Chapter Thirteen Choosing Happiness
Kyle’s parents live on the original Frederickson farm, a white clapboard house set back from the road behind a row of old oak trees.
The driveway is long and gravel and the mailbox at the end has "Frederickson" painted on it in faded green letters. I’ve driven past this property a hundred times without knowing it belonged to Kyle’s family.
That’s how Sugar Ridge works. You drive past the same houses your whole life and never think about who’s inside until you have a reason to care.
Today I have a reason to care. Today is Sunday dinner.
"You’re quiet," he says about a mile in.
"I’m nervous."
"About my parents?"
"About making a good impression. What if they don’t like me?"
He takes his eyes off the road just long enough to give me a look.
"Kaitlyn, my mother has been asking about you since the first time I mentioned your name. She called me yesterday to ask what kind of dessert you like so she could make it from scratch. She’s making peach cobbler because I told her you bought peaches at the farmers market that one time. "
"She remembered that?"
"She wrote it down. In a notebook. She has a notebook."
I laugh and some of the tension leaves my body. It’s hard to be nervous about a woman who keeps a dessert preference notebook.
We pull into the driveway at ten minutes to five.
The house is bigger than I expected. Two stories with a wide front porch and rocking chairs on either side of the door.
There’s a garden to the left of the house with tomato plants taller than I am and a row of sunflowers along the fence.
A golden retriever comes bounding off the porch the second Kyle opens his truck door.
"That’s Biscuit," he says. "She’s fourteen and deaf in one ear but she’ll love you harder than anyone you’ve ever met."
Biscuit confirms this immediately by shoving her head against my knees and wagging her entire body until I kneel down and scratch behind her ears. Her fur is soft and warm and she leans into me with her full weight.
"She likes you," Kyle says.
"The feeling is mutual."
The front door opens and Nancy Frederickson steps onto the porch. She’s a small woman with short silver hair and a kind face that crinkles at the corners when she smiles. She’s wearing an apron over a blue dress and she’s wiping her hands on a towel.
"Kyle, don’t just stand there. Bring that girl inside."
Kyle grins. "Mom, this is Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn, this is my mother, who has no concept of a calm introduction."
"Hush." Nancy walks down the steps and takes my hand with both of hers. Her grip is warm and firm. "Kaitlyn, I have been waiting to meet you properly for weeks. Kyle talks about you so much that I feel like I already know you."
"It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Frederickson."
"Nancy. You call me Nancy. Mrs. Frederickson is Richard’s mother and she’s been dead for fifteen years."
She leads me inside and the house smells exactly the way I imagined it would.
Roasting meat and fresh bread and something sweet baking in the oven.
The kitchen is large and lived-in with a big wooden table in the center and copper pots hanging above the stove.
There are framed photos on every wall. Kyle as a baby.
Kyle as a teenager in a football jersey.
Kyle standing next to his father in front of the ag supply store.
A wedding photo of Richard and Nancy that must be forty years old.
Richard Frederickson is sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. He stands when I walk in. He’s a tall man with Kyle’s build and Kyle’s quiet demeanor. His handshake is firm and his voice is low and even.
"Nice to meet you, Kaitlyn. Kyle tells me you work at Citizens United."
"I do. I’ve been there about six years now."
"Good bank. Good people. I’ve done business there since before you were born." He sits back down and picks up his newspaper, then looks at me over the top of it. "You like steak?"
"I love steak."
"Good. Because Nancy made enough for a small army and if you don’t eat your share, she’ll send you home with a bag big enough to feed you for a week."
Nancy swats him with the towel. "Richard, stop scaring her."
"I’m not scared," I say. "I came hungry."
Nancy beams. Richard goes back to his paper.
Kyle puts his hand on the small of my back and steers me toward the living room, where a fire is burning low in the stone fireplace even though it’s not cold enough to need one.
Nancy just likes the way it looks, Kyle tells me.
She lights it every Sunday regardless of the weather.
We sit in the living room while Nancy finishes cooking.
Kyle’s childhood is everywhere in this room.
A bookshelf full of old school yearbooks and hardcover novels.
A framed certificate from the 4-H club. A photo of Kyle at maybe eight or nine years old sitting on a tractor with his father, both of them squinting against the sun.
"You were a cute kid," I say.
"Were?"
"You’re still cute. But you were especially cute at age nine."
He smiles and leans back on the couch and Biscuit jumps up between us and puts her head in my lap.
I scratch her ears and look around the room and I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
I feel like I belong somewhere. Not because anyone has told me I belong.
Just because the welcome is genuine and the warmth is real and nobody in this house is performing.
Dinner is incredible. Nancy has made steak with roasted potatoes and green beans from her garden and homemade dinner rolls that are so light I eat three of them before anyone notices.
Richard carves the steak with careful precision and serves each plate himself.
We eat at the big kitchen table with mismatched napkins and water glasses that look like they came from three different sets.
"So, Kaitlyn," Nancy says, "tell me about your family."
"My parents are retired. They moved to Greenfield about four years ago. My sister Jennifer lives here in Sugar Ridge with her husband and their two kids."
"Jennifer Spellman? Married to Paul?"
"That’s her."
"Paul did the tile work in our upstairs bathroom last year. Wonderful job. Very respectful young man."
"I’ll let Jennifer know you said that. She’ll be thrilled."
"And what about you? You said you’ve been at the bank six years. Do you enjoy it?"
"I love it. I was recently promoted to Assistant Branch Operations Supervisor."
Nancy looks at Kyle with an expression I can only describe as pointed. "Did you hear that, Kyle? Supervisor."
