Chapter 39 #2
"Kinda. Was born on the road, but I grew up there, yeah. Haven't been back in a long time, though."
She nodded, and I waited for the follow-up. The where's your family or the what brought you to Montana or any of the dozen questions that would require me to either lie or crack myself open at a dinner table.
But Colleen just held my gaze for a beat, smile soft, then said, "Well, you're here now. That's what matters. Brody, pass the potatoes and stop hoggin' the gravy."
She didn't push. Didn't pry. Didn't even glance at me sideways. But the way she'd looked at me, steady and kind and careful, told me she knew more than she was letting on.
I didn't have the emotional capacity to figure out what, so I let it go and ate my roast beef.
And just like that, the interrogation I'd been bracing for turned into somethin' else entirely.
She asked about my work—what I liked, what I hated, whether Slim and Tommy were behavin' themselves.
She told me about the feed store, about how it had been in the Lancaster family going back to Brody's great-granddad, how the whole town depended on it.
She teased Brody about his cooking. "The man can shoe a horse, but Lord help us all if he tries to boil pasta," she said, and Brody took it with the easy grin of someone who'd been loved this way his whole life and knew it. Felt it. Every damn day.
It was warm. And easy. And it hurt me down deep.
Not because anything was wrong. But because everything was right. Because this was what family was supposed to feel like, and I was thirty-four years old and witnessing it for the first time.
At some point, Colleen reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. Didn't say anything. Just squeezed once, brief and firm, and went right back to her roast beef like nothing had happened.
I excused myself to the bathroom before dessert could arrive, because my eyes were doing that thing they did when I couldn't hold it all inside. I stood at the sink, hands braced on the counter, staring at myself in the mirror.
Get it together.
But the woman staring back at me didn't look like someone falling apart. She looked like someone settling in.
When I came back, there was a pie on the table. Apple, from the look of it, with a lattice crust that was golden and perfect and made with the kind of patience I'd never had for anything.
"Brody mentioned you liked apple," Colleen said, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world that her son had passed along my pie preference, and she'd baked one from scratch.
I looked at Brody. He was lookin' at his plate, ears pink.
"Thank you," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "Really."
She cut me a slice so big it was borderline aggressive, and I planned on eating every bite.
We were three forkfuls into the pie when the front door banged open.
"Sorry I'm late!"
Luke came through the kitchen doorway looking like he'd run from wherever he'd been—hair a mess, shirt untucked on one side, slightly out of breath. He stopped when he saw the table, the pie. His eyes bounced between me, Brody, and his mom.
"You made pie?"
"Sit down, Luke." Colleen was already up, pulling his plate from the oven where she'd been keeping it warm. "You look like you've been rollin' around in a ditch."
"I was just— There was—" He scraped a hand through his hair and dropped into the empty chair. "Traffic."
"Traffic," Brody repeated, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Between here and Bozeman? Where you go to... what, exactly?"
Luke's jaw tightened. "I wasn't in Bozeman."
"I literally saw you in Bozeman yesterday."
"That was yesterday," Luke deflected. Colleen set a plate in front of him and he smiled up at her, despite the ongoing inquisition. "Today I was just… around."
"Around where?"
"Just around, Brody. Jesus." Luke grabbed his fork and stabbed a potato with more force than any root vegetable deserved.
Brody's eyes narrowed. I could see the gears turning, the questions stacking up behind his teeth. Before he could fire off another one, I pressed my knee into his under the table.
He glanced at me.
I held his gaze. Drop it.
He held mine. But—
My eyes bulged. Drop. It.
He exhaled through his nose and turned back to his pie.
Colleen set a water glass down in front of Luke and smoothed a hand over his hair the way you'd settle a spooked horse. "Eat your dinner, sweetheart."
Luke ate. Brody chewed in pointed silence. I ate my pie and filed away everything I'd just seen for later examination.
After dinner, Colleen walked us to the porch. Luke had already bolted with a hug for his mama and a quick wave toward me and Brody that screamed please do not ask me any more questions.
I was two steps down when Colleen's hand caught my elbow. Gentle, not grabby. Just enough to stop me.
"Calvin."
I turned.
She stood on the top step, backlit by the warm glow of the house behind her. She didn't look sad or sympathetic. She just looked sure.
"You've got a place at this table whenever you want it. No invitation needed." She paused, and her eyes turned glassy. "Your mama would be real proud of the woman you've become."
The words hit me so hard I couldn't breathe for a second.
She knew who I was. Who my mother was. How long she'd known—whether Brody had told her or she'd figured it out on her own—didn't matter right then.
What mattered was that she'd sat through an entire dinner without once making me feel like a sad story.
Hadn't brought it up, hadn't given me that wounded-bird look, hadn't done a single thing to make me feel like anything other than her son's girlfriend sitting at her kitchen table.
She'd just fed me. And squeezed my hand. And baked a goddamn pie.
My nose burned. My eyes burned. Everything fucking burned, and I stood there on the second step of Colleen Lancaster's front porch and pressed my lips together until I could trust my voice.
"Thank you, Mrs. Lancaster."
She smiled, warm and bright.
"It's Colleen, sweetheart. Or Ma. Whichever suits you."
I nodded once, because if I opened my mouth again, we were both gonna be standing on this porch crying and I didn't think either of our pride could survive it.
Brody's hand found the small of my back as we walked to the truck. He didn't say a word. Didn't ask if I was okay. Just opened my door, let me climb in, and walked around to his side.
We were halfway down the dirt drive before I trusted myself to speak.
"Your mom's kinda great."
He glanced over, smug as shit. "Yeah?"
"Don't ruin it."
He reached over and took my hand. Palm to palm, thumb across my knuckles.
"She already loves you," he said quietly. "Told me while you were in the bathroom."
I looked out the window. The Bitterroots were dark against the sky, same as they always were. Same as they'd been before I got here. Same as they'd be after.
Except I wasn't thinking about after anymore.
"I think I'd like to bring my granddad out here. To the ranch, for sure, but maybe to your mom's, too."
His hand tightened on mine.
"Yeah," he said. "I think that'd be real nice."
I leaned my head against the window and watched the road unspool ahead of us in the headlights.
Real nice.
There it was again.