XII
By the end of the week, I’d buried myself in coursework, but it was useless. Heaton’s words were still there, pressing up from beneath the surface of my thoughts like a low-grade fever I couldn’t break.
I tried not to dismantle them the way I had dismantled flowers as a kid, petal by petal, never satisfied until I had pulled apart every beautiful thing to see what it was made of.
Sunday arrived soft and golden.
I stood in front of the mirror longer than I meant to, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear, then pulling it free again.
It was just dinner.
Family friends.
Normal. Predictable. Harmless.
Still, I changed my jeans twice.
A horn chirped outside.
Two quick taps.
Ford’s unofficial: I’m here; hurry or I’m leaving without you.
I grabbed my coat and bag, forcing myself not to sprint down the hall. By the time I stepped onto the porch, late-afternoon light stretched thin over the yard, warming the planks beneath my shoes.
Ford was already there, leaning against the driver’s side of his truck, keys hooked around one finger.
And he looked . . . good.
Dark pants. A blue button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, the color bringing out the softer parts of him he usually kept locked down.
The parts that made my stomach tighten.
I raised an eyebrow. “You clean up nice.”
His mouth pulled sideways, not quite a smile. In the low light, his hazel eyes seemed to melt to pure gold, and they held mine a second too long.
“Penny threatened to disown me if I showed up in a sweatshirt.”
“Wise woman,” I said, a small smile touching my mouth.
His eyes dropped in a slow sweep from my face to the hem of my coat, which had slipped from my shoulder. He closed the distance in a single step and slid the heavy wool back into place.
The knuckle of his thumb skimmed the bare skin of my arm. For half a second, he let it linger. Then he stepped back, rocking on his heels before shoving his hands into his pockets.
“You, uh . . . ” He cleared his throat. “You look really nice, too.”
It was soft.
Unpolished.
He sounded as if he’d forgotten how to breathe, let alone tease.
“Relax,” I said, rolling my eyes to save us both. “It’s family dinner, not a date.”
He let out a breathy laugh, his eyes darting away toward a fascinating patch of sky.
“Yeah. I know.”
Too quick. Too quiet.
“Ready?” he asked, looking at me again, though his jaw was tight.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
His smile curved, fond and a little too knowing.
“That’s the spirit.”
He moved ahead of me and opened the passenger door.
“Come on,” he said, voice lower now. “Before my mom decides I bailed on dinner again.”
The porch light flickered as I climbed into the cab, my heartbeat finally settling—right until Ford rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel.
The heater clicked on, blowing softly against my ankles.
The truck filled with him at once. Warm sandalwood and the sharp, electric crack of black pepper from his cologne.
When he glanced at me—quick, almost as if he hadn’t meant to look at all—the world tilted. His eyes caught the fading light, and for one heart-stopping moment, I saw something there I hadn’t seen before.
Something that saw me.
Ford McCrae.
My best friend’s older brother.
The boy who once dared me to eat pine needles and held my hair back when I regretted it. I fumbled with my seatbelt, pretending it wasn’t suddenly the hardest task on earth.
Ford eased into drive; the engine rumbling beneath us. One hand rested loosely on the wheel. The other tapped the gearshift in time with the low hum of classic rock bleeding through the speakers.
The shadowed pines fell away, and the McCrae farmhouse appeared as if conjured from memory. Two stories of weathered wood, its porch wrapping around it like a welcoming embrace. Sun-bleached lawn chairs slouched in the yard, and a swing set stood perfectly still, a monument to more carefree days.
Inside, warmth hugged the air like a spell: rosemary, garlic, and the slow comfort of a pot roast simmering too long to rush. The foyer was alive with chaos: boots crowded the wall, a wicker basket spilled unopened mail, and the faint tang of lemon polish clung to the banister.
The walls were a collage of memories.
Penny as a toddler in fairy wings.
Ford mid-throw in his football uniform.
Mr. McCrae beaming beside a trout nearly as long as his arm.
And tucked between them—jarringly recent—was a photo of Ford in a suit, a blonde girl on his arm, her head tipped toward him, their smiles caught in the glare of a terrible flash.
