Chapter 20
TWENTY
Gage
The ceremony took eleven minutes.
I know because my dad timed it and reported this to my mother afterward with the satisfied expression of a man who considered efficiency a virtue.
Eleven minutes, a judge, and two witnesses—Daniela, who cried through the whole thing, and Stetson, who didn't but stood very straight and looked like a man taking something seriously.
Millie wore a dress the color of heavy cream, simple, nothing complicated, her hair loose the way I liked it.
She walked toward me across the courthouse lawn with her hand on her stomach—habit now, always that hand—and the October light was doing something unreasonable to her and I looked at her and thought: there it is.
That's the thing I didn't know I was waiting for.
I told her so, quietly, while the judge was still talking.
She looked up at me. "Right now?"
"Seemed like the right time."
"Gage." Her eyes went bright. "I'm going to cry."
"I know," I said. "I love you anyway."
She laughed—wet and undone—and the judge paused and looked at us over his glasses and we said sorry in unison and finished getting married.
The reception was at the main house. My mother had transformed it in the three weeks since Millie had said obviously yes on the phone outside the Creekside Diner—string lights in the live oaks, tables on the lawn, Elena Calloway installed in the kitchen two days ago and already running half of it.
My mother had ceded the counter space without argument, which told me everything I needed to know about how that relationship was going to go.
I stood on the porch and watched it all happen.
My dad and Robert Calloway were at the far end of the lawn.
My dad had his hands moving the way he did when he was explaining the geology of the creek bed, and Robert was nodding along with the expression of a man who hadn't expected to spend his daughter's wedding reception learning about limestone and was finding, to his own surprise, that he didn't mind.
My mother and Elena stood close at the food table, already talking in the shorthand of women who've decided to be friends and are simply getting started. My mother laughed—a real one.
Millie appeared at my elbow.
She'd traded her heels for something flat and her cheeks were flushed and her hair had come half loose from wherever she'd pinned it and she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life.
She leaned into my side. I put my arm around her and felt her belly against my hip—round and solid and real—and thought: mine. All of it. Finally.
"Your dad is explaining limestone to my dad," she said.
"I see that."
"My dad looks genuinely interested."
"Your dad is a good man."
She smiled. Her eyes moved across the lawn to where Daniela stood at the edge of the dance floor, head tipped back, laughing. Sawyer beside her, saying whatever had made that happen. The distance between them was not very much distance at all.
"They've been like that all day," Millie said.
"I know."
"You're not going to do anything about it."
"Not my business."
She looked up at me. "Since when."
"Since the last time I tried to manage something it resulted in an eleven-minute courthouse wedding."
"You loved that wedding."
"I did. Eleven minutes was exactly right."
Across the lawn, Haven said something to Wyatt.
He shook his head. She said something else, and he looked at her for a moment with that flat, unreadable expression he used on everyone, and then he let her pull him toward the dance floor.
He danced the way he did everything—correctly, no wasted movement, one hand at her waist and his eyes somewhere over her shoulder.
Haven looked up at him like he'd hung the moon.
My mother materialized beside me with a wine glass, watched them for a moment.
"She's sweet on him," she said. Fond, faintly amused, not concerned.
"She's twenty," Millie said.
"Mm." My mother watched Haven say something that made Wyatt's jaw move. "He's not interested. You can always tell with Wyatt." She took a sip of wine. "That boy would rather work himself to death than let someone take care of him."
Millie glanced up at me sideways. I kept my face even.
"What about you," my mother said, turning to me. "Did you give him trouble about dancing?"
"I haven't danced yet," I said.
She looked at Millie. Millie looked at me.
"That's a Holt trait," my mother said. "Making things harder than they need to be."
"Eleven minutes," Millie said solemnly.
My mother laughed and kissed her cheek and moved back toward Elena, toward the food and the string lights and the ongoing limestone situation at the far end of the lawn.
Daniela drifted past on Sawyer's arm—he'd steered her onto the dance floor and she'd apparently decided to allow it—and she caught Millie's eye over his shoulder and made a face. Millie pressed her lips together.
"Don't," I said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're thinking loudly."
"That's not a thing."
"It is with you." I turned her toward me, hands at her waist, careful around the bump.
She put her palms flat on my chest and looked up at me and I looked back at her and thought about seven months ago—a waiting room, a sunflower print, a spreadsheet that didn't add up—and about everything that had happened between that morning and this one.
"What," she said.
"Nothing." I pressed my mouth to her temple. "Dance with me."
"You don't dance."
"I do now."
She laughed and leaned in and we moved slowly, not really dancing, just standing close while the music played, her cheek against my chest. My hand found her stomach the way it always did. Automatic. Like checking something I needed to know was still there.
Something moved under my palm.
I went still.
Millie looked up. Her eyes were bright. "She's been doing that all day," she said. "I didn't want to say anything until you felt it."
I kept my hand there and waited.
There—again. Small and definite, pressing back. Hello.
I looked at my wife.
My wife looked at me.
The string lights moved in the October breeze. Behind us Haven laughed at something, and my dad was still talking about limestone, and Elena Calloway was feeding my mother something off a spoon, and Daniela was letting my cousin hold her closer than was strictly necessary.
The ranch spread out in the dark past the tree line. The creek ran below, somewhere. Three generations of limestone and cedar and Holt stubbornness holding the ground the way it always had, the way it always would.
My daughter pressed her hand against mine through six inches of Millie.
"Hey," I said quietly. To both of them. "I've got you.”