Chapter 12 Ella
ELLA
Ella awoke at dawn to the delicious scent of bacon. Soft light spilled through the break in the curtains and pooled on the wood plank floor.
Stretching, she decided not to overthink things today. She grabbed her painting clothes—a thin sweater and an old pair of overalls, and headed to the bathroom to get ready for her day.
Dove’s door was already open, which meant the little one had probably smelled breakfast cooking and hurried down.
Ella smiled, knowing how much her parents loved sharing the early mornings with their granddaughter.
Of course Dalton would be down there too. That thought had Dove’s Thanksgiving declaration echoing in Ella’s head all over again.
I love you too, Dalton. I’m glad you live here now.
Well, Ella had made sure that Dalton would stay at least a little longer. Hopefully, Dove wouldn’t mind the price of losing her mom for an evening when the man decided to take her up on that dinner promise.
“Good morning,” her father called out as Ella headed downstairs after showering and dressing.
“Good morning,” she replied. “It smells amazing down here.”
“Just bacon and eggs,” Dalton said. “But plenty of them.”
“Amazing,” Ella groaned happily as she reached the landing.
“And I helped,” Dove said brightly.
She was standing on her footstool, wearing her grandmother’s apron over her pajamas and a big smile on her face.
“Now I know it’s going to be an amazing breakfast,” Ella said on her way over to the stove to kiss Dove’s soft cheek.
“Want to start the toast?” Dalton asked.
“I was on toast duty,” her dad complained.
“No, no,” Dalton said. “You were going to write us some notes about painting the barn.”
“You and your notes,” her father sighed.
But he didn’t argue, and he stayed in his seat.
In just a few minutes, they were all seated around the table, taking a moment of silent thanks before digging into their breakfast and conversation.
“You’ll want to start with prep,” Dad said. “Hose her down, get the lay of the land, and when you’re done with that, it will be time to go into town and get some paint.”
“Excellent,” Dalton said, taking the written rundown from him.
“When you find wood rot, you’ll replace it,” Dad said. “Shouldn’t be much because we did this five years ago. But we’ve had some harsh winters in between.”
“Yes, sir,” Dalton said.
Ella bit her lip. Last time they did this, her brother had been around to help out. Dad hadn’t been able to do this particular job himself since then, and he hadn’t let her or her mother do it either.
“Only needs to be done every five years or so,” Dad said gently, patting her hand, as if he had read her mind.
“We haven’t let things go too much since Andy, have we?” she heard herself ask.
“Of course not,” Dad said. “What we couldn’t do ourselves we hired out. Everything is fine.”
Ella nodded, and was surprised at how much relief she felt.
For a long time, she’d wished she had more education so she might have had more career choices at her disposal. But this conversation was making her realize how much she really loved working her family’s land.
It might not be what she had pictured herself doing as a child, but she could feel her parents’ and grandparents’ hands working alongside hers sometimes, and that was a feeling she wouldn’t trade for a fancy job in the city.
“You two are sure you won’t need my help?” Mom asked.
“Don’t worry about us, Mom,” Ella told her firmly. “Dad would have said if it wasn’t a two-person job.”
“I don’t have to go to book club,” Mom said, clearly choosing to worry anyway.
“After you stayed up half the night to finish the book?” Dad teased her. “You’re going to that book club, or I am.”
“You?” Mom asked, laughing.
“You probably read half that book out loud to me,” Dad teased. “I could write an essay about it, I bet.”
“It was such a good one,” Mom said fondly. “Harry’s Trees. Wonderful.”
“You can go to your book club,” Dalton said firmly. “Ella and I are an amazing team.”
She glanced over at him, feeling a little rush at those words.
Half an hour later, she was using a broom to dust the spiderwebs off the tops of the barn doors while Dalton was up on a ladder doing the same for the roof overhang.
“We can just use the power washer for this,” she offered Dalton for the second time.
“These webs are strong as superglue,” he replied. “Besides, you should stay dry until you’ve dropped Dove off at school.”
She nodded and turned back to her work.
They continued in friendly silence for a while, the only sounds the cries of the morning birds and the whispers of the breeze through the last few leaves still clinging to the old sycamore.
“Andy and I used to have this job,” Ella said, not sure why she was bringing it up.
“Oh yeah?” Dalton asked.
“Back in high school,” she said, nodding. “It was kind of fun to have an excuse to hang out.”
