52. “It’s perfect.”
“IT’S PERFECT.”
YASMINE
The farmhouse felt finished, and it wasn’t the honey-gold floors that did it. It wasn’t the walls we’d painted soft, warm white after arguing for three days about undertones like two people with actual opinions on eggshell.
Not even the crown molding in the study, which Hale had eventually taken down himself while I lay boneless on the couch, too satisfied to argue or care.
It was the noise.
Ava laughing too loud on the couch, Annie yelling that somebody needed to move their big country ass out of her way, Havoc’s tags jingling down the hall on a mission nobody had assigned him.
And Hale in the middle of it all, pencil behind his ear, telling Carter there was absolutely no stud where he kept insisting there was.
We’d invited everybody over to help hang the photographs that had come home from my Austin show. Forty-three had gone up in the gallery. Fifteen were going up here.
The rule was simple—everybody got to choose where theirs went.
This had been a mistake.
Annie wanted hers in the hall where everybody would see it the second they walked in. Ava had rejected three spots based on lighting. Grant claimed he didn’t care and then became deeply invested in whether his was better two inches to the left.
Hale’s people stayed where they had always been.
Nothing came down. That had been the rule since spring, and it had been mine.
His grandmother on the church steps in Sunday white.
Harry and his wife on the hood of the Chevelle they’d passed down to their son.
Hale at fifteen in a bad blazer holding a plaque, which had been face down under books until I found it and hung it without permission.
“All right,” Hale said. “Nobody puts a nail in anything without me.”
Annie held up her portrait. “Mine’s going in the hall.”
“Fine, but let me do it.”
“I can do it.”
“That wall’s plaster, not drywall.”
“So?”
“You put a nail in it wrong, you’ll take a dinner plate of it down with you.”
Annie considered this. Then she handed him the frame like she had meant to all along.
Ava stepped back from the front room wall, studying it the way she studied a canvas, and pointed with her wineglass at the middle of it.
“Mine goes there. Dead center.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“That spot’s mine.”
She put a hand to her chest. “Hale Henry, I fixed your life.”
“You set me up on dates that didn’t go anywhere.”
“Well, that’s hardly my fault.”
He gave her a look. “Move along, Ava.”
She caught my eye, waiting for backup.
Two anchors were already sunk into the plaster beneath a pencil mark. He’d done that before anybody got here.
I shrugged. Whatever it was, he’d get to it.
Ava sniffed, regal in her offense. “The ingratitude is astounding.”
Somehow, a system emerged.
Hale had made paper templates of every frame, which I’d made fun of him for on Thursday and was grateful for by ten o’clock Saturday.
Nico held the next frame in place while Grant called out measurements.
Tabby had picked her place and moved on.
She was in the hallway with one of Hale’s old books open in her hands, completely useless to the rest of us.
Carter had appointed himself keeper of the stud finder and would not be relieved of the post.
“There’s one here,” Carter said.
“There’s not.”
“It beeped.”
Hale glanced over. “Because you’re over a nail plate.”
Carter looked at the wall. Then at the stud finder. “It knows that?”
“No. I know that.”
“Then what’s the point of this thing?”
Hale grinned. “Mostly keeping you occupied.”
Carter set down the useless device and walked away. “Laugh it up. I’m going to remember this come audit week.”
I stopped helping around the sixth frame and watched them go up.
Ava, head tipped back, laughing with paint on her wrist.
Tabby in the bookstore doorway, one hand pressed to her mouth like she had just heard the best secret of her life.
Annie barefoot on this porch, hair wild, middle finger raised at whoever had made her laugh.
Nico and Grant under the hood of the Chevelle, wearing identical expressions of insulted competence.
Harry at the chess table with his hand hovering over a bishop, sun on the side of his face.
Hale from behind at the edge of the field, one hand on his hip, the other holding a coffee mug he had forgotten to drink from.
“Left,” Ava called. “Your other left, Grant.”
“You want to come do it?”
“I’m supervising.”
Somewhere around the eleventh frame, Ava produced the magazine.
“Now,” she said, thumbing through the pages. “Let’s see what the automotive world has to say about our own Hale Henry.”
Hale did not turn around. “No.”
“Page fifty-one.”
“Ava.”
“There’s a photograph.”
Annie snatched it, delighted. “He’s leaning on the Chevelle.”
“They asked me to,” Hale said to the wall, a pencil between his teeth.
“Sure they did.”
“They did.”
“Quiet down. Attention everybody.” Annie cleared her throat and everyone turned to her, except my very talkative boyfriend, who developed a sudden, intense professional interest in a pencil mark on the wall.
“The design is deceptively simple,” Annie read. “Its inventor is not.”
Grant put the level down and looked Hale over, then stretched a hand out. “Deceptively? Lemme see.”
Annie passed him the magazine. Carter leaned in over his shoulder. “Really? This is journalism?”
“Shut up,” Hale said.
“Check out the supermodel pose,” Ava cackled.
“I am standing. That is called standing.”
“Looks like a pose,” Carter agreed.
“Woman had a clipboard and a light up on a stick and she moved me four separate times, and on the fifth she said perfect and I hadn’t done one thing different. So take it up with her.”
“Mm-hmm.” I hummed.
Hale finally turned and pointed the pencil at me. “You’re supposed to be on my side, woman.”
“Always. But, in your defense, it’s a very good lean. I’d do you.”
His eyes narrowed.
I smiled innocently.
Grant still had the magazine. He tapped it against his palm twice, and his voice changed half a step. “Offer’s still open, by the way.”
“I know it is,” Hale said.
“All of it. I’ll buy you out. The whole thing. You’d never touch a fender again.”
“I know.”
“You’d have time to design.”
