29. Aiden
Aiden
Iset three plates on the kitchen table before Josie asks who the third one is for.
My hand stops on the back of the chair Paige usually takes. It gives her a clear view of the porch and keeps her beside Josie when they read during dinner, despite both of them knowing books stay closed at the table.
“No one,” I say, and carry the plate back to the cabinet.
Josie watches me slide it onto the stack. “Is Paige coming later?”
“No.”
The answer is still too new to sound real. Six nights ago, Paige stood on this porch and told me she loved me. I keep seeing the steady line of her back as she walked to her car, the sound of the door closing without a single glance over her shoulder. Anger is easier than remembering that calm.
She knew how to leave. I was the idiot who believed all the room I made would give her a reason to stay.
I turn back to the stove before Josie can read any of that on my face. “Do you want peppers in yours?”
“Only the red ones.”
I open the second drawer and my hand closes around the grater. The memory surfaces without warning: Paige pulling it out while I found the skillet, her voice dry as she complained that quesadillas were an irresponsible amount of work for grilled cheese with opinions.
Tonight, the grater is exactly where she left it.
The counter beside me carries a different memory.
Paige sat on it with her knees around my hips and two fingers inside my belt, enjoying every crack in my control.
The memory lands hard, a physical ache that starts low in my gut.
My hand clenches on the counter, knuckles white.
Six nights without her touch feels longer than a year.
Josie drags her step stool to the counter. “Can I do the cheese?”
“Wash your hands first.”
She hurries to the sink, singing a song Paige taught the kids at the library to make them scrub long enough. I slice peppers while her small voice fills the kitchen, and when she stops, the silence that rushes back in is huge.
When she climbs onto the stool, I steady it with one foot and set the bowl in front of her.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Paige stop liking Fridays?”
I press the knife into the cutting board harder than I need to. “No, baby.”
“Then why isn’t she here?”
I set the knife down. Josie deserves an answer she can understand, and Paige deserves to stay out of a conversation she is not here to shape.
“Paige and I had a disagreement. The adults are working through it,” I tell her.
The answer would feel less hollow if Paige and I had spoken since Saturday. I ended our relationship, watched her leave, and have spent the week waiting for her to prove it hurt.
Josie considers this while dropping cheese onto one half of the tortilla. “I miss her.”
“I know.”
She raises her face to mine. I could tell her I miss Paige too. The words lodge behind my teeth because saying them will not bring her through the back door with coffee in one hand and a paperback in the other.
“Can Sprinkle have some cheese?” Josie asks.
I look at the stuffed horse propped in the chair beside her. “Sprinkle doesn’t have a digestive system.”
“She still gets hungry.”
“She can have pretend cheese.”
Josie pinches air from the bowl and feeds it to Sprinkle, satisfied, then returns to her quesadilla.
We eat at the table with the third chair empty. Josie tells me Sprinkle has decided to open a restaurant where horses are allowed inside, then reads two pages of her book after I remind her twice that dinner is for eating.
I still glance at her empty seat when she mispronounces a word. Paige usually waits to see if Josie can correct herself. I answer too quickly, and Josie gives me the same disappointed look Paige would.
After we clean the kitchen, Josie curls into the corner of the couch with Sprinkle. I reach for the paperback on the end table before remembering it belongs to Paige.
She left it here last Friday. Her toothbrush is upstairs. Clothes hang beside my shirts, and romance novels fill half the dresser drawer I cleared because she claimed one book could not support every possible mood. I ended the relationship in one sentence.
Her absence is a shape that has taken over my house.
By eight Saturday morning, the east gatepost is set better than any post on this ranch. I drive the tamping bar down again, the impact jolting up my arms. And again. The gravel shifts, settles, refuses to move farther.
Axel keeps both gloved hands on the brace, his knuckles tight.
“Hit it any harder,” he says, “and we’re going to find groundwater.”
“Hold it straight.”
“I am. You’re the one leaning.”
I step back and check the level. The bubble sits a fraction left of center.
“It’s crooked.”
“It’s a fence, Aiden. The cows aren’t measuring it.”
“They’ll push against the gate.”
“They’ll push against it because they’re cows. Your personal crisis isn’t improving their standards.”
I set the level on the tailgate and grab another shovelful of gravel. The rhythm of physical work is supposed to quiet my head. This morning, every strike lands with Paige’s voice beneath it.
I choose you every day.
Apparently, I needed her to choose every year after that too.
Axel takes the shovel from me. “The hole is full.”
“Then we’ll reset the hinge.”
“The hinge is fine.”
I look at him. “Do you have somewhere else to be?”
“No.” He props the shovel against the truck. “I’m wondering how long you plan to punish ranch equipment because you broke up with a woman you love.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re trying to drive a gatepost into Wyoming.”
Gravel crunches behind us. Adrienne’s SUV stops beside our trucks, and she climbs out in jeans, boots, and sunglasses with a paper bag tucked beneath one arm.
“Mom sent breakfast,” she says. “Dad needs both of you to sign something, and Axel sent me a message that said you were being an idiot with heavy equipment.”
I glare at him.
“He was already angry,” Axel tells her. “I provided context.”
Adrienne sets the bag on my tailgate and studies the post. “Did it apologize?”
“I ended the relationship. It’s not like Paige did anything wrong.”
“Then why are you mad at her?”
“Because she walked away as if I’d only asked if she wanted coffee.”
Adrienne removes her sunglasses. “You told her it was over.”
“She agreed.”
“What was she supposed to do? Wrestle you onto the floor until you took it back?”