“You two weren’t close?” Dalton asked, frowning.
“We were,” she said. “Growing up we were really close. But in high school he was just so much cooler than I was, and of course his friends didn’t want to hang out with his little sister. So chore time was one of the only times we spent a lot of time together those last few years of school.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dalton said. “That doesn’t sound like Andy.”
“Every teenager is figuring things out,” she said, shrugging. “I wasn’t always the best sister either.”
“I highly doubt that,” Dalton chuckled.
“I was annoying,” she said. “I broke his favorite Batman action figure. I followed him around like a duckling.”
“That all sounds pretty normal,” Dalton said.
“I didn’t come home in time to say goodbye to him,” she heard herself admit out loud.
He didn’t answer right away, and she sucked in a breath of cold air.
“Well, you had just lost your husband, right?” Dalton asked quietly after a moment. “And Dove was a toddler. That’s a lot.”
“I still could have come home,” she said. “I was so determined to get packed up and out of there. I didn’t want to make the trip back here twice.”
“That’s understandable,” Dalton said. “You were probably exhausted.”
She had been, heart and soul.
“Taking care of Lee wasn’t easy,” she admitted, shocked at herself for sharing that selfish thought. “I feel bad saying it.”
“I’ll bet it was hard because you did a good job,” Dalton said.
“It was hard to see him like that,” she admitted, glad to have work to do while she spoke, so she didn’t have to see the look on his face. “He was so miserable, and he was constantly trying to do stuff he shouldn’t. He’d always been such a physical guy, but by the end, he was so weak…”
She expected Dalton to bury her feelings under a mountain of sympathetic talk, like her girlfriends had done at the time.
But instead, he let her words sit for a moment, to be absorbed by the breeze and the birdsong.
“And you wouldn’t know it now, but Dove was a handful as a toddler,” Ella went on. “I loved her with all I had, but I felt like I was always too sapped to give her everything she deserved.”
“She’s a great kid,” Dalton said firmly. “You clearly did everything just right.”
“Thank you,” she said, venturing a glance up at him. She really did love the fierce way he always had her daughter’s back. “Anyway, Andy really wanted me to come home to see him off, and I told him I couldn’t. I never got to say goodbye.”
“I’m sorry,” Dalton said, the kindness in his bright blue eyes so genuine, she had to look away. “You know he talked about you a lot.”
“He did?” she asked.
“He thought you were so brave,” Dalton said, nodding.
“He had nothing but respect for how you took care of your husband and raised your little girl. He didn’t hold a thing against you, as far as I could tell.
He probably wanted to see you because he loved you, not to make you prove anything.
And he would have hated the idea of you feeling guilty about not making the trip. ”
Ella nodded and felt a tiny weight lift from her shoulders as she let her eyes scan the horizon of the farm where she and her brother had worked and played together.
When she looked back to Dalton, he had stopped working for once. The expression on his face was one of real loss.
“He loved you too,” she told him. “He always talked about you in his letters.”
“Really?” Dalton asked.
“Oh yeah. We heard about everything the two of you did, and how excited he was about the training you were doing,” she said. “I’m so glad he had you there.”
“Me too,” Dalton said, nodding.
He wasn’t smiling, but the empty look was gone from his face, and as she watched, he went back to brushing off the walls of the barn.
Too soon, her alarm went off, reminding her to take Dove to school.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she told him. “Should I pick up the paint while I’m in town?”
“Nah,” Dalton said. “We’ll go together later. I need to grab something in town anyway.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling at the idea of doing something so simple as running errands together.
We’re friends, she reminded her suddenly pounding heart. Just friends.
And that might be true. But it kept feeling like something more.
When she got to the house, her mom was chatting with Dove as she shoved her library book into her schoolbag.
“Thanks for helping her get ready, Mom,” Ella said.
“It was a real pleasure,” her mother said with a smile. “And we packed a nice lunch too, didn’t we?”
“Leftovers,” Dove sang out. “And a muffin.”
“That’s great,” Ella said, smiling as she remembered her mom packing her the best leftover lunches when she was Dove’s age. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Dove said. “Will I be there early enough to play on the playground?”
“Absolutely,” Ella told her. “A little earlier than usual since you’re already good to go.”
“Yes,” Dove said, sprinting for the front door.
