Chapter 14
Molly
The knock comes at nine in the morning, which is early enough to be annoying and late enough that I'm already dressed and fed, Clem drowsing in the bassinet by the window.
"Delivery," I mutter, even though I stopped expecting anything from Taz after our last conversation. STOP, I told him. No more gifts, no more services, no more attempts to buy forgiveness. He agreed. For once, he actually listened.
But when I open the door, it's not a delivery driver on my porch.
It's Taz himself, arms full of a box I recognize. The bottle warmer. Behind him, more boxes: the matching dresser, the changing table, all the nursery furniture that's been sitting in storage since I walked out.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I ask.
"I'm not here to intrude," he says quickly. "I swear. This was Maggie's idea. She called yesterday. Asked if it was okay to bring your stuff back. Porch delivery only, she said. You said yes."
I did say yes, to Maggie, not to him.
"I agreed to a delivery from your mother," I tell him. "You should have checked before coming yourself."
He shifts the box in his arms. "You're right. I should have asked her to confirm the driver with you. I can take it back and arrange someone else."
He waits with the box still in his arms. Apparently I'm allowed to refuse an entire truck now. It would have been useful to discover this power before we moved to LA.
"Fine." I step back. "But keep the path clear. I'm not climbing over baby furniture every time I want to check the mail."
"Yes ma'am," he says, and hefts the box.
He starts unloading. I watch because I'm not about to leave him unsupervised, and definitely not because the morning sun is doing obscene things to the tattoos on his forearms. Sleeves shoved to his elbows.
Forearms flexing under the ink every time he hefts a box.
And the hat, the battered straw one I haven't seen on his head since we left Ojai.
Okay, partially because of that. I'm mad, not blind.
"There's one more thing in the truck bed," he says after the fifth trip. "The crib I started building. Back when you told me. About the pregnancy."
I stop breathing.
The crib. The oak crib he was building in the garage, the one I used to sneak out to watch him sanding in the evenings.
He'd sketched bees along the rails in pencil, tiny detailed bees he swore he'd carve, because he said our daughter would grow up knowing her mama's honey business, knowing where she came from.
I never saw it finished. I thought I never would.
"You finished it," I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I want it to.
"I finished it. Three weeks ago. I've been waiting for a chance to bring it to you." He stops. "I should have asked whether you wanted me to deliver it, too."
"How did you find me in the first place?" I ask.
"I drove past. I saw the onesies on the line. I didn't knock." He takes off his hat, runs a hand through his dark hair. "I wasn't trying to ambush you. I just needed to know you were okay. Both of you."
I should tell him to leave. I should slam the door and call the sheriff and make this his problem instead of mine. But my feet won't move and my mouth won't cooperate, and there's a finished crib in his truck with bees carved into it and I'm so tired of being angry all the time.
"I accepted the help because I needed it," I say. "I don't want to discover you've filed that under progress with me."
"I haven't." He sets the box down. "Nina works with you. Carmen works with you. You can keep either of them or send them away. They don't report to me about you."
"And the crib?" I ask.
"I started it for our daughter," he says. "It belongs to her. You don't have to thank me for finishing a crib I promised before she was born."
I look past him toward the truck. "I wanted to see it in her room before we brought her home. I used to imagine standing beside it with you."
His grip tightens on the brim. "I remember you coming out to the garage. You'd trace the pencil bees on the rail."
"Then you remember me asking when it would be ready," I say.
His throat works. "I do."
"Don't tell me you ran out of time," I tell him. "You used the time somewhere else."
"I did." He doesn't look away. "And I can't give you that homecoming back."
"I got the lawyer's packet," I say. "Weeks ago."
He nods slowly. "I figured."
"Hudson's not your son. The test was forged. She drugged you—there was no sex." I recite it flatly, facts I've read seventeen times. "Jensen arranged everything. Withheld the message that I was in labor. Faked the prenatal report."