“At least it would’ve been a response.”
Axel’s expression loses its amusement. “Did Paige refuse you, or did she refuse the move you never properly proposed?”
“I didn’t ask her to move in.”
“Exactly.”
“I asked whether she saw us sharing a home and getting married. She said she could picture marrying me, but then explained that she needed a life that could survive without me.”
Adrienne leans against the tailgate. “That sounds responsible.”
“It sounds like she’s already planning her exit.”
“It sounds like a woman who doesn’t want love to erase the rest of her.”
“She knows I would never ask her to give up her work or the cabin.”
“Does she?” Axel asks. “Josie thought Paige was moving in. Mom thought Thanksgiving was settled. You were renovating an entire building for her. Everyone knew where this was going except the woman supposedly going there.”
The words land like stones, each one a fact I can’t dispute. “I was making room for her,” I say, the excuse sounding thin even to me.
Adrienne opens the paper bag and hands Axel a breakfast sandwich. “If I brought you a contract selling the south acreage and told you Dad had already decided it was best for the family, would you sign it?”
“Of course not.”
“Even if Dad had good reasons?”
“He doesn’t get to sell land I own without asking me.”
Her eyebrows lift, and the silence that follows is the real argument.
“So our relationship is a land deal now?”
“I’m comparing consent. You’d demand the terms, the timeline, and a chance to negotiate. You’d be furious that anyone assumed your agreement because they loved you and believed the plan was good.”
“She could’ve told me what she wanted.”
“Maybe she was still deciding,” Axel says.
“We’ve had months.”
“To fall in love with you,” he replies. “That doesn’t mean she spent those months deciding which furniture to move.”
Adrienne starts to hand me the second sandwich, then puts it back in the bag. “Paige may have been wrong about some of it. The question you asked might not be the one she answered.”
They leave it there. Axel starts loosening the old hinge bolts while Adrienne sorts the pages Dad sent across the tailgate. Neither of them offers a solution, which means I have nothing to argue against.
I pick up the wrench and crouch beside the gate.
Paige told me she wanted more of the life we already had. I heard a limit and demanded a promise that matched the future I had already pictured.
The key. The closet. Thanksgiving. The room at the ranch. I treated each one like proof that I was building something for us.
I never asked Paige to design the future with me.
That afternoon, the office door opens on the first pull.
I repaired the swollen frame two weeks ago. New pine flooring runs beneath my boots, the outlets work, and the afternoon light comes through glass I cleaned because Paige deserved the mountain view without years of ranch dust across it.
I carry the drill to the far wall and set the bit against the first screw.
Either I finish this room or I take the shelves down. Leaving it suspended between both choices is a perfect mirror of my life.
The framework stretches almost to the ceiling.
I secured three shelves beneath the window, including the lower one I measured for Josie.
I planned another wall for fiction, a desk for Paige, a chair wide enough for her to curl into, and enough children’s books to keep Josie beside her whenever Paige wanted company.
I put her name on the library while I planned how my family would use it.
The drill is set to reverse. My finger rests on the trigger, but I don’t pull it.
I can still see Paige standing in the dust, sunlight in her hair as she spread her arms and filled this room with her words: shelves, a reading chair, a desk beneath the window. She loved the light, the view, the quiet. She loved the door she could close.
All I saw was the twenty yards between this building and my house. She imagined a place to be herself; I saw a place to keep her. My hand drops from the drill.
When I started the repairs, I told myself I was listening.
Paige wanted solitude, so I built it close enough that she could step away without ever leaving my reach.
She wanted a door, so I gave her one while assuming I knew which side she would call home.
She said she would choose Fridays, and I turned that choice into every Friday that followed.
The same thinking shaped the key, the drawer, the empty hangers, Thanksgiving, and riding lessons she never asked for.
Each decision felt like love because structure is how I take care of people. I fix the broken thing, make the plan, and prepare for whatever comes next. If Paige had a place in my house, my family, and every month on the calendar, I could stop wondering whether she would choose me later.
I built certainty for myself and handed it to her as a gift.
I turn off the drill and set it on the floor. Sawdust still lines the baseboards. A pencil mark beside the window shows where I planned to mount the desk. I wrote her name there, a clear directive for anyone helping me.
Paige understood exactly what I meant by the room, and that was the problem.
She saw a future taking shape around her before I ever asked her to help shape it.
When I finally asked whether she could picture marrying me, I reduced her answer to yes or no.
But she gave me more than that. I can hear her voice now, telling me what she wanted, and this time I don't hear the limits.
My daughter. Our Fridays. Mornings here. Nights at my cabin.
I heard the cabin and the parts she needed to keep, then decided they mattered more to her than I did.
I remember her standing in my living room, her hands clenched at her sides.
“Losing you would destroy me.”
She said it like a fact she hated admitting. She refused to make a promise out of fear, and when I ended our relationship, she accepted the choice that hurt her instead.
I mistook that control for ease because anger was simpler than admitting I wanted her to overrule me.
She walked away because I told her we were done. The steady line of her back wasn’t ease. It was control.
I look through the window toward the foreman’s house.
From here, I can see the porch where she reads with her feet in my lap and the upstairs window of the room where her toothbrush still stands beside mine.
I built every connection I could see and assumed love meant she wanted the walls built higher around her.
She kept asking whether there would still be room for her inside them.
I leave the shelves standing. Building the future I designed without her would only repeat the mistake. The room can wait until I can build a question instead of an answer.
She could picture a life with me; she just needed to know she would still exist inside of it.