A life I didn’t know. A piece of him I hadn’t been part of.
I looked away before Ford noticed, pretending to study the floorboards instead.
Everything here felt warm, layered, lived-in. As if time had pressed itself into the walls and refused to let go. My house was the opposite: hollow rooms, boarded windows, the echo of footsteps where people used to be.
For a moment, I wondered what it might feel like to grow up somewhere so messy and alive it could drown out the quiet.
Penny arrived in pieces—voice first, then footsteps, then the rest of her tumbling down the stairs in a scatter of laughter. She leapt off the last step in a whirl of dusty rose and cream fabric.
Penelope McCrae, living up to her name as usual, wore a tiered skirt embroidered with tiny wildflowers and an oversized cable-knit sweater that refused to stay on one shoulder. Her blonde waves bounced around her face, the tips kissed pink as if dipped in sunset.
“I’ve been trapped in my room for hours,” she announced, though the mischief in her eyes said it had been more choice than sentence.
Mrs. McCrae swept through the hallway like a warm front, balancing a tray of steaming bread. She moved with the efficiency of someone who could run three households at once, her floral apron tied over a navy dress.
“Penelope, set the table, please,” she said, not breaking stride toward the kitchen.
Then she caught my eye and softened.
“Madeline, sweetheart, please make yourself at home.”
Penny groaned but linked her arm through mine.
“Welcome to the McCrae family circus. Nobody escapes Sunday dinner. Thanks for suffering with me.”
The dining room was a sanctuary of lived-in comfort: a long oak table worn smooth by years of elbows and homework, lace curtains filtering the bruised light of the fading sun. Down the center runner, candle wax had hardened into pale rivulets—fossil remains of fires burned down to nothing.
Penny handed me a stack of plates.
“Here. Distract yourself with manual labor. It builds character.”
I circled the table, but my focus fractured. The plates were heavier than I expected, and the top one began a slow slide toward the floor—
A shape moved beside me.
Ford was there, quiet and steady, as if he had materialized out of the woodwork. His hand slid beneath the slipping plate a second before gravity took over, his other hand bracing the stack.
It was a practiced motion.
The move of a man who had spent his life catching things for other people.
“Got them?” he asked.
Our arms brushed, and my pulse stuttered, a ridiculous overreaction to a touch that barely lasted a second.
“Yeah,” I managed, though my grip was anything but steady.
He steadied the plates in my hands with quiet precision, fingers close but never quite touching. Then he turned to the cabinet and reached for a row of mismatched glasses.
Penny, oblivious, lobbed forks and knives onto the table as if preparing for a duel.
“Forks on the left, knives on the right,” she declared solemnly, as if reciting a sacred rite.
I followed her lead. The table offered its history beneath my fingertips—water rings pressed like faint moons into the oak, scratches that refused to sand out.
On one corner, someone had crookedly but determinedly carved initials into the wood.
M + F.
A foreign ache moved through me. I remembered a pocketknife, Ford’s guilty grin, and Penny yelling that her mother was going to kill him.
Then Penny caught my eye and grinned.
“Yeah, we live inside a scrapbook. Careful—it’s clingy. It’ll trap you if you stay too long.”
Mrs. McCrae swept back into the room, balancing a platter like an offering to the gods. A pot roast, glossy and perfect, sat nestled among bronzed potatoes and carrots.
“Dinner’s ready!” she announced, the words practically glowing.
And then—slipping in behind her, wearing a floral apron that matched just a little too well—was a girl with smooth blonde hair and a smile that bordered on victorious.
For half a second, the gears didn’t mesh.
Then the hallway photo slammed into me.
The suit.
The tipped head.
The comfortable gravity of someone who belonged.
She wasn’t just a face in the hall.
She was every year I’d missed, made solid.
Ford exhaled through his nose—the kind of breath you give a situation you can’t escape but would happily torch if given permission.
“Perfect,” he muttered, barely audible.
“I thought it’d be so nice to invite Natalie tonight!” Mrs. McCrae chirped, too bright, too rehearsed. “The more, the merrier, right?”