Roots
SLADE
“Icalled my agent three weeks ago,” I say. “Told him I’m retiring.”
Her breath catches.
“I’m not going to Denver,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.
I want to stay in Marble Falls, at Wild Rose.
I want to wake up in bed with you every morning and work this land and watch you turn everything you touch into better-than-gold.
” My fingertips trace her cheek. “You’re building something here.
Something real and beautiful and brand-new, and I want to be the man standing next to you while you do it. ”
Her eyes are very bright.
“You walked into my life,” I say. “And you changed everything. You made me want things I’d spent years telling myself I didn’t need. I want to put down roots and call this place home and mean it. As long as you’re making it a home with me.”
The mountain peaks turn golden as the clouds move away from the sun. Tear tracks shine on her soft cheeks as she gazes up at me. My wife.
“I love you,” I tell her. “I’m completely head over heels in love with you and I’m done keeping that to myself. Words still ain’t my strength but you’ll be hearing those three from me every single day of our lives, I promise you that.”
I go down on one knee on the ice. She’s already wearing her diamond ring, so I trace it as it rests on her finger.
“Marry me. For real. Eyes open, no deals, no expiration date.” I kiss the back of her hand. “Just you and me. Forever.”
She launches herself off her blades and into my arms.
She’s laughing and crying at the same time, her arms locked around my neck, her legs around my waist, her face pressed into the side of my neck and her tears cold against my skin in the cold air. Lucky barks around us and attempts a twirl before scrambling on the ice and catching herself.
Then she pushes her nose between us and shoves her whole head against Lila’s hip. Lila laughs through her tears and wraps one arm around Lucky’s neck, the other still around me. The three of us are standing on a frozen lake in Montana, but I’ve never felt warmer in my life.
“Yes,” Lila says, into my neck. “Yes. A million times yes.”
I exhale, relief and triumph surging through me all together.
She pulls back to look at me, eyes wet, cheeks flushed, the cold turning her nose pink. “I moved to this town looking for a place that felt like home. And I found it. But it wasn’t the town, Slade. It was you. You are the home I was looking for.”
She kisses me. Or I kiss her, I don’t know. All that matters is that she said yes. Yes to me, yes to forever.
“I love you,” she says, when we pull back. “I was waiting for you to realize it. I was so scared you weren’t going to get there in time.”
“I can be a little slow sometimes,” I admit. “I’m working on the whole ‘facing your feelings’ thing.”
She laughs and pulls my face down to hers again and kisses me in the middle of the frozen lake with the cold air all around us and Lucky bearing witness with joyful tail wags as the puppies yip happily in the background.
I skate us slowly back toward shore, none of us in any hurry.
We’re almost to the bank when I hear the sound of tires on the ranch road. Then hoofbeats.
Walker’s truck pulls into the clearing first, parking beside mine. The doors open and Sadie climbs out, twins bundled against the cold, and Walker follows behind her with Jonah scrambling down from the back seat.
Behind them, coming through the pines on horseback, my father and Rafe and Tanner, their breath and the horses’ breath rising together in the cold air. Josie is on horseback beside them too, evidently home early for Christmas.
Lila lifts her head from my shoulder.
“Did you plan this?” she says.
“No,” I say.
Which is true. I didn’t plan it. I just may have mentioned to Walker last week that I was taking Lila up to the lake today, and no doubt Walker told Sadie, and the whole Rhodes family phone tree did its thing from there.
We reach the bank and step off the ice.
Tanner swings down from his horse and looks at me and his face splits into a grin.
“Holy shit,” he says. “Slade. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”
I hadn’t realized I was smiling, but I look down at Lila and am pretty sure I’m grinning like a fool. “Lila just agreed to be my wife.”
Josie lets out a little yelp and then she’s rushing over to Lila and giving her a bone-crushing hug. “I knew it! I knew Slade was hopelessly in love with you.” She glares at me even as she hugs Lila. “Couldn’t have just nailed the first proposal, could you? Idiot.”
“I know,” I say, unruffled.
Dad grins. “Cut him a break, sweetie. Every man in love is an idiot.” Dad’s knowing gaze sweeps over all his sons.
Jonah pushes through to the front of the group, already having scooped up one of the puppies in his arms. The puppy licks Jonah’s cheeks as my nephew looks between me and Lila with his brow furrowed.
“But you’re already married to Auntie Lila,” he says.
“Yup.”
“So why did she agree to be your wife if she’s already your wife?”
“It’s complicated,” I say.
Jonah looks at his father. Walker shrugs.
“Does this mean Uncle Slade is getting old?” Jonah asks. “Because Dad says old people forget things they already did.”
“I said that one time,” Walker says.