"I heard it, Mom. I was at the bank when it happened."
"And you didn’t tell me about the promotion specifically?"
"I told you she got promoted."
"You said ‘she got a new job.’ That is not the same as supervisor." She turns back to me. "He undersells everything. Always has. When he bought the farmhouse, he told me he ‘found a place.’ I drove over there and it was an entire house on twelve acres."
I laugh. Richard shakes his head. Kyle turns red and focuses very intently on his potatoes.
"I think it’s nice," I say. "He’s humble."
"He’s maddening is what he is." But Nancy says it with so much affection that it couldn’t be anything other than pride.
After dinner we have the peach cobbler. It is, without any exaggeration, one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. The peaches are soft and sweet and the crust is buttery and golden and I eat two helpings and consider a third before my stomach intervenes.
"This is amazing, Nancy."
"It’s my grandmother’s recipe. I’ll write it down for you before you leave."
"I would love that."
We clear the table together and I insist on helping with dishes.
Nancy and I stand side by side at the sink, her washing and me drying, and she tells me stories about Kyle as a child.
How he brought home a stray cat when he was six and named it General.
How he built a treehouse in the backyard that was so crooked his father had to take it apart and rebuild it, but Kyle helped with every nail.
How he chose to come back to Sugar Ridge after college even though he had job offers in two other cities because he couldn’t stand the idea of being far from home.
"He’s a good son," she says. "And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother. He works hard. He keeps his promises. He takes care of the people he loves." She hands me a clean plate and looks at me sideways. "He’s been waiting for you for a long time, you know."
"He told me."
"Did he tell you he used to come home from the bank and talk about the teller who remembered his name? This was years ago. Before you were with anyone. He’d come home and say ‘Mom, this girl at the bank asked me about the store today’ or ‘she remembered that I had a vet appointment for the dog.’ Little things.
But they mattered to him because nobody else paid attention like that. "
I don’t know what to say to that. The idea that Kyle was noticing me the same way I was noticing him, for the same reasons, for the same length of time, is something I’m still getting used to.
"I care about him very much, Nancy."
"I know you do. I can see it." She squeezes my arm with a soapy hand. "Welcome to the family, sweetheart."
Kyle and Richard come back inside from the porch where they’ve been talking. Richard sits in his chair and opens his newspaper again and Kyle comes into the kitchen and looks at me and then at his mother and then back at me.
"What did she tell you?"
"Nothing," Nancy and I say at the same time.
"That’s exactly what I was afraid of."
We leave around eight. Nancy sends us home with a bag containing two containers of leftover steak, four dinner rolls, a full container of peach cobbler, and the written recipe on a piece of notebook paper.
Richard shakes my hand at the door and tells me I’m welcome anytime.
Biscuit follows us to the truck and wags until we’re out of the driveway.
Kyle drives me home. The road is dark and quiet and the truck’s headlights cut through the country darkness.
"So?" he says.
"I love them."
"They love you too. My mom texted me while you were in the bathroom and said, and I quote, ‘If you let this one go I will never forgive you.’"
I laugh. "She barely knows me."
"She knows enough. My mom has always been a good judge of character. She sized up every friend I ever brought home in about thirty seconds. She told me Travis was ‘all surface’ the first time she met him at a Rotary event."
"She said that?"
"Those exact words."
He reaches over and takes my hand. We drive in silence for a while and I look out the window at the dark fields and the occasional porch light and the stars that are clearer out here than they are in town.
"Kyle."
"Yeah?"
"I want to tell you something."
"Okay."
"I’ve been afraid. Since everything with Travis, I’ve been afraid of trusting the wrong person again. Of believing in something and having it turn out to be a performance. And you’ve been patient with that fear in a way that I’m not sure I’ve properly thanked you for."
"You don’t owe me thanks for being patient."
"Maybe not. But I owe you honesty." I squeeze his hand. "I’m not afraid anymore. I trust you. Completely. Not because you’ve proven anything or passed some test. Because you’ve just been yourself every single day since the first time I met you and that’s more than enough."
He pulls the truck to the side of the road. He puts it in park. He turns to face me and he takes both of my hands in his. His face is serious and open and honest in the way that only Kyle’s face can be.
"Kaitlyn, I have admired you for years. Not just liked you.
Admired you. The way you treat people. The way you show up every day and do your job with so much care.
The way you remembered my name and asked about my dog and listened to me talk about fence posts and delivery trucks without ever making me feel boring.
I fell for you a long time ago and I have never once wavered. "
"I know. I can feel it."
"I’m not going anywhere. Not ever. You don’t have to worry about that."
"I’m not worried."
He leans across the console and kisses me. It’s soft and warm and unhurried and it tastes faintly of peach cobbler and I think that from now on peach cobbler will always make me think of this exact moment. This man. This truck. This dark road. This feeling of being chosen completely.
He drives me the rest of the way home. He walks me to my door. He kisses me goodnight and waits until I’m inside before he gets back in his truck.
I watch him pull away through the window. Then I sit on my couch and I hold the cobbler recipe in my hands and I read Nancy’s handwriting in the lamplight.
I imagine Sunday dinners at that kitchen table. Holidays around that fireplace. Summer evenings on that porch with Biscuit at my feet and Kyle beside me. A life built on honesty and steadiness and the quiet certainty that the person next to you is exactly who they say they are.
I fold the recipe and put it in my kitchen drawer. I change into pajamas. I brush my teeth. I get into bed.
For the first time since all of this started, I’m not thinking about what I lost. I’m thinking about what I found.
And what I found is better than anything I ever had.