27. Bree
— ? —
Bree
The knocking started at seven in the morning.
I was already awake, had been awake for hours, staring at the ceiling of the inn room and trying to process the fact that my home was ash and my daughter was safe and my ex-husband was sleeping in the chair beside the bed because he’d refused to leave us alone.
Rosie was curled against my side, her breathing steady, her small hand clutching the stuffed pig she’d somehow managed to keep through the chaos. Rafael had carried her from the hospital to the car to the inn, and he hadn’t let go of her until I’d pulled her into the bed with me.
The knocking came again. Louder.
Rafael was on his feet before I could move, crossing to the door with the protective instinct of a man who’d spent the last twelve hours expecting threats from every direction.
He opened it.
“Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”
My mother’s voice. My mother’s face, appearing in the doorway, shoving past Rafael without ceremony.
“Mija.” She crossed the room in three steps and had me in her arms before I could sit up. “Oh, mija, we came as fast as we could. Your father drove ninety the whole way. I thought we were going to die before we got here.”
“Mom, I’m okay-”
“You’re not okay. Your house burned down. My granddaughter was inside. Nothing about this is okay.”
“Marisol, let her breathe.” My father appeared behind her, his weathered face tight with worry. “Bree. Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Dad. We’re all fine.”
“The baby?”
“Rosie’s right here. She’s sleeping.”
My parents turned to look at the small form on the bed. My mother made a sound, somewhere between relief and anguish, and sank onto the mattress to gather Rosie into her arms.
More voices in the hallway. Heavier footsteps.
“Rafael. Where is she? Where’s Brianna?”
Sylvia Grant swept in with Warren a step behind her, her elegant composure cracked wide open, and the inn room, which had already been full, stopped having any room in it at all.
“Brianna.” Sylvia had my hands before I’d registered her crossing the floor. “We came the moment we heard. Are you hurt? Is the baby hurt?”
“We’re okay. Everyone’s okay.”
And then the room went quiet in a very particular way, because my mother had stood up from the bed, and she and Sylvia Grant were taking each other’s measure across it. Two women who had spent twenty years on opposite sides of a rivalry neither of them had started.
“Marisol Salazar,” my mother said, in the voice she used for people she’d already made up her mind about.
“Sylvia Grant.” A pause. “Your daughter is remarkable. I hope you’ve always known that.”
“I’ve known it since the day she was born.” My mother’s chin lifted. “Some of us were paying attention.”
Warren made a sound that might’ve been a cough.
“Mom,” I said.
“I’m being lovely.” She wasn’t being lovely. But Sylvia had caught the grief underneath it, the four years both of them had lost, and after a moment she reached out and took my mother’s hand, and my mother let her.
My father watched the whole thing from the foot of the bed with his arms crossed. Then his eyes moved to Rafael, still standing guard by the door in yesterday’s clothes with Rosie’s stuffed pig somehow tucked under one arm, and I watched my father do the math.
“So.” Gus said it slow. “You two are together again.”
It wasn’t a question. Rafael straightened, bracing.
“Dad-”
“I threw him into a produce table,” I offered. “For what it’s worth.”
“She did,” Rafael confirmed. “It was deserved.”
My father studied him for a long moment. Then he grunted, which from Gus Salazar was practically a benediction, and uncrossed his arms.
“We’ll talk,” he told Rafael. “Man to man. About the last six years.”
“Yes, sir. I’d expect nothing less.”
“Warren.” My father turned to the man he’d spent two decades trying to beat at auction. “Long time.”
“Gus.” Warren inclined his head. “That business with the distribution contracts, ninety-seven. You outmaneuvered me badly.”
“You had it coming.”
“I did.” And to my genuine astonishment, Warren smiled. “It seems the children have made the argument moot. We’ve a granddaughter to spoil now, and I’d rather not spend her childhood fighting you over grain futures.”
My father considered that. Then he put out his hand, and Warren took it, and the oldest feud I’d been raised inside of ended without ceremony, in a small room at Patsy’s inn, because a four-year-old had been born with both their stubbornness in her.
Rosie stirred.
She blinked awake slowly, her face scrunching against the morning light. Then her eyes focused on the crowd of people surrounding the bed, and they went wide.
“Mommy?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Why are there so many people?”
“These are your grandparents, baby.” I gestured to the Grants. “Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Warren. They came to make sure you’re okay.”
Rosie studied them with the frank assessment of a four-year-old. Then her face split into a grin.
“I have MORE grandparents?”
“You do.”
“AMAZING!”
She launched herself off the bed and into Sylvia’s arms with the force of a small cannonball. Sylvia caught her, laughing, tears streaming down her face.
“Hello, sweetheart. I’m so happy to finally meet you.”
“You’re very pretty,” Rosie announced. “Are you rich?”
“Rosie!” I said.
“What? Emma at school says rich people dress fancy, and she’s dressed fancy.”
“That’s - we don’t ask people-”
“Yes,” Warren interrupted, his voice warm. “We’re very rich. And we’re going to spoil you terribly, if your mother allows it.”
