Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Jake
THE ALARM CLOCK clatters to life with its usual overzealous cheer, dragging me out of sleep. I cross the room and smack the off button, groaning as I do.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with that thing. I like early mornings, the quiet, the productivity, but some days, the interruption feels more cruel than helpful.
I shower, shave, and get dressed, and as soon as I step back into the bedroom, Hattie jumps down from the bed. She always waits until I’m ready before she gets out of bed.
We make our way to the kitchen, and I let her out into the yard while I start the coffee. She’s scratching at the door before I’ve taken my first sip.
I let her in, and she pads straight to her food bowl, tail wagging in anticipation.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Can I get a few sips in?”
Her tail thumps the floor with polite insistence.
I take a long pull from my mug and get to work on her breakfast.
I stopped buying commercial dog food years ago, after reading too much about what actually goes into some of it.
The rendering plants, the “meat byproduct” labels that could mean anything from roadkill to euthanized animals, it turned my stomach.
I couldn’t support that industry. Not for Hattie. Not for anyone’s animal.
So I started cooking her meals myself.
Chicken with green beans, carrots, small potatoes, and brown rice. I prep a few days at a time. She thinks I’m a five-star chef, and honestly, I don’t hate the praise.
This morning is no different. I warm the broth, pour it over her food, and set the bowl down. She eats like it’s a feast prepared just for her—which, I guess, it is.
“If only people were as easy to please,” I say.
She wags her tail but doesn’t look up—too busy licking the bowl clean.
I take my coffee out onto the deck. The morning is cool, the air just damp enough to smell like soil and dew. The sun is rising pink over the lake, a soft ball of color edging up above the trees.
And I feel… grateful.
Not in the abstract sense, but grounded. Present. Aware that this place I get to live in is more than I deserve.
But there’s something else this morning.
Something more than just the sunrise or the quiet.
It’s the thought of Sawyer, just down the road.
I’ve thought about her so many times over the years. Always with the same ache, the same certainty that she was out of reach. Not just in miles, but in the way time and tragedy carve out distances we can’t always close.
But now she’s here. And though I know she doesn’t plan to stay, just knowing she’s nearby stirs something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope. Maybe. Or memory.
She’s not the same girl I knew. I can see that.
I can feel the heaviness in her, the weight of things that haven’t let her go.
But there’s still something in her, the same pulse of quiet strength.
The same hunger for truth. I wonder if being here, in this place that once brought her joy, might start to heal the fractures she thinks will never mend.
Maybe I’m fooling myself. Arrogant enough to believe I know what she needs.
But when you’ve known someone when they were young, really known them, you remember who they are at their very foundation. And I once knew Sawyer to be someone who believed fiercely in the good in this world. In its ability to overcome the bad.
I take another sip of coffee and wonder if I still believe that too.
I think I do.
I’ve lived long enough to know that pain is part of the deal. There’s no clean path through a human life. We all get knocked down. We all lose people. We all come apart in our own quiet ways.
But there are also moments of peace. Beauty. Grace.
I’ve found them here, on this land, in the slow rhythm of tending to the things that grow.
It’s not the life I once imagined.
But in many ways, it’s better.
And then my thoughts return to Sawyer.
Did she look me up?
I’m guessing she did. Not out of doubt or suspicion—but out of need. Need to know if the person she once believed in was still real.
A stab of fear rises in me.
Because if she did read the stories, there’s every chance she might believe them.
And if she does…
Then I’ll know I was wrong about what we shared.
And that’s what scares me the most.
Not the stories.
Not the fallout.
But the possibility that I was wrong about what I felt between us all those years ago.