Chapter 1
Molly
Seven years married, and I don't remember the last time my husband looked at me like I'm a person instead of furniture.
I'm standing in the doorway of our bedroom watching Taz get dressed for work.
"Could you put that down for a minute?" I ask.
He looks at the tie in his hand. I point at the phone beside it. Even my requests need a diagram now.
"I'm waiting on a message, Mol." He doesn't look up from the knot. "What's going on?"
"I'd like to go to Ojai this weekend," I say. "With you. Before you offer me a driver or remind me where we keep the keys."
He winces, the way he does when a spreadsheet disagrees with him. "Saturday's difficult. There's a dinner tonight that might run late, and I'll have things to follow up. Why don't you go ahead? I'll join you if I can."
"Because the last time you said that," I tell him, "I spent Sunday at the farm watching the driveway. Miguel stopped by with the hive report and asked if I was waiting on a delivery. I nearly told him it was my husband, but he already has enough bees to worry about."
Taz pulls the burgundy tie through its knot. I bought it three Christmases ago, back when I thought choosing a thing he wore all day might make me part of that day.
"You could have called," he says, tugging the knot tight.
"I did." I hold up my own phone like evidence. "You sent me a thumbs-up. To a question. I still don't know which part of 'Are you coming?' you approved of."
"I was in the middle of a meeting," he says.
"Believe me, I noticed. I live on the outskirts of your meetings." My smile doesn't reach anywhere. "It's a lovely neighborhood. Terrible company."
He sets down the phone, but keeps it faceup. A compromise for which I am apparently supposed to organize a parade.
"Tell me what you need," he says, and at least he sounds like he means it.
"I miss my work." The words come out smaller than I planned. "I miss opening a hive and knowing what I'm looking at because I've been there all week. Miguel can keep the bees alive. He can't make me feel like I still have a business."
"Then spend more time there," he says, reasonable as a contract. "Stay a week. We have the help so you can choose."
"And have a husband on alternate weekends?" I ask. "Provided you don't get a better invitation?"
His jaw sets. "That's unfair. I'm working, Molly. I'm not out enjoying myself while you wait at home."
"I don't need you to be enjoying it for it to hurt," I say quietly.
His fingers stop on the watch clasp. There. A sentence that gets through the suit. I cross the room before he can fasten himself back into it.
"When did you last ask me about Sagebloom?" I stop in front of him, close enough to smell his aftershave. "I don't mean whether Miguel sent the invoice, or whether I needed money. When did you want to know what I was making?"
He blinks, searching his memory like a file drawer. "We talked about the hives last week."
"You asked if everything was handled," I say. "A leaking pipe is handled. I wanted to tell you about the honey. You built the room where I made it, Taz. You used to come in and steal the broken pieces of comb and pretend that counted as helping."
The corner of his mouth moves. "You made me wash every bucket afterward."
"And you stayed." My voice catches on it. "That's the part I'm trying to get back. You stayed after there wasn't a problem left to solve."
He looks at me then. Properly. My throat aches with the humiliating relief of it.
"I thought you understood why we moved," he says.
"I did understand," I tell him. "I packed. I left my grandmother's farm. I tried to make a life here. Understanding isn't an agreement never to be unhappy again."
He reaches for his watch. "You could take a class. Meet people. You shouldn't spend your whole day waiting for me."
"You're right. I shouldn't." I watch his fingers work the clasp. "But when I ask for an evening with my husband, 'find a hobby' is a fairly brutal response."
He stops. "That isn't what I'm trying to say."
"Then try again," I say. "I'm standing here. You've got an actual chance to talk to me before this becomes another thing we almost did."
He drags a hand over his face. "I don't know how to make both places work right now. If I leave early, things wait for me. Then I spend the weekend catching up. I'm trying to get ahead enough to stop doing that."
"You've been trying for two years," I say. "At some point the temporary arrangement becomes the marriage."
He spreads his hands, helpless and a little defensive. "What would you have me cancel?"
"Don't make me choose from a calendar I've never seen," I tell him. "Choose yourself. Come home before I'm asleep. Ask me a question and stay for the answer. I don't need a holiday, Taz. I need a Tuesday."
His phone buzzes. His eyes move before he can stop them.
