mother laughing in the dark.
She’d been small enough to believe the night sky was something her family owned together.
Small enough, still, to assume that one day she’d lie under it with a husband and children of her own, and that wanting that would feel like an ordinary thing and not like standing at the edge of a long drop.
Back when she still believed in magic. Back when love was something that happened in Disney movies and her mom’s beloved romance novels and would definitely, absolutely, certainly happen to her someday.
This is a fresh start, she reminded herself firmly. A chance to do something good, something that matters.
A chance to be useful, which was a thing she understood, a thing she had been since she was twelve. Useful let her stand inside a family’s warmth; the Pattersons’, the rescue’s, without ever being so far inside that if the house crumbled, she would be stuck in the wreckage.
She wasn’t here to find anything for herself. She’d given up on that fairy tale a long, long time ago. She’d decided that long ago, not in a single dramatic moment but as a slow settling, the way a path is worn into the grass, until the door to that particular room had simply stopped opening.
The strange part, the part she didn’t examine, was that the romantic in her had never actually died in there. She was still in that room. Mia had just stopped going in to check on her.
But as she watched the stars multiply across the Montana sky, Mia couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was about to change.
Something was shifting, had been shifting since the moment they’d crested that first hill and she’d seen the mountains.
Some locked door inside her was creaking open, just a crack, letting in air that smelled like pine and grass and possibility.
Something significant was coming. She just hoped she was ready for it.
“Mia!” Paige called from the porch. “Come on! Sloane found a pizza place that delivers!”
Mia took one last look at the barn, the house, the mountains standing sentinel against the star-scattered sky. Then she turned and walked toward her friends, her notebook tucked under her arm, her heart beating inexplicably hard in her chest.
Tomorrow, she would meet the mysterious Garrett Hayes who could help build kennels to hold what would hopefully be many, many fuzzy happy-ever-afters.
Tomorrow, everything would begin.
But tonight was for pizza and unpacking and pretending she wasn’t terrified that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
The stars didn’t offer her any answers. They just kept shining, ancient and indifferent and impossibly beautiful, as far from her small life as it was possible for anything to be.
A story written in light a long time before her that would continue a long time after, with no interest in her.
Mia walked towards the women and let them lead her toward whatever came next.