Chapter 10 #2
Claire set her delivery on the kitchen counter and accepted the tea Agnes pressed into her hands. They settled in the front room, Agnes in a wingback chair that held the impression of long occupation.
“My husband Harold died eleven years ago.” Agnes started the conversation without preamble, the way people do when they’ve integrated loss into their identity rather than fighting it. “Best friend I ever had. Married forty-four years.”
“I’m sorry.” Claire meant it.
“Don’t be.” Agnes sipped her tea. “Didn’t say it for sympathy.
Trying to make a point. I had forty-four years with an exceptional person.
That’s more than many people get.” She set her cup on a coaster and stared hard at Claire.
“I spent the first three years after he died convincing myself I was fine and didn’t need anyone’s help. ”
“What changed?”
Agnes tilted her head. “This community wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to maintain the fiction.
” A dry smile crossed her face. “Ruth Calloway showed up every Tuesday for six months whether I asked her to or not. Rachael started a Bible study in my living room under the pretense that it was the most convenient location, which it absolutely was not. Tessa Ray started having my cat food order delivered when she knew perfectly well I was capable of picking it up myself.”
“You let them in.” Claire’s iced tea had gone warm in her hands.
“Eventually. Took longer than it should have. I’d built a very tidy, very manageable life after Harold died, and I wanted to keep it.
Organized. Controlled. Safe.” She paused.
“Also quite lonely, though I didn’t admit that until Ruth sat down at my kitchen table one Tuesday and said, ‘Agnes, you are the loneliest person I’ve ever met, and I am not leaving until you talk to me.
’ And then she just sat there like a bump on a log. ”
Something about the image made Claire’s throat tighten. She picked at her jeans and avoided looking at Agnes until the lump in her throat eased. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Granny Mama asked me to.” Agnes’s expression was entirely unapologetic.
“She’s worried about you. So is Rachael.
So am I, though we haven’t met before today.
” She folded her hands in her lap. “You’ve been doing for this community what nobody asked you to do, which tells me you’ve already decided you belong here even if you haven’t told yourself yet.
And from what I understand, there may be a reason you’re afraid to admit it. ”
Heat flooded Claire’s face. She opened her mouth to deflect, but Agnes held up one small hand.
“I’m not asking you to confess anything.
I’m telling you what I know from experience.
Staying safe is a choice. Leaving before you can be left is a choice.
And choices have costs.” She picked up her tea again.
“Eleven years alone has taught me that the cost of refusing to love is lonelier than the cost of loving and losing.”
Twice now she’d been at a loss for words.
Agnes finished her tea and stood, taking Claire’s half-empty cup from her. “Now then. I think I’ve done what Mae asked. The rest is up to you. Go on. Head home and think about what I said.”
Claire walked out in a daze, climbed into her sedan, and drove to Granny Mama’s with the radio off, her thoughts too loud to compete with music. She sat with everything the day had handed her, and even then, her conversation with Luke infiltrated.
You’ve already decided you belong here.
Had she?
The question burrowed under her careful rationalizations.
I’m asking for the possibility.
Granny Mama had dinner started when Claire came through the door. The smell of beef stew brought an immediate sense of comfort. Claire set her empty bags by the door and sank into a kitchen chair.
“Long day.” Granny Mama didn’t make it a question.
“Good day.” She pulled the rubber band from her hair. “Weird but good.”
“Those are often the same.” Granny Mama stirred the pot with smooth, even strokes. “How was Agnes?”
Claire’s chin rested in her hand. “Like you really have to ask. You set me up with that one. She had the whole thing scripted and on point.”
“I sent you there because she’s a widow on my delivery list.” Granny Mama’s innocence was entirely unconvincing, especially when her voice went all light and she turned her head away, so all Claire saw was the back of her bun.
“Granny Mama.”
“Oh, all right.” She lowered herself into her chair. “Agnes has wisdom she should share more freely. I may have encouraged the opportunity.” She folded her hands on the table and stared at Claire. “I wasn’t sure you’d hear it from me.”
Claire stared at the scarred tabletop and tried to organize the thoughts that kept flying in every direction.
The more she tried to control them, the harder her pulse drummed her ribs.
“I keep telling myself I’m leaving. This was always temporary.
I have a career and a plan and a life that doesn’t include 4C Ranch or the people in it. ”
“And?”
“And today I drove to three people’s houses and felt more useful than I have in years.
” The laugh she tried to push out clogged her throat and made her eyes burn.
“I’ve been doing the financial work and the spreadsheets and the consulting but delivering food and sitting with people and being present for them changed everything.
I’ve been avoiding the things that scare me. ”
Granny Mama patted her hands, a choked sound emerging when she spoke. “You came back here for me, and I’m grateful, honey. More grateful than you’ll ever know.”
Claire’s eyes burned. “You never really needed me.” But she’d needed to come here. For whatever reason she kept refusing to acknowledge, she’d needed this time in Covenant Creek with Granny Mama.
Her whip-smart grandmother leaned forward. “Is your plan to go back to Billings about your career? Or is it about making sure you have an exit before you can love this place too much?”
She choked on the next inhale, her heart going wild as Luke popped into her head.
“Because those are different things.” Granny Mama continued.
“Billings is a fine city with fine opportunities. It’s a safe place far enough away that losing what you’ve found here would only hurt instead of devastate.
Close enough to visit without committing.
The perfect distance for someone who learned at nineteen that loving people is dangerous. ”
A tear tracked down her face, and she pressed her fingers against her mouth to try and stop the trembling.
“I’m not telling you what to do.” Granny Mama reached across the table. “But I love you enough to say what I see. And what I see is a woman who’s been criticizing a certain rancher for building walls around himself while building identical ones and calling them something more dignified.”
Claire’s hands fell to the table. Her lungs felt too small for the breath she needed.
She’d been thinking about him so much it took less than a second to replay their conversation in the line cabin. He’d asked for a chance, and she’d shut him down cold.
Why?
She’d accused Luke of controlling outcomes and building walls because vulnerability hurt. She’d said he chose perfect management over faithful living.
And then she’d done the same thing to him.
A pair of headlights swept across the kitchen window.
Claire looked up at instinct and saw Luke’s truck moving slowly down the road, heading away from town toward the ranch.
Late again, working past dark, the way he’d been doing for weeks.
She knew his truck by the pattern of its lights, which was its own kind of critical acceptance about how much space he’d taken up in her life without her permission.
He passed without stopping, heading home with no idea she was beginning to understand what made them work so well together while also pushing them apart.
He was trying. Genuinely, painfully, one hard step at a time, he was rebuilding what he’d damaged and learning to lead with his whole heart instead of the efficient half.
He’d taken a chance at the cabin and reached toward vulnerability with hands that shook.
And she’d responded by telling him she didn’t know if she was staying.
Which was its own kind of cruelty, dressed up as honesty.
Claire wiped her face with the back of her hand. Granny Mama stood and stirred the stew, bringing up a rush of thyme and beef broth that once again settled her nerves. “I’m not going to figure this all out tonight.”
“No.” Granny Mama ladled stew into bowls. “But sometimes seeing things clearly is the first step.”
Outside, Luke’s taillights had long since disappeared. She kept looking at the spot where they’d been, turning Agnes Pruitt’s words over and over like rocks in a tumbler, wearing them smooth enough to examine what made them wonderful.