12. Jade
JADE
Idon't sleep.
I lie in the guest room with the lamp off and the ceiling at the same height it's been every time I've stayed in this room, and I watch it. Through the wall: the active nothing of people awake in the dark, keeping still. At some point the gray starts at the curtains. I get up before it finishes.
The bathroom. My hair. The face in the mirror that has made a decision and isn't going back on it.
I go downstairs.
Cormac is already at the table.
Seven-twelve by the kitchen clock. He's at the head of it with his coffee and the ledger open at his elbow, morning light coming through the window.
He looks up when I come in and takes in my face the way he has for two years—reading what's there, taking his time—and he doesn't say anything about last night.
"Morning," I say.
"Morning." He nods at the coffee. "Fresh."
I pour a cup. I sit.
Not a choice, exactly. The table is set for four and the fourth place is there and I sit in it. He goes back to the ledger. I look out the window at the north slope going gold in the early light and I drink my coffee and we don't fill the quiet with anything.
This is how it's been for two years: just us in the kitchen before the boys are up, talking about the harvest or not talking about anything. The difference is that last night his hands were on my hips. His cock was inside me bare. I asked him to breed me. He did.
Not that different from most Tuesday mornings, really. The table is the same table.
Ryan comes down at seven-forty.
I hear him on the stairs before he appears in the doorway—the footfall I learned in eight months of Sunday nights at this house, slightly heavier on the left. He stops in the doorway when he sees us. A half-second, the way you stop when a room has shifted from what you expected.
He comes in.
"Morning," he says. To both of us, to the room.
He pours coffee and sits across from me. I look at his jaw.
The bruise is there—a shadow along the left side, skin gone slightly purple in the night. He sits with his coffee and his jaw and doesn't touch the bruise or acknowledge it. He looks at his cup.
Then he looks at me.
I hold his gaze. Not punishing him. Not forgiving him. Just here.
He looks back at his cup.
Killian comes in at eight, still in the shirt from last night, sawdust already on one forearm from wherever he's been since dawn. He pours coffee, goes to the stove, starts eggs without asking. His cheekbone has the beginning of something—the skin there faintly swollen. He doesn't look at Ryan.
Ryan doesn't look at him.
I look at both of them and consider the bruise on Killian's jaw and the bruise on Ryan's jaw—which means they got one each, which means this was fair by some measure I'm not going to examine this morning—and neither of them has brought it up and neither of them is going to.
I am the only person at this table who finds this absurd.
I drink my coffee.
Cormac puts the ledger down.
He doesn't clear his throat or build to it. He sets the ledger to the side and looks around the table—the four of us—and then he talks.
"She's staying," he says.
He doesn't look at me when he says it. He looks at Ryan, then at Killian, then at his coffee mug, the way he says things that are true without needing to be performed.
Killian turns from the stove. He looks at me. His jaw doesn't move.
Ryan's cup goes still.
"If you want to be part of this family going forward," Cormac says—and the you is Ryan, just Ryan, all three of us know it—"you know what that means.
" He picks up his mug. "I go first. I've gone first. That's how it is.
" A beat. "You both conduct yourselves accordingly.
Nobody leaves this table worse than when they sat down.
Nobody takes it outside this house." He sets the mug down and finally looks at me.
"And she's at this table. That part's not up for discussion. "
The kitchen is quiet.
"Killian," he says. "Eggs."
Killian turns back to the stove.
Ryan has both hands around his cup. His jaw does the thing—the internal calculation I watched for two years, whether to say the thing or hold it, the muscle tightening, the deciding. He doesn't say it.
He looks at me across the table.
For a long moment—just the two of us in the kitchen while Killian cracks eggs and Cormac reads his ledger like he hasn't just said the thing that reorganizes everyone's life.
Ryan's eyes are tired and the bruise is there and he looks like a man who has been carrying something heavy and has been told where to set it down.
He nods.
Small. Certain. Once.
I hold his gaze. Not permission—that's not what this is. But I don't look away either. I look at him until he's looked long enough, and then he picks up his coffee and drinks.
Killian sets a plate in front of me without announcing it. He goes back, returns with the other two. Ryan. Cormac. Then his own. He pulls out the chair to my left and sits. He reaches across the table without looking up from his eggs and nudges the sugar bowl toward me.
I've been putting sugar in my coffee at this table for two years.
He's only just been allowed to notice.
The fourth chair under me. The fourth plate.
Killian's shoulder to my left, Ryan's jaw across from me, Cormac at the head of the table with his ledger and the morning light.
The north slope going gold beyond the window—the same slope I've been watching from this table for two years of Sunday dinners, telling myself I was watching it for Ryan.
It was never for Ryan.
I put my elbows on the table and look out the window.
"Second tractor," I say.
Cormac: "I know."
"Ryan said he'd do it before Thursday."
Ryan: "I will."
"Thursday's the rain," I say. "Do it today."
Nobody argues. I drink my coffee. Killian's shoulder is warm beside mine. Cormac is writing something in the ledger. Ryan reaches for the bread—not performing, not making it a thing, just reaching—and there is something in that small ordinary motion that is the first easy moment of the morning.
I eat my eggs.
The competition is still here. It's structural, it's what this table is now: who refills my cup first when it goes empty, whose elbow ends up closest to mine, who Ryan glances at when something I say gets a reaction from Cormac.
Always there. But this morning it's underneath something quieter than itself.
The eggs. The north slope. The rain on Thursday. The fact that it's Tuesday and the work is still here and they're all still at this table.
I was here for this. I think I always was.