27. Quin
— ? —
Quin
I woke up with my arm asleep and a four-year-old three inches from my face.
“Daddy.”
“Katie.”
“You’re in Mommy’s bed.”
I pushed myself up on one elbow, careful of the woman still curled against my side, and tried to assemble a sentence a four-year-old would accept. Clara’s double bed had clearly not been designed for a man my size and she’d claimed most of it anyway. “I am.”
Katie considered this. “Is it a sleepover?”
“Something like that.”
“Bunbun didn’t get invited.”
“Bunbun can come next time.” Clara’s voice, muffled by the pillow and laced with amusement. “Go put on your socks, baby. Daddy’s going to make toast.”
“Daddy can’t make toast.”
“Daddy’s going to try.”
Katie left, satisfied, and Clara turned her face out of the pillow and looked at me. Sleep-creased, hair everywhere, the old shirt of mine back on over nothing. No regret in her eyes. No morning-after retreat. Just a small, private smile, like she’d checked and found me still there.
“Sleepover,” she said.
“Something like that,” I agreed, and kissed her before either of us could ruin it with a sentence.
***
Breakfast was chaos.
Good chaos, the kind I hadn’t known I was missing until I was standing in Clara’s tiny kitchen trying to make toast while Katie demanded I braid her hair and Clara laughed at my complete incompetence at both tasks simultaneously.
“You’re losing that toast.”
“I’m aware.”
“Daddy, you have to do the TWIST part. Like this.” Katie demonstrated with an invisible hair tie while I stared at the back of her head in complete bewilderment.
“How do you do this every morning?”
“Practice.” Clara appeared at my elbow, smelling like coffee and sleep and something floral I couldn’t identify. “Here. Let me show you.”
She took my hands and positioned them in Katie’s hair, her fingers guiding mine through the motions. Over, under, twist. Over, under, twist. Her body was warm against my back, her breath soft on my neck, and I was pretty sure I’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Got it?”
“Definitely not.”
She laughed and finished the braid herself while I salvaged the toast. We ate breakfast together at her tiny table, Katie chattering about a dream she’d had, orange juice threatening to spill, the morning light making everything feel golden and possible.
This was what I was fighting to keep.
“I have an idea,” I said when the plates were cleared. “Something I want to do today. All three of us.”
“What kind of something?”
“Do you trust me?”
Clara studied me for a moment. Then, slowly, she nodded.
***
Two hours later, we were standing on the main street of downtown, and Clara was staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
“You brought horses to downtown.”
“I brought our horses to downtown.” Cinnamon and Sugar were waiting in the public parking lot, saddled and ready, a handler standing by looking like he was questioning his life choices. “I thought we could go for a ride.”
“Through the city. On horseback.”
“Through the city on horseback.” I was already swinging up onto Sugar’s back, reaching down for Katie. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re riding with Daddy.”
Katie scrambled up in front of me with the fearless enthusiasm of a four-year-old who had no concept of how ridiculous this was. Clara stood on the sidewalk, mouth open, staring at us like we were an apparition.
Then she laughed.
“You’re insane,” she said, but she was already walking toward Cinnamon, already running her hand along the mare’s neck. “You know that, right? Certifiably insane.”
“Insanely in love with you, maybe.”
“That’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Probably. Is it working?”
She mounted Cinnamon with the easy grace of someone who’d grown up on horseback. “Ask me again in an hour.”
***
We rode down Main Street at a walk.
Cars slowed. Pedestrians stopped and stared. Someone pulled out their phone to take a video, probably already composing a caption about the cowboys taking over downtown. A kid on the sidewalk yelled “COWBOYS!” and Katie waved at him like royalty.
“Wave like a princess,” she instructed me. “Not like THAT, Daddy. Like THIS.”
I waved like a princess. Clara watched us and laughed so hard she nearly fell off Cinnamon.
“This is ridiculous,” she said when she caught her breath.
“This is romance, cowboy style.”
“It’s both. It’s definitely both.”
We rode through downtown, past the coffee shop where Clara used to grab lunch on busy days, past the office building where she’d rebuilt herself one assignment at a time, past the law office where the divorce papers had been drawn up, the ones she never finished.
Past all the places that held her grief and her anger during the months we were apart.
The horses clopped along the pavement, surprisingly unbothered by the traffic and the noise. A police officer on the corner saw us, did a double-take, and then waved us through the intersection with a bemused expression.
“Do you have permits for this?” Clara asked.
“Several.”
“How long have you been planning this?”
“Long enough to know I’d do anything to see you smile like you are right now.”
She didn’t have a response to that. Just reached over and squeezed my hand.
We stopped at the park where I’d knelt in the grass weeks earlier. Different now, with her hand in mine, the horses tied to a bench and Katie running ahead to feed the ducks with the approved duck food I’d brought specifically for this purpose.
Clara and I stood together, watching our daughter scatter pellets like confetti.
“I want to come home,” Clara said quietly.
I went completely still. “What?”
“I want to come home. To the ranch. To…”
“DADDY! MOMMY!” Katie came running back, duck feathers somehow tangled in her hair, mud on her shoes, grinning like she’d conquered the world. “The ducks ate ALL the food!”
Clara’s sentence hung unfinished between us. But her hand stayed in mine. And the word she hadn’t finished saying echoed in the silence.
Home.