Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Millie
The Creekside Diner had a porch the size of an afterthought—four tables, a ceiling fan that moved the heat around without actually reducing it, and a view of the main street that made you feel like you were watching Briar Hill happen in real time.
Gage had wanted to come. I'd told him I was fine, that I was meeting Haven for lunch, that he didn't need to escort me everywhere just because I was eighteen weeks pregnant and starting to show.
He'd looked at my stomach and then at my face and I'd pointed at the door and he'd gone, but not before kissing me in a way that made Haven, waiting on the porch steps, cover her eyes.
"You two are disgusting," she said, when I came out.
"You're just jealous."
She snorted. But she was smiling.
We got the corner table, the one with the good sightline to the street.
It was a Tuesday in October and the air had finally broken, that first real cool front of the season coming through overnight, and the whole town felt like it had exhaled.
Haven ordered sweet tea before she sat down and I did the same, which still felt like a small victory—the first trimester had taken caffeine from me entirely, and for six weeks the smell of tea or coffee alone had been enough to send me back to bed.
The second trimester had given it back. I wasn't taking that for granted.
Marlena came out with menus tucked under her arm, and I felt the small warmth I always did when I saw her.
I'd met her maybe half a dozen times now—Sunday dinners at the main house mostly, once when she'd come by the cottage to drop off a pie for Peggy and ended up staying two hours, the two of them at the kitchen table talking in the easy shorthand of women who'd known each other since they were girls.
She and Peggy had grown up together, which meant she'd been watching the Holt family from the inside for forty years, and she'd looked at me the first time we met with careful, assessing eyes—taking stock of who'd landed in Gage's kitchen—and then something in her face had settled and she'd said you'll do in a tone I'd taken as the compliment it was apparently meant to be.
She was sixty now, Stetson's mother, still sharp-faced and pretty, silver threading through her dark hair. The particular self-possession of a woman who'd survived something and come out the other side without making it her whole personality.
"Ladies." She set the menus down. "How are we doing today."
"Good," I said. "Better now that it's finally under ninety degrees."
She smiled at that. "Thought summer was never going to let go this year." Her eyes dropped briefly to my stomach—not rude, just acknowledging—and something softened in her face. "You're looking well. Second trimester treating you better?"
"Much better. First trimester took my coffee. I'm still not over it."
"Gage told Stetson you cried about it."
"I did not—" I stopped. "I teared up once. That's different."
Haven laughed. Marlena's smile stayed, but I noticed her eyes had moved to the window, just for a second, scanning the street outside. Then she pulled her notepad out and looked back at us.
"What can I get you."
We ordered. Marlena wrote it down and went inside, and Haven watched her go with a small frown.
"Is she okay?"
I followed her gaze through the diner window, where Marlena was clipping our ticket to the line. "She seemed fine to me."
"She kept looking at the street." Haven turned back to her sweet tea. "She gets like that sometimes when Arlo's been around."
I looked at her.
"She doesn't talk about it," Haven said. "None of them do. But you can tell." She picked at the edge of her napkin. "Stetson gets the same way. This kind of—" she paused, looking for the word. "Braced. Like he's waiting for something he already knows is coming."
I thought about that. About what it meant to have a person in your life who moved through the world like a weather system—not asking permission, not announcing himself, just arriving and leaving damage and moving on.
About Peggy's face at the dinner table the night Arlo came.
About Stetson saying blood doesn't mean a damn thing in that flat, final voice.
"She'll be okay," I said. "She's got Peggy."
Haven nodded. Looked at the street again.
I did too, without meaning to.
Arlo was coming down the sidewalk on the other side of the street.
He wasn't looking at the diner. He was walking with his hands in his pockets, that same unhurried gait, taking up space the way he always did.
He'd been in town more lately—Gage's lawyer had told us to expect it, that the closer the claim got to resolution the more Arlo would circle.
Trying to find angles. Trying to apply pressure in the small ways that didn't show up in court filings.
Haven had gone still beside me.
"It's fine," I said. Quietly.
"I know," she said. Not convincingly.
