Chapter Nine Peace
I wake up on a Saturday morning in Kyle’s bed and for a few seconds I don’t know where I am.
The pillow smells different from mine. The light is coming from the wrong direction.
The ceiling fan overhead is wobbling slightly on its axis in a way that makes a soft, rhythmic clicking sound with each rotation.
Then I feel his arm across my waist and everything settles into place.
He’s still asleep. His breathing is deep and even and his face is relaxed in a way I’ve never seen when he’s awake. He looks younger. He looks unburdened. I lie still and let myself watch him for a moment before I carefully slide out from under his arm and pad barefoot into the kitchen.
His coffee maker is the old-fashioned kind with a glass carafe and a permanent filter.
I find the coffee in the cabinet above the sink and measure out enough for two cups.
While it brews I stand at the kitchen window and look out at the field behind the house.
The morning is gray and soft and there’s dew on the grass and a hawk circling high above the tree line at the far edge of the property.
This is what peace feels like. I didn’t know I’d forgotten.
Kyle appears in the doorway a few minutes later, barefoot in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt. His hair is sticking up on one side and he squints at the kitchen light.
"You made coffee."
"I found everything. I hope you don’t mind."
"Mind? I might ask you to move in just for this."
I pour him a cup and he takes it and stands beside me at the window. We drink our coffee and we don’t talk and it’s the most comfortable silence I’ve ever shared with another person. There’s no need to fill it. No anxiety about what he’s thinking. No performance required.
We eat breakfast together. He makes scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and toast with butter and I slice an apple because I saw one on the counter and figured it shouldn’t go to waste.
We sit at his kitchen table and eat and talk about small things.
What we’re doing today. Whether the weather is going to hold.
How his mom’s garden is doing this year.
"She’s got tomatoes coming in that are bigger than softballs," he says. "She’ll be bringing bags of them to everyone she knows by next week."
"I love fresh tomatoes."
"Then you’re about to be very popular with Nancy Frederickson."
I smile. The ease of this. The normalcy.
Travis and I had breakfast together plenty of times but it always felt like an event.
He’d suggest a restaurant or pick up something from a bakery or make a production out of cooking.
There was nothing wrong with it but it was always curated. Always a performance.
This is just two people eating eggs at a kitchen table and talking about tomatoes and it’s the best morning I’ve had in years.
Over the next few weeks Kyle and I settle into something that feels natural in a way no relationship I’ve had has ever felt before.
We see each other three or four times a week.
Sometimes he cooks at the farmhouse. Sometimes I make dinner at my apartment.
Sometimes we go to the Oak Street Diner or grab sandwiches from Tina’s and eat them on a bench in the park.
He remembers things. Not just the big things.
The small things. He remembers that I take my coffee with two sugars and no cream.
He remembers that I mentioned wanting to read a certain book and the next time I come to his house it’s sitting on the kitchen counter with a bookmark already in it.
He remembers that I told him Harold Briggs was having knee surgery and he asks me a week later how Harold is doing.
"How did you remember that?" I ask.
"You told me. Why wouldn’t I remember?"
Because Travis wouldn’t have remembered.
Because Travis listened to reply, not to retain.
Because Travis paid attention to the things that served him and let everything else slide past. But I don’t say any of that because this isn’t about Travis anymore.
This is about Kyle and the way he makes me feel seen.
We go to the Saturday farmers market together.
Sugar Ridge has a small one that sets up in the parking lot behind the post office from May through October.
A dozen vendors sell produce and honey and homemade bread and jars of preserves.
Kyle knows every single farmer by name and they all know him.
He introduces me as his girlfriend and nobody seems surprised.
"About time," says an older man selling sweet corn from the back of his truck. "I’ve been watching you stare at this girl through the bank window for three years."
Kyle turns red from his neck to his ears and I laugh harder than I have in months.
We walk through the market and he carries the bags and I pick out peaches and green beans and a jar of wildflower honey that the beekeeper’s wife tells me is the best batch they’ve ever produced.
Kyle buys a loaf of sourdough bread from a woman named Ruth who asks him how his mother is doing and then tells him to bring me to church on Sunday.
"We’ll see," he says.
"Don’t ‘we’ll see’ me, Kyle Frederickson. That girl is too pretty for you to hide."
He grins. "Yes, ma’am."
We eat dinner that evening on his porch.
Grilled chicken and the green beans from the market and thick slices of Ruth’s sourdough bread with butter.
The hay field in front of us is golden in the fading light and the air smells sweet and warm.
