25. After Forever #3
She smiles. Looks at the fence rail. "I want you to know something."
"Okay."
She turns to face me fully, her back to the fence, looking at me in the dark with the particular open expression she only wears when she's about to say something completely true with no management around it.
"Whatever comes next for us," she says carefully. "Whatever the next chapter looks like." She holds my gaze. "I'm not afraid of any of it."
I look at her. Something in that phrasing sits slightly differently than a general statement about the future. Whatever comes next. Whatever the next chapter looks like.
I file it quietly.
"Neither am I," I say.
She looks at me for a long moment.
Then she reaches up and puts both hands on my face the way she does when she means something with her whole self and kisses me in the south pasture in the dark with the creek bend lights behind her and the ranch quiet around us.
I put my arms around her and hold on.
She holds on back.
When she pulls away she's smiling in the dark. Not the layered complicated version from the ranch house. Something cleaner underneath it now. Like a person who has made a decision about something and feels good about the making of it.
"Ready to go back?" she says.
"Ready when you are," I say.
She takes my hand.
We walk back toward the string lights and the party and the people who showed up for all of it.
Halfway across the yard she squeezes my hand twice.
I squeeze back. She looks at me sideways with that clean smile.
Whatever comes next. I can't wait.
Remy announces one final toast at nine forty-five.
Nobody asked for a final toast. Everyone wants one anyway. He climbs back on his crate with the authority of a man who has been waiting to close this evening properly and has strong opinions about how that should go.
He looks at Maisie still asleep on his jacket.
Looks at the party.
"Someone wake her up," he says. "She's been waiting for this chance longer than any of us."
Silas crouches down and says her name once, quietly.
Maisie sits up immediately with the alertness of a child who was not actually fully asleep and has been monitoring the situation with one ear the entire time.
She looks around the party, finds me, finds Laney, finds the ring still on Laney's finger, and nods with the satisfied expression of someone whose plan has fully executed.
She stands up, straightens her shirt.
Remy steps off the crate and gestures at it.
Maisie looks at the crate. Looks at Remy. Climbs up with the dignity of someone who has been waiting for this platform her entire life.
The party goes quiet.
She looks at the gathered crowd of Silver Ridge with complete composure. Eight years old, badly ironed shirt, turquoise boots, hay in her hair from the jacket she was sleeping on.
"I want to say something," she announces.
"Floor's yours," Remy says.
She looks at me first.
"Dad," she says. "When you told me we were moving to Texas I Googled Silver Mesa Ranch at two in the morning because I couldn't sleep.
" She pauses. "I saw a picture of the horses and I saw a picture of the ranch house and I thought it looked like somewhere people were supposed to be happy. " She holds my gaze. "I was right."
Something tightens in my chest and I have to breathe through it carefully.
She looks at Laney.
"Laney," she says. "You told me once that okay and happy aren't exactly the same thing." She tilts her head. "I think you were talking about you but it was also about Dad." She pauses. "You fixed the missing kind for both of us. I want you to know I noticed."
The yard is very quiet.
June makes a sound.
Pearl takes a long drink of sweet tea.
Remy is looking at the sky with his jaw set in the way of someone trying very hard to hold himself together after something hit him unexpectedly. Silas is looking at the ground.
Maisie raises the lemonade cup she's been carrying all evening.
"To Dad and Laney," she says. "For figuring it out." She looks between us with those serious eyes. "And to Silver Mesa. For being the kind of place where people do figure it out."
The yard raises everything it's holding.
I find Laney's hand in the dark.
Maisie climbs down from the crate, walks directly to Laney, hugs her once around the middle, says something into her shirt that I don't catch, and goes back to Remy's jacket on the ground and closes her eyes.
Laney looks at me.
Her left hand is in her jacket pocket.
Closing around something.
I saw June slip it to her when she came back from the ranch house.
Small. Rectangular.
I don't know what it is yet.
But Laney's expression in the string light glow is the layered, complicated beautiful one and her hand is closed around whatever June gave her and her eyes are bright in a way that has nothing to do with the toast.
"You okay?" I say quietly.
She looks at me and smiles.
"Ask me tomorrow morning," she says softly.
I look at her.
The creek bend lights glow in the oak tree behind us.
Silver Mesa breathes around us in the dark.
Tomorrow morning.
For her, I can wait one more night.