Arlo crossed at the corner and I thought he was going to keep going—but he looked up. Found us on the porch. That pleasant, weathered face doing the thing it did, the smile that was really just a mask with better manners than the man underneath.
He stopped.
His eyes moved to my stomach.
I put my hand there, flat, without thinking.
Just—there. Eighteen weeks of something that was already real, already ours, already named in the quiet conversations Gage and I had in the dark after he'd spent twenty minutes with his palm pressed to my belly waiting to see if he could feel anything yet.
Arlo looked at my hand on my stomach for a long moment.
Then he looked at my face.
I looked back. Didn't smile. Didn't look away.
The door behind me opened and Marlena came out with our drinks.
She set them down without looking at the street, and then she straightened up and she did look, and something moved across her face that had sixty years of history in it—not fear, long past fear, something quieter and more permanent than that.
She looked at Arlo the way you look at a scar. Just acknowledging it was there.
Arlo's eyes moved to Marlena.
Whatever he'd been calculating shifted. The pleasant mask stayed but something underneath it changed, reconfigured, and for just a second I saw what Gage had been dealing with his whole life—a man who kept score of everything and had never once come out ahead and still couldn't stop playing.
Then he crossed the street.
Haven went still beside me.
He came up the porch steps like he'd been invited, pulled out the empty chair at our table without asking, and sat down. Up close he looked like an older, harder version of Adam—same jaw, same stillness, none of the care.
"Millie," he said. Pleasant as anything. "Didn't know you were a regular here."
"I am now," I said.
He looked at Haven. "Haven. How's your mama."
"Fine," Haven said. Flat.
He nodded like she'd said something warm. His eyes moved back to me—to my stomach, briefly, then back to my face. "You're showing."
"Eighteen weeks."
"Mm." He leaned back in the chair, unhurried. "Talked to my lawyer this week. Interesting conversation."
I waited.
"Turns out there's some specific language in the deed I hadn't looked at closely enough.
" He said it like he was sharing something helpful.
Like he was doing me a favor. "Natural heir, produced within the claimant's primary household.
" A pause. "Produced within a legitimate household is how Hargrove's reading it.
Means the child has to be born in wedlock.
" He spread his hands. "Bastard can't inherit. That's just the law."
The word hit the table the same way it had at dinner. I felt Haven go rigid beside me.
I looked at him. Kept my face even. "Is that right."
"I'm just letting you know where things stand." Still pleasant. Still reasonable. "Gage is a good man. I've got nothing against him personally. But the deed is the deed, and if that baby's born out of wedlock—"
"We're engaged," I said.
He smiled. "Engaged isn't married."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
He held my gaze for a moment, looking for something—doubt, maybe, or fear, or the particular wobble of a woman who wasn't sure she was staying. I didn't give him any of it. I'd spent eighteen weeks becoming someone who knew exactly where she was and why.
He stood. Settled his hat. "You have a good afternoon."
He went down the porch steps and kept walking, back the way he'd come.
Haven waited until he'd crossed the street. "That's not actually true," she said. "Is it? The bastard thing?"
"I have no idea." I was already reaching for my phone.
Gage picked up on the second ring.
"We need to get married," I said. "Soon. Arlo just—"
"I know," he said. "Hargrove called me an hour ago."
I stopped. "You already knew."
"Was going to tell you tonight." A pause. "Didn't want you to feel like you were being pushed into something."
I looked out at the street. At the spot where Arlo had been standing. At Marlena, visible through the diner window, watching me with her arms crossed and her face doing nothing at all.
"Gage."
"Mm."
"Ask me," I said.
A beat. "Millie. Will you marry me."
"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes. Now stop being careful with me and go call whoever you need to call."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Yes ma'am."
I hung up.
Haven was staring at me. "Did you just—on the phone—"
"He already asked properly," I said. "Months ago. That was just logistics."
Haven grabbed a piece of cornbread and pointed it at me. "You are the most unbothered person I have ever met."
I smiled and blushed. “Guess Gage is rubbing off on me.”