“Did you have a good start to your morning?” Mom asked Ella quietly before she could set out after Dove.
“Yes,” Ella said. “It’s been… nice.”
“I like hearing that,” Mom said, giving her a pat on the shoulder.
“Mama, let’s go,” Dove called out excitedly from the front door.
“Okay, here I come,” Ella told her, giving her own mom a quick smile before jogging down the hallway.
“Does the air taste like snow?” Dove asked as they headed down the porch steps together.
“Not yet,” Ella told her. “But soon, I’ll bet. It’s been snowier than usual in December the last few years.”
“Will I have a snow day?” Dove asked. “I’m going to make a snowman.”
“Well, we’re used to dealing with snow around here,” Ella told her. “So it would take a pretty big storm for them to cancel school. But you never know.”
“You never know,” Dove echoed dreamily.
“Do you like going to school?” Ella asked as they piled into the car. She had thought Dove was having a good experience with school in Trinity Falls, but the question about snow days was worrisome.
“Oh yes,” Dove told her. “I love my school.”
“That’s good,” Ella said, relieved. “So a snow day just sounds fun?”
“It would be super fun,” Dove said.
Ella smiled as she pulled down the driveway.
Dove was so much more outgoing and open these days.
She used to be quieter, and Ella took it to heart that the child had spent her first two years of life by a sickbed, and then been brought up around her grandparents, one of whom was in near-constant pain.
But these days, she seemed to be letting her natural exuberance out, and it was a blessing to see her shine.
There was a certain someone who Ella suspected had played a part in that.
“You’re glad to have Dalton with us, aren’t you?” Ella asked Dove as lightly as she could.
“Oh yeah,” Dove said. “He’s funny.”
Ella was still amazed that anyone could describe her solemn soldier as funny, but it was true that Dove and Dalton seemed to bring out a silly side in each other.
“I know you said the other day that you were glad that he lives with us,” Ella said carefully. “But you know that’s not forever, right? Just as long as he wants to stay?”
“Okay,” Dove said, sounding a little disappointed.
“He’ll definitely stay for a while though,” Ella said. “He’s helping with the barn and some other things.”
“That’s good,” Dove said firmly.
Ella took a deep breath, unsure how in the world she was supposed to broach the next subject.
“How would you feel if Dalton and I went out to dinner one night?” Ella asked, figuring it was best to pull the Band-Aid off quickly.
“And me?” Dove asked.
Well, that was a fair assumption. Ella hadn’t been on a single date since losing Lee. And she didn’t go out with friends either.
“I’m sure the three of us will go do lots of fun things together,” Ella said carefully. “But Dalton told me he would like to go out to dinner, just the two of us.”
“Like a boyfriend-girlfriend thing,” Dove said wisely.
“Um…,” Ella said, desperately trying to figure out how to answer.
“You like him, right?” Dove asked. “If you like him and he likes you back, then he’s your boyfriend.”
“Is that all it takes?” Ella asked, suddenly curious about what kind of ideas her daughter had about romance.
“Arnold asked me to be his girlfriend,” Dove said nonchalantly. “But I said no.”
“What does it mean to be someone’s girlfriend?” Ella asked.
“It means you hold hands on the swings,” Dove sighed, as if that should be obvious, and her mother was being deliberately slow. “But Arnold likes to swing too high.”
Ella tried very hard not to laugh.
“If Dalton is your boyfriend, then you go on dates,” Dove said. “Because you’re a grownup.”
“So, you wouldn’t mind if I went on one date with him?” Ella asked, trying to find the thread of what she’d set out to talk about.
“Of course not,” Dove said. “He’s nice to you. He’ll make a good boyfriend.”
“We’ll see,” Ella said. “But let’s not talk about it too much in front of Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Will you get in trouble?” Dove asked quietly.
“No,” Ella said, holding back another laugh. “I just don’t want them thinking too much about it. Dalton and I are just going to go out one time. Mostly we’re friends.”
“That’s the right type of person to pick for a boyfriend,” Dove said, nodding sagely. “A good friend.”
“You know what?” Ella asked.
“What?” Dove said.
“You give pretty good advice for a six-year-old,” Ella said. “Thank you for talking to me about this.”
Dove didn’t reply, but when Ella looked in the rearview mirror, her daughter was looking out the window with a pleased expression on her face.
That went better than expected.
Am I really going on a date?