"Yeah."
"You were a victim of a crime, Taz."
"So were you."
I let myself look at him properly. He's thinner. Dark circles under his eyes. That's not fake. That's five weeks of not sleeping, and I know because I look the same way.
"I'm not coming back," I tell him. "Knowing the truth doesn't erase what happened."
"I know." His voice is quiet. "I'm not asking you to."
From the bassinet inside, Clem makes a small huffing sound. Taz looks toward the doorway, and I see his throat move.
"Did you know," I say carefully, "that she paid Boone Keller to come after me?"
His face goes completely still. "What?"
"Three weeks ago. The drugstore parking lot in town.
He slammed me into my truck with Clem in her car seat three feet away, and Jolene screamed the whole thing out: some blonde woman with an LA car and a hospital bracelet paid him five hundred dollars.
" I lift my chin. "I broke his nose. I've already reported it. My lawyer has everything."
For a second he doesn't breathe. Then, very quietly: "Have her send my lawyers what she has. Please. Whatever Kendall paid him with, we'll find it."
I grip the doorframe. Months of being excluded, and now there's an entire filing cabinet of reasons. Apparently my marriage came with supplementary reading.
"I quit," he says. "Resigned from the company.
The management team is taking over the operations.
I'm going to be on the ranch full-time, working with the land and the cattle, the way I was supposed to be before my father died and I got so lost trying to fill his shoes that I forgot how to be a husband. "
"You think that fixes anything?" I ask. "You think quitting your job—"
"I don't think anything fixes it." He cuts me off gently.
"I think I have to earn your trust back, and I can't do that if I'm still making the same choices that broke it.
You and our baby have a right to know what I am doing and to count on me.
I never should have made those choices or kept you in the dark.
That's what I'm apologizing for: my own choices, my own failures. Kendall's lie is hers to answer for."
I'm crying. I hate that I'm crying, hate that he's seeing me like this, but the tears won't stop. Knowing the facts on paper was easier than standing here with him, and I don't know how to hold any of it.
"I waited for you," I whisper. "In that hospital room. I waited for you to come back, and you didn't. You wouldn't wait for the nurse to check. You wouldn't make a plan with me. Even if Hudson had needed you, we could have faced that together. You made the choice without me again."
"I did." His voice breaks too. "I did, Molly. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making different choices. Whether you let me back in or not."
I step back inside and shut the door.
I stand in the hallway with my back against the wood, listening to my own heartbeat pound in my ears. I should walk away. Clem needs checking on, and I could take a shower, do anything other than stand here eavesdropping on my own front porch.
But I can hear him out there. Moving around. The thud of boxes being set down, the scrape of furniture being positioned. He's still unloading. He's still setting everything up even though I just shut the door in his face.
I peek through the window, only to see how much longer this is going to take.
Taz is carrying the crib up onto the porch, whole, assembled, the oak glowing honey-gold, and even from here I can see the bees, carved now, marching along every rail.
He sets it down carefully, reverently, like it's precious.
Then he goes back to the truck for another load.
Bassinet. Swing. More boxes I can't identify from this angle.
He's sweating in the morning sun. His shirt is sticking to his back and his hair is damp under the hat and he looks—
He wipes his forehead with his wrist the way he used to after a day moving cattle, knocks his hat back, and squints at the truck bed like it's personally insulted him.
For one second the suits and the phone and the two years in LA peel right off him, and he's the man on the tailgate with two sandwiches.
He reaches for another box. I crack the window an inch and stay behind the curtain, where he can't see me.
"Is that thing going to fit through my nursery door," I call, "or am I raising her on the porch?"
He turns toward the sound of my voice. "It fits. An inch to spare. My mother had Nina measure the door. You can have someone else carry it in."
"Who wrote down the measurements?" I ask.
"I did," he says, a little sheepish. "I can make them clearer."
"If they resemble your wedding vows," I tell him, