Chapter 22 The Ranch Dinner
The Ranch Dinner
Maren
* * *
The evidence release office in Sheridan smells like industrial cleaner and old paper. I sign my name on three separate forms while a clerk with reading glasses perched on her nose checks my ID against the case file.
"One opal pendant, silver setting, chain included." She slides a clear plastic bag across the counter and points to a final signature line. "Sign here confirming receipt and condition."
I look at the pendant through the plastic.
The stone catches the fluorescent light, fire blooming in its depths the way it always has, the way it does in the wedding photograph Delilah found for me.
The verification photo is clipped to the form, the same pendant, photographed against a white background with a ruler for scale, case number printed along the bottom edge.
I check the clasp and setting before signing. "It looks all right."
The clerk stamps something, files something, and then the bag is in my hands.
I don't open it until I'm sitting in my truck in the parking lot, and even then I take my time, working the seal carefully so I don't tear it.
The chain pools into my palm first, then the pendant, and the weight of it against my skin makes something in my chest crack open.
I put it on. My fingers fumble at the clasp, but I close it, and the opal settles into the hollow of my throat like it never left.
My phone buzzes. Jackson: Still on for tonight? Seven o'clock.
I text back: I'll be there.
The drive to the ranch takes forty minutes, and I spend most of it with one hand on the steering wheel and the other touching the pendant. The opal is warm now, warmed by my skin, and I think about my grandmother's hands fastening the clasp for my wedding portrait, her fingers cool and sure.
I kept it close. Shay Denton took it anyway.
But now it's back. The case isn't closed.
Deputy Ellis was clear about that when he called, careful to explain that charges filed isn't the same as conviction, that there will be hearings and possibly a trial and certainly more paperwork.
Shay remains in custody, and the justice system will grind forward at its own pace.
I don't care about any of that right now.
What I care about is the weight of the opal against my collarbone and the fact that I'm going inside the main house for the first time since the night I left.
The sun is low when I turn onto the ranch road, painting the mountains in shades of rose and gold.
I pass the east house where Delilah lives and lift a hand in case she's watching from her kitchen window.
My mother-in-law has been a steady presence these past months: tea and conversation when I needed company, silence when I needed space.
She's never pushed me toward Jackson or away from him, just offered her guest room and her kitchen table and her complicated love for her son alongside her uncomplicated affection for me.
The main house comes into view around the last curve, and I pull into the circular drive with my heart beating harder than the situation warrants.
It's just a house. It's just dinner. It's just my husband, who I've seen a dozen times since I left, who I've danced with and laughed with and slept with at the lodge.
But I haven't been inside this house since the night three masked men came up our stairs.
Jackson opens the front door before I can knock, and the sight of him in dark jeans and a gray button-down with the sleeves rolled back makes warmth curl through my belly despite my nerves.
"You're early," he says, and the smile that creases the corners of his eyes tells me he's glad about it. "I was betting on fashionably late."
"I wasn't giving you extra time to worry about dinner." I climb the porch steps and stop in front of him, letting him look at me, letting myself look back. "I got the opal today. The release paperwork finally went through."
His gaze drops to the pendant at my throat, and something shifts in his expression, relief, maybe, or recognition of what it means that I'm wearing it here, now, walking back into the house where I lost it.
Jackson steps aside, but his eyes stay on the pendant as I reach the door. "It looks right on you. Come inside. Dinner's almost ready."
I step over the threshold and make myself breathe.
The entryway looks the same: the hardwood floors, same family photographs on the walls, same brass light fixture that Jackson's great-grandmother supposedly shipped from Denver in 1920.
I don't know if that story is true, but I've always liked the way the light falls through the amber glass.
"I set up in the kitchen," Jackson says, leading me through the house. "The dining room felt too formal."
The kitchen is warm with cooking smells: rosemary and garlic and something rich and savory, and the table by the window is set with the good dishes, candles already lit, a bottle of wine breathing in a decanter.
Through the window, the last light of sunset spills across the valley, turning everything gold.
"This is beautiful." I touch the edge of a linen napkin, feeling the weight of his intention in every detail. "You planned this."
"I wanted it to be right." He pulls out a chair for me, a gesture so old-fashioned it makes me smile. "You've been in plenty of restaurants these past months. I figured I should at least try to compete."
"You're not competing with restaurants." I sit and watch him move to the stove, lifting the lid on a pot to check something, adjusting the flame under a pan. "You're competing with my own cooking, which is much harder."
"That's why I made lamb." He carries a platter to the table, and the roast is golden-crusted and perfect, surrounded by vegetables that glisten with oil and herbs. "I thought of the Friday dinner you made in April. I wanted you to sit down and enjoy this one."
I glance at the table, remembering that evening with a pang. "You remembered that dinner."
He serves the lamb without rushing back to the stove or reaching for his phone. "You used your grandmother's recipe. I had the copy you left in our kitchen binder."
The lamb melts on my tongue, tender and rich, the crust shattering into rosemary-scented crumbs. I close my eyes and let myself taste it properly before I speak.
I taste the rosemary before I answer him. "You got it right."
He sits across from me, pleased enough that he doesn't try to hide it. "I was hoping you'd like it."