“You said it about Grandpa and the tractor.”
“Excuse me?” Daryl says in an offended tone, though his eyes are crinkling with mirth.
“That was different—”
“Uncle Slade.” Jonah looks at me with great solemnity. “If you forget you’re married to Auntie Lila again, I’ll remind you.”
“I appreciate that,” I say.
As the group starts chattering amongst themselves, Dad comes straight to me and give me a bear hug.
“I’m proud of you,” he says low in my ear, just for me to hear. “And I know your mama is too. She used to worry about you most, you know.”
I frown. “She did?”
“Not because you were the most troubled. Because you felt everything the deepest and worked the hardest to make sure nobody knew it.” He squeezes my good shoulder. “She’d be so glad you stopped doing that.”
“I should have stopped sooner.”
“You stopped when you were ready,” he says. “That’s how it works.”
He lets go.
“Now go be with your wife,” he says. “That’s what she always wanted for you. Someone you loved bigger than your fear of losing them. She told me so herself, at the very end.”
I think about my mother in that hospital room. About the fact that she’d been worrying, not about herself, not about what was coming for her, but about her child. She was always putting the people she loved first.
I look at my wife. The person I’ll always put first.
She’s laughing right now, her pink hair wild in the cold air, one of the puppies tucked against her chest.
Mom wanted this for me. I almost didn’t let myself have it.
Never again.
Dad gives Lila a hug next. He tells her, “My wife Marianne would have known, from the very first minute, that you were exactly what this family needed.” His voice is steady but his eyes are bright.
“And I want you to know, you’re not just Slade’s wife.
You’re a Rhodes. One of ours. You have been since the moment you walked through the gate.
Wild Rose is your home now, same as it’s always been ours. Same as it always will be.”
He pulls her in for a hug and I watch the tears run down my wife’s beautiful face as she smiles.
I look at my family gathered on the bank of the frozen lake in the last of the light.
Walker has his arm around Sadie, the twins bundled between them.
Jonah is letting Lucky nibble at a piece of beef jerky he’s produced from his pocket, while two of the puppies have escaped the truck bed and are skittering toward the ice with no concept of danger.
Tanner and Rafe are already crouching down to scoop them up before they reach the bank, their big hands completely gentle around their furry little bodies. Josie takes the puppy from Rafe and laughs as the puppy starts enthusiastically licking her face.
Lucky watches them all serenely, a mother who has accepted that her children are a collective menace and she can’t do everything herself.
It takes a village.
And I have one.
Lucky ambles over and leans against my leg. I give her an absent-minded pet, my eyes on Lila as she walks over to me. She’s got the littlest puppy, the runt, in her arms.
I pull my wife into my arms and kiss her cheek. “It’s about time we name him,” I say. “I know you’ve got ideas.”
“Yeah, I do,” she smiles. She looks down at the puppy, then up at me. “How about Chance?”
“It’s perfect,” I tell her.
She gives me a hopeful look. “I’m pretty sure Jonah’s convinced Sadie and Walker to take one of the puppies. And Rafe wants one too. So does your Dad. Which means this little guy still needs a home.”
“Lila, sweetheart, how many animals do you intend to bring into our household?”
“I’ve always wanted a cat,” she says. “Or better yet, two cats. There’s a bonded pair who came into the animal shelter last week.”
I sigh, pretending to resigned to my fate, when the truth is I couldn’t be happier that this is my life now. “So we’re gonna have two dogs and two cats. What’s next, a couple of horses?”
She grins up at me, eyes sparkling. “Of course. But I was also thinking… if you want enough kids to fill a hockey roster, we’d better get started. You’re not getting any younger. “
I laugh, then tip her chin up towards me for a soft, deep kiss. “In that case, baby, we’re getting started the second we get home.”
Attachment is the root of all suffering—I spent more than a decade believing that. Organizing my entire life around it. Moving on before anything could take root, before anything could grow and therefore be cut down.
Standing here, I realize I got it all wrong. Those words weren’t an argument against love. They were an argument against desperately holding on, against trying to stop things from changing.
I’m not afraid of attachment anymore. Not afraid of changing. Not afraid of putting down roots.
Because roots are also what hold you in the ground when the storm comes. Roots are what nourish you. Roots are what connect you to everything else and make it possible to grow. To bear fruit.
The fruit of my mother’s love is all around us. It’s the family she built and the kids she raised and the place she loved for half her life. She’s gone but her roots are still here, still holding, still feeding everything that grows out of them.
Now it’s time for my wife and I to put down roots too. To add a few branches of our own to the family tree.
Luckily, there’s no better dirt to plant those seeds than here at Wild Rose. Our heartland.