"I'm lonely," I say. "I'm telling you plainly because I don't want you to say you didn't know. I love you, and I'm lonely living with you."
"Mol." He reaches for my hand. "We'll talk tonight."
"After the dinner?" I ask.
He closes his eyes briefly. "Tomorrow. This weekend. I'll clear Saturday and we'll go out together. Check on the bees. Spend some time."
"Please don't make me pack a bag unless you're coming," I say.
He glances at the clock on the nightstand. "I'll sort it out. I really do have to leave now."
I let go of his hand so he doesn't have to pull it away.
He kisses my forehead on his way out. A brush of lips, barely there. "Love you."
"Love you too," I say to the closing door.
The front door closes. His truck starts in the garage below. And I'm alone in this two-story house with its floor-to-ceiling windows and its view of a city I never wanted, standing in a bedroom that feels like a hotel room, wearing a robe my husband didn't notice.
I think about the farmhouse in Ojai that's sitting half-empty because I couldn't sell my grandmother's land but I can't live there without him.
At the honey house he built me at Topa Ridge our first year of marriage, he'd come out in the evenings and sit on an overturned crate and watch me extract frames, asking questions long after he'd run out of comb to steal.
Sometimes he forgot his questions because he was watching me instead.
I can't remember the last time he looked at me like that.
But Sundays are still his.
That was the deal we made when we moved here.
Monday through Saturday, work could have him.
But Sundays belonged to us. No phones, no meetings, no things.
Just Taz and Molly in the house, cooking breakfast and watching bad movies and pretending we're still the people who fell in love on the tailgate of a pickup truck.
It's been getting harder to pretend.
This Sunday, though, this Sunday is different.
This Sunday I'm standing in the bathroom with a plastic stick in my hand and two pink lines blooming in the window, and my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
Pregnant.
The word doesn't seem real. I keep looking at the test, waiting for the lines to disappear, waiting for the whole thing to be a mistake.
We've been trying for months, since September, since that conversation where Taz looked up from his phone long enough to say he thought we should start a family.
I agreed because I wanted it, had wanted it for years, and because I thought maybe a baby would bring him back to me.
Maybe if there were three of us, he'd have a reason to come home.
That's a terrible reason to have a child. I know that. But desperation makes you do terrible things, and I have been desperate for a very long time.
I wrap the test in toilet paper and carry it out to the kitchen, where Taz is standing at the stove in nothing but jeans.
His back is to me, muscles moving under tattooed skin as he flips eggs, and for a second I just watch him.
This man. This impossible, infuriating, beautiful man who swept into my life with borrowed money and homemade sandwiches and made me believe in things I'd sworn off after Boone.
"Hey," I say.
He glances over his shoulder. "Eggs are almost done. You want toast?"
"Taz," I say again.
The crack in my voice must register because he turns around fully, spatula still in hand, brow furrowing. "What's wrong?"
I hold up the test.
He stares at the test, then at me, then back at the test. His face goes from confusion to comprehension to a look I've never seen on him, close to terror but sweeter, and then the spatula clatters to the floor and Tazio Williams, six-foot-four of muscle and stubbornness and cowboy pride, sits down on the kitchen tile and starts to cry.
"Taz—" I start.
He reaches for me, hands finding my hips, pulling me closer until his face is pressed against my stomach.
His shoulders shake. His breath comes in ragged gasps against the silk of my robe, and I stand there with my fingers in his hair and my own tears streaming down my face, and I think: There you are. There's my husband.
"A baby," he says against my skin. "Molly. A baby."
"Yeah," I whisper, and wipe my face with the heel of my hand.
He pulls back, looks up at me with wet eyes and a trembling smile, and he's the man from the tailgate again. The one who made me sandwiches and bought all my honey and blushed to his ears when June yelled about marriage across the yard.
"You're sure?" he asks.
"Two pink lines, Taz," I say, and wave the stick at him.
He squints at it like it's written in another language. "But you could test again. Just to be—I mean, sometimes they're wrong, right? False positives?"
"They're not wrong," I tell him.
He laughs, a wet broken sound, and pulls me down into his lap right there on the kitchen floor. His arms wrap around me and I bury my face in his neck and we stay like that, tangled together on the tile, and for the first time in months I feel like I can breathe.
"I love you," he says into my hair. "God, Molly. I love you so much."