We eat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the kind of silence that doesn't need filling. The food is good, better than good, actually, and the wine is that Malbec I mentioned liking once, months ago, a detail I'm surprised he remembered.
"I've been thinking about what you told me," Jackson says eventually, setting down his fork. "About the night of the robbery. What you told me before you left that night."
My hand goes to the opal without my permission. "What about it?"
"You told me you made two calls from the safe room. That you waited, hoping I'd call back." He holds my gaze, his expression steady and serious. "You told me the facts of what happened. But I've been thinking about what you didn't tell me. What was going through your mind while you waited."
The candle flame flickers between us, casting moving shadows across the table. I could deflect. I could change the subject, make a joke, steer us back toward safer ground. But I came here tonight to be honest, and honesty means saying the things that cost something.
"You want to know what I was thinking." I set down my wine glass and fold my hands in my lap.
"That afternoon, at the committee meeting, you defended me.
In front of everyone. You told Shay she was wrong about my work and made her apologize, and when we drove home together I thought, this is it.
We're going to be okay. Whatever else has gone wrong between us, he still chooses me. "
Jackson's jaw tightens, but he doesn't interrupt. He asked, and now he's listening.
"So when I heard the glass break, when I ran for the safe room and locked the door and picked up my phone, I called you first because I believed you would answer.
" My voice stays steady, which surprises me.
"I believed that whatever had pulled you away before, whatever had made you choose Shay's crises over our marriage, that was over.
You had stood up for me that afternoon. You had promised, without saying the words, that I mattered. "
Jackson looks down at the wine between us, his jaw working before he can speak. "And then I didn't answer."
"And then you didn't answer." I meet his eyes. "Twice. I watched my phone go to voicemail twice, and I thought: I was wrong. I thought we were okay, and I was wrong. Where is he? Why won't he answer? He said he'd be back soon. I kept staring at the screen, waiting to see your name."
The words hang between us, stark and true.
Jackson pushes back from the table and moves around to kneel beside my chair. His hands find mine, callused and warm, and his face when I look down at him is stripped of everything except pain.
"I should have answered." His voice is rough.
"I assumed you were calling about something small, something that could wait, because I was still carrying all the tension from the weeks before.
That's not an excuse. That's just what happened.
I looked at your name on my phone and decided my own resentment mattered more than finding out what you needed. "
I keep my hands in his and let him hear the answer without softening it. "Yes."
"I chose wrong." He squeezes my hands. "Not because of what Shay was doing, not because of anything except my own failure to show up when it counted.
You deserved a husband who answered the phone.
You deserved to hear my voice telling you I was coming.
I owe you that, and I didn't give it to you, and I'm sorry. "
I want to stay angry enough that this can't reach me. It reaches me anyway. He isn't telling me what he meant or asking me to be fair to him.
"I'm angry at Shay," he continues, and there's an edge to his voice now, something hard underneath the grief. "She used me to hurt you, and I'm angry about that. But what she did doesn't change what I did. You called me for help, and I wasn't there."
I keep my hand in his. I need him to know I heard that part too. "No. It doesn't change that."
"I want to make you a promise." He lifts my hands and presses them against his chest, over his heart.
"I won't decide what you need before I hear you.
You won't have to be in danger to deserve my attention.
I love you, Maren. I let you feel alone in our marriage, and I'm done asking you to accept that. "
I look at him, my husband, kneeling at my feet, asking instead of assuming, offering what he can instead of what sounds impressive.
I put my hands on his shoulders, wanting him closer. "Stand up. And hold me."
He rises and pulls me out of the chair and into his arms. I press my face against his shoulder and let the tears come, feeling his hands stroke my back, feeling the solid warmth of him surrounding me. The opal presses between us, caught against his chest, warm between us.
When I pull back, his eyes are wet too.
I wipe my cheeks and take his hand. "Let's sit on the porch. Like we used to."
The night air is cool against my tear-damp face as we settle onto the porch swing, his arm around my shoulders, the familiar creak of the chains a sound I didn't know I'd missed until now. Stars are beginning to emerge, faint pinpricks against the deepening blue.
"I'm not staying tonight." The words are harder than I expected them to be. "I want to, but I need to go back to my apartment. I need to sit with all of this."
He keeps his arm around me and leaves the decision where I put it. "Okay."
"But I want to come back." I lean my head against his shoulder. "Soon. Not tonight, but soon. I want to come home, Jackson."
His arm tightens around me. "Whenever you're ready. I'll be here."
We swing in silence for a long time, watching the stars wheel overhead, listening to the night sounds of the ranch settle around us. Eventually I stand, and he walks me to my truck, and at the driver's door he kisses me, soft and slow and full of promise.
Jackson stays beside the open door while I fasten my seat belt. "Drive safe."
I touch his wrist before he steps back. "I will."
I pull away slowly, watching him in the rearview mirror until the house disappears around the curve. The opal is warm against my throat. My chest aches in a way that isn't entirely pain.
Halfway home, I pull over to the side of the road and sit in the darkness, engine idling, one hand pressed to the pendant that my grandmother gave me.
Then I pick up my phone and text Jackson: Thank you for dinner. For everything.
His reply comes before I've pulled back onto the road: I loved having you here.
I'm not home yet. But I can see it from here.