39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Thirty-Nine
REGAN
October mornings in Wild Briar Creek smell of cold creek water and the last of the wild honeysuckle giving up for the season.
I walk through town with a coffee from the Briar Rose.
My boots click on the sidewalk. The one I’ve walked every morning for months, past the feed store and the post office and the library with the bench outside where Mrs Petersen sits on Thursdays and tells me the same story about her Labrador’s hip surgery.
Almost three months ago, I drove down this street for the first time with my whole life in boxes and a thermos going cold in the cupholder.
The clinic at the end of the block looked small and slightly run-down, and perfect.
The apartment above it smelled of dust and old carpet and the loneliness that comes with choosing a town where nobody knows your name.
Now half the town knows my name. More than half know Bear’s. Mrs. Henley at the post office asks after him every time I pick up the mail, and the kid at the feed store keeps a biscuit behind the counter for when Caleb brings him in.
My phone rings. Tyler. I answer with my coffee hand, switching it to the left. “Morning.”
“Morning, Reg. How’s nowhere?”
“It’s not nowhere.”
“You literally live in a town that doesn’t show up on Google Maps.”
“It shows up,” I say. “You just have to zoom in.”
“I had to zoom in five times. Five, Regan. That’s not a town. That’s a rumor.”
The laugh comes out before I can stop it. The sound bounces off the storefronts and comes back to me.
“So,” Tyler says. “You good?”
The question he always asks. The question I always answered with fine or yeah or stop worrying or the cheerful deflection I’d perfected over ten years of pretending the boy who left didn’t take a piece of me with him.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m good.”
“You mean it this time?”
The street stretches out in both directions.
The Briar Rose, with its blue awning. The Rusty Spur, with the neon sign that buzzes after dark.
The clinic at the end of the block, my clinic, with the apartment above it where I keep a spare set of clothes for the nights I don’t make it to the Airstream.
The truck parked out front that I drove into this town three months ago.
“I mean it,” I say.
Tyler is quiet for a second. He’s been checking in on me daily since I told him everything, since the truth about the photo came out and he carried his own guilt about it for weeks before I told him to stop.
He’s my twin. He reads the difference between my fine and my good the way a vet reads a heartbeat.
“He treating you right?” Tyler asks.
“He built me a bed.”
“That’s a low bar, Reg.”
“He built it with dovetail joints and sanded it by hand.”
“Okay, marginally higher bar.”
“Tyler.”
“I’m happy for you,” he says. The teasing drops. His voice goes plain and warm. “I’m really happy for you, Regan.”
“I know.”
“Tell him I said if he disappears again, I’m driving to Tennessee.”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
“Good.” A pause. “Love you, Reg.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up. Tuck my phone into my jacket. Finish the coffee standing on the sidewalk in the October sun, and I don’t need to go anywhere for a minute. I’m just here. In the town I chose, on the street I walk, breathing air that smells like woodsmoke and creek water and home.
I used to check this phone seventeen times a day. Waiting on an email from a board in Virginia, the one that was going to tell me I wasn’t fit to do this job.
I haven’t looked for it in weeks. Couldn’t tell you when I stopped.
That’s how it goes, maybe. The bad thing doesn’t leave with a bang. You just look up one morning and notice it’s been gone a while.
The clinic is mine until noon. After that, I’m at the ranch for a check-up on Prospect’s fetlock. Then the clearing. The Airstream. Caleb.
The drive out to the ranch takes twelve minutes. I know every bend, every stand of dogwoods going copper, every stretch of fence line. The mountains sit blue and steady behind the ridge. The creek runs alongside the road for the last half mile, catching the light, breaking it up, tossing it back.
I park by the stable yard. Ethan’s truck is there, and Noah’s, and the old flatbed Ben drives when he’s hauling feed.
The ranch is busy in a way that doesn’t need me yet.
The Henderson mares are in the lower paddock, the trekking horses are out on the trail, and I’ve got an hour before Prospect’s check-up.
So I walk the path. The one Bear showed me.
Past the paddock gate, down through the lower meadow, along the creek crossing where the flat rocks are warm in the sun.
The four posts are still there. The thumbtacks still in the wood.
No cards anymore. Those are in a box on the shelf in the Airstream, next to Caleb’s two books and his tin mug.
The Wild Briar Boys are playing somewhere on the property. I hear them before I see the barn. Luke’s guitar first, then Noah’s voice, then the bass underneath. And the drums. Caleb’s drums, steady and even, the heartbeat of it all. No edge to them. No anger. Just rhythm. Just the man keeping time.
The Airstream sits in the clearing, silver in the afternoon light. The workshop beside it, the fire pit with last night’s coals still warm, the clothesline with one of his flannel shirts and one of mine hanging side by side.
Bear is lying in a patch of sun by the workshop door. He sees me, stands, shakes himself head to tail. His tail goes. He trots toward me. And then he stops. Sits. Looks at me with his big dark eyes and that expression he gets when he’s done something and knows he’s done it.
He’s got something in his mouth.
“What have you got?”
Bear doesn’t move. He sits in the dirt, tail sweeping, the thing in his mouth small and wrapped in brown paper and held so gently between his teeth that I can see the effort of holding it is tiring him.
I crouch down. Hold out my hand. “Give.”
He gives. It’s a small package wrapped in brown paper, folded clumsily, and taped with too much tape. Caleb’s handwriting is on the outside, the same bad handwriting from the index cards, three words: Open this, darlin’.
My hands are shaking. They were shaking the last time I opened something he wrote me, standing at the fourth post with the valley below and the dogwoods on fire. They’re shaking now.
I peel back the tape and unfold the paper.
In it sits a ring. It’s a silver band, thin, with a small stone that catches the October light and throws it back in a way that makes my eyes sting. Simple. Not flashy. Exactly right. Exactly him.
You said you wanted to marry me.
Do you still?
I never stopped.
I look up.
Caleb is standing in the doorway of the Airstream, shoulder against the frame, arms at his sides.
His face is open, everything he’s ever felt written there for me to read, and I can read every word because I know this man.
I know him the way I know the creek path and the stable yard and the sound of Bear’s feet on the clearing floor.
The way you know the thing you almost lost and fought like hell to keep.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. The question is in the ring, and the ring was in the dog, and the dog was the first bridge between us. The whole story, right there.
I stand up. The ring is in my palm. Bear is between us, looking from my face to Caleb’s, tail going.
“Yes,” I say.
His face breaks open.
He steps off the Airstream and is with me in two strides.
His hands find my face, my waist, pulling me in.
I’m laughing and crying and his mouth is on mine and Bear is circling our legs and the ring is pressed between our palms and somewhere on the property the Wild Briar Boys are still playing and the drums have stopped because the drummer isn’t there anymore. He’s here.
His forehead drops against mine. His breath is warm. His hands are steady.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says.
Bear settles at our feet. The creek catches the light through the trees. The October air holds the last warm days of a season that’s turning.
His hand finds mine, and he takes the ring from me and slips it onto my finger.
* * *
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