We sit in the old wooden chairs he refinished last spring and we eat slowly and we talk about nothing and everything.
"Can I ask you something personal?" he says.
"Of course."
"When did you know things with Travis weren’t right?"
I think about this. I could give him the easy answer. I could say I knew when Kendra showed me the texts. But that’s not entirely true. The texts were the evidence. The knowing started earlier.
"I think I always knew something was missing," I say. "I just didn’t want to look at it. He was attentive and charming and everyone thought we were perfect together. It’s easy to believe something is good when everyone keeps telling you it is."
"What was missing?"
"This." I gesture between us. "Whatever this is. The part where you ask me a question and then actually listen to the answer. The part where you remember the small things because they matter to you. The part where I don’t have to perform."
He’s quiet for a moment. "You never have to perform with me. I like you exactly the way you are. Specifically the way you are right now, with green bean juice on your chin."
I reach up and wipe my chin and he laughs and I throw a piece of bread at him and he catches it and takes a bite.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
I know that now. Not constant excitement.
Not grand gestures. Not a performance of devotion that exists primarily for an audience.
Just two people who enjoy each other’s company and tell each other the truth and sit on a porch eating bread and laughing about nothing.
On Sunday evening we take a walk. Kyle lives on a county road with no sidewalks and almost no traffic, so we walk right down the middle of the pavement. The sun is setting and the sky is streaked with orange and pink and the fields on either side of us are quiet except for the insects.
"My parents want to meet you," he says.
"They’ve met me. I’ve processed your mom’s deposits at least a dozen times."
"They want to meet you as my girlfriend. My mom specifically asked when I was going to bring you for Sunday dinner."
"Nancy asked that?"
"She asked it three separate times this week. She’s not subtle."
I feel a flutter of nervousness. Meeting the parents is a milestone. It means this is real. It means we’re moving forward. It means he’s told his family about us and they’re invested in knowing me.
"Are you sure it’s not too soon?" I ask.
"Kaitlyn, I waited three years to ask you to dinner. Nothing about this is too soon." He takes my hand and we walk in silence for a while. "But only if you’re ready. No pressure."
"I’m ready. I’d love to meet them properly."
He squeezes my hand. "Sunday, then. Be warned, my mom will try to feed you until you can’t move."
"I can handle it."
"Nobody can handle it. But it’s fun to try."
We turn around at the end of the road and walk back toward the farmhouse. The stars are starting to come out and the air is cooling off and I can feel the warmth of his hand in mine and the solid, steady rhythm of his steps beside me.
I’m starting to trust myself again. That’s the thing that surprises me the most about this.
Not that I can trust Kyle. I trusted Travis too and I was wrong about that.
The bigger victory is that I’m learning to trust my own judgment.
I’m learning that I can assess a situation clearly and make a decision that’s good for me without waiting for someone else to validate it.
Kyle is a good man. I know this because I’ve watched him for years. I know this because the entire town of Sugar Ridge respects him and none of that respect was bought or performed. I know this because he tells me the truth even when the truth is boring. Especially when the truth is boring.
And I know this because when he looks at me, I don’t see calculation. I don’t see strategy. I don’t see a man weighing what I can offer him against what he has to invest.
I just see Kyle. The same Kyle who stood at my teller station every week and asked me how my day was and meant it.
We get back to the house and he makes tea and we sit on the couch and I lean against him and he puts his arm around me and we watch a documentary about migrating birds that neither of us particularly cares about.
He falls asleep halfway through and I watch the last thirty minutes alone with his head resting on my shoulder and his breathing slow and even against my neck.
I don’t move. I don’t want to. I sit there with him sleeping against me and I think about how different this is from everything I had before.
With Travis, love was something I had to earn every day through loyalty and service and willful blindness.
With Kyle, love is something that’s offered freely and received without conditions.
I’m not ready to call it love yet. Not out loud. But I know what it feels like and I know what it doesn’t feel like and I know the difference between the two is everything.
I reach for the remote and turn off the television. The house goes quiet. Kyle stirs and opens one eye.
"Did I fall asleep?"
"Thirty minutes ago."
"Was the movie good?"
"It was about birds."
"Was it good?"
"I have no idea. I wasn’t really paying attention."
He smiles sleepily and pulls me closer. "Stay?"
"I’m staying."
He closes his eyes again. I rest my head on his shoulder and I listen to the house settle around us. The creak of old wood. The hum of the refrigerator. The distant call of whatever bird is still awake out there in the dark.
I close my eyes too.
This is peace. Real, earned, uncomplicated peace.
I’m not going to let it go.