“I’ve got time to design. I drew that thing at the kitchen table with my dinner going cold next to me. Time was never the problem.”
“So you’re keeping the shop.”
“I’m keeping the shop,” Hale agreed. He set the frame against the wall and pressed his thumb over the tape mark.
Grant exhaled. “You’re a difficult man to make rich.”
“I’m an easy man to make rich. I’m a difficult man to make bored.”
Ava took the magazine off him. “That should’ve been the pull quote.”
A little after two, the screen door creaked and CeeCee came in with a diaper bag over one shoulder and Theo on the other. I was across the room before it shut.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, already reaching.
She narrowed her eyes. “You are not greeting me. You are greeting my child.”
“That is unfair and accurate.”
She handed him over anyway, because she is a generous woman and because I had already made grabby hands like a fool.
He was heavier than last time. Rounder in the cheeks. His fist opened against my collarbone and closed on nothing with great determination.
“Hello, perfect man,” I whispered.
“Token hello,” CeeCee said. “Noted.”
She looked good.
Tired, because babies are tiny dictators with no respect for a circadian rhythm, but good. Her hair was pulled back, her face bare, her mouth softer than it had been the night she showed up at my apartment with a packed bag and one hand on her stomach.
She had settled into herself.
We ended up in the hallway, away from the noise.
“How is he?” I asked, touching Theo’s socked foot.
“Perfect when he wants to be. Expensive always.”
“Shaun?”
Her smile changed shape. Smaller. More complicated.
“He’s good with him.”
I lifted a brow.
“He really is,” she said. “Shows up. Knows his schedule. Knows which cry is which. Brings diapers without being asked. Still gets on my last nerve, though.”
“Obviously.”
“And suddenly added persistence to his personality traits.”
I snorted.
Theo startled, and I bounced him.
“I tell him the truth. I’m proud of the father he’s becoming.” She shrugged one shoulder. “That doesn’t mean I forgot the man he was to me.”
“That’s good.”
“Your mama came by yesterday.”
“Yeah?”
“Her and Shaun. Early. I think she went there hoping to see you.”
“She did.”
CeeCee waited.
Down the hall, Hale laughed. The sound moved through the walls and settled me.
“I was leaving when they pulled in,” I said. “She got out of the car. Looked like she wanted to say something.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
CeeCee’s face softened.
“She misses you.”
“I know.”
“She regrets some things.”
“I know that too.”
“But not enough?”
I looked down at my nephew. His lashes were ridiculous. His mouth made a small bow when he slept.
“No,” I said. “Not enough.”
CeeCee did not argue.
Some griefs do not need a committee.
From the living room, Annie hollered, “YAZ. IF YOU DON’T brING THAT BABY IN HERE SO I CAN SMELL HIS HEAD, WE FIGHTING.”
CeeCee sighed. “See what you started?”
“I’m building community.”
“You’re building a custody dispute.”
I carried him in like royalty, and was swarmed immediately.
Annie claimed him first. Tabby adjusted one of his socks. Ava stood over both of them making high-pitched noises she would deny under oath.
Hale crossed the room, touched two fingers to Theo’s back, and kissed my temple.
“You good?”
“Very.”
His eyes moved over my face anyway.
He always checks.
By five, the wall was done, and my house looked like somebody lived in it. Every frame held a person.
The gallery director had noticed immediately. Yasmine Valentine, known for landscapes and wildlife, had filled an entire room with people. When she asked what changed, I told her Antarctica.
That was true. It just wasn’t all of it.
I had always taken pictures for proof. I was here. I saw this. Then I came home and found out I wanted proof of something else. Who had stayed, and who I loved, and what I came back to.
I found Hale on the porch after everybody left. The field was dark. The stars were doing their thing. Even Dolores had gone silent for once in her life.
“Good night tonight,” I said, leaning on the rail beside him.
“Yeah.”
“You decided what’s going in that space you left?”
“I did.” He set his mug on the rail and went inside. A minute later he came back with a print and handed it over.
It was me.
On the ladder in the study. Overalls cuffed, one strap gone loose, the wrong end of the hammer in my fist and half the crown molding hanging off the ceiling behind me. Dust turning in the window light. My mouth parted in concentration.
The color was off. The whole thing was soft. It had been printed bigger than it had any business being and you could see every bit of that.
“You took this.”
“Mm.”
“On your phone.”
“On my phone.”
“You made me get off that ladder.”
“I did.” He drank his coffee. “Took the picture first.”
I looked at it a long time.
“It’s blurry, Hale.”
“It is. I know better than to hand a photographer a bad picture. Say the word and I’ll shoot it proper—”
“No,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
I didn’t say anything for a while.
Through the window, I could see the wall.
Harry at his table. CeeCee in the window light. Annie with her middle finger raised and her whole heart showing anyway. Hale’s mother on the front steps, her face turned toward someone outside the frame.
And in the middle, the space he had saved for me.
“Hale,” I whispered, “you made room for me.”
“All those frames. Not one of them is you.”
“I’m the one holding the camera.”
“I know it.” He looked out at the field. “You’re in every shot, darlin’. I wanted one where people could see you.”
My throat closed. “Thank you.”
He put his arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him without thinking. My body already knew where it wanted to be.
“I want to take more,” I said.
“So you’ll take more.”
“Tanzania.”
“Tanzania first.”
Inside, the farmhouse held the last warmth of the day—wildflowers in the old pitcher, boots beside the door, the map on the corkboard in the office with the herd routes marked in pencil.
A second chair sat at the desk now, and the drawings for his next design had spread across both workspaces because they’d outgrown his.
He held the door open.
I went in first, the frame held against my chest.
The porch light stayed on behind us.
END.