Rosie’s eyes went huge. She turned to me with naked hope.
“Later,” I said. “We’ll discuss spoiling parameters later.”
Rosie nodded solemnly, then wiggled out of Sylvia’s arms to hug Warren, then my mother, then my father. She made the rounds of the room, distributing affection with democratic enthusiasm.
Then she stopped in front of Rafael.
He’d been standing near the door, watching the chaos with a quiet smile. He looked exhausted and happy and more at home than I’d ever seen him.
“So,” Rosie said. “You ARE my daddy.”
It wasn’t a question. Somewhere in the past few days, she’d figured it out. Or maybe she’d known all along and was just waiting for someone to confirm it.
Rafael looked at me. I nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
Rosie considered this.
“Good,” she said finally. “I knew it. You have my eyes.”
She hugged him, small arms wrapping around his legs, and Rafael sank to his knees to hold her properly. His face was buried in her hair, and his shoulders were shaking.
I wiped my own eyes and pretended I wasn’t crying.
“Well,” my mother said briskly, “I assume we’re going to fix that farm. Who has work gloves?”
We drove out to the property together. Two cars full of grandparents and parents and one small girl who insisted on sitting in Rafael’s lap despite all laws regarding car seats.
“Just this once,” I said. “Because of the circumstances.”
“Understood,” Rafael agreed, his arms wrapped securely around her.
The smoke had cleared. The damage was visible in the morning light, stark and devastating, the barn a skeleton and the house worse, half the structure collapsed, the rest blackened beyond recognition.
I stopped at the gate.
Half the town was already there.
Molly. Dot. Martha and Ruth and Peter the sheriff. The women from my self-defense class, the farmers I bought supplies from, the families whose kids went to school with Rosie. They were everywhere, spread across my property, armed with tools and lumber and a grim determination that moved mountains.
“Bree!” Molly spotted me first. She came running, bandaged arm held close to her chest, and threw the other one around me. “You’re here. Good. We’ve been waiting for the boss.”
“You’ve been - what is all this?”
“What does it look like?” Dot appeared beside us, a hammer in one hand and a coffee thermos in the other. “We’re fixing your farm.”
“But-”
“No buts.” Ruth pushed through the crowd. “You think we were going to let you rebuild alone? After everything you’ve done for this town?”
“The self-defense class alone,” Martha added. “I used that wrist grip on my brother-in-law last Thanksgiving. Very satisfying.”
“The point is,” Molly said, “you’re family. And family shows up.”
I couldn’t speak.
Rafael’s arm came around my shoulders.
“She’s overwhelmed,” he said. “Give her a minute.”
“She can have thirty seconds. Then she’s getting a hammer like the rest of us.” Dot thrust the thermos at me. “Coffee first. Then crying. Then work.”
I took the thermos and drank the coffee, and I didn’t manage to stop crying.
“I’m glad,” Rafael said quietly, so only I could hear, “that everyone knows how great you are. You deserve this kind of love. You deserve people who show up. You deserve more than I ever gave you.”
I turned into his chest. Let myself be held while the tears came.
“We’re going to fix it,” I said. “All of it.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “We are.”
We worked all day.
The grandparents were surprisingly useful.
Warren, it turned out, had spent summers on a construction crew during college.
Sylvia organized the volunteers with the efficiency of someone who’d run charity galas for thirty years.
My father and mother fell into the rhythm of farm work they’d known their whole lives.
Rafael was everywhere, hauling lumber, directing traffic, making sure everyone had water. He’d shed his shirt by noon, working in just his jeans, and I caught more than one of the women watching him with appreciation.
I didn’t blame them. I was watching too.
By sunset, the barn skeleton had been cleared and the foundation for a new one had been marked out. The house was a longer project, but temporary structures were going up, and someone had donated a camper that would serve as living quarters until the real rebuilding could begin.
“Want us back in the morning?” Peter asked as people started to leave.
“If you’re willing.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” He tipped his hat at me, that familiar hopeful look in his blue eyes, and then glanced at Rafael and seemed to think better of whatever he’d been about to say. “See you tomorrow, Bree.”
“See you tomorrow, Peter.”
The last truck disappeared down the drive.
I stood in the middle of my ruined farm, surrounded by the people who loved me, and felt a thing I hadn’t felt in years.
Hope.
Rafael came to stand beside me. Rosie was on his hip, exhausted and filthy and perfectly content.
“Good day,” he said.
“The best kind of bad day.”
“What’s next?”
I looked at the foundation. At the marks in the dirt where the new barn would rise. At the temporary structures and the borrowed equipment and the evidence of a community that had my back.
“We keep building,” I said. “Until it’s done.”
“I like that plan.”
“It’s a good plan,” I agreed.
“You’re a good planner.”
“I learned from a nerd who charts Butterbean’s moods.”
He laughed. Rosie giggled without knowing why.
And we walked back toward the camper together, as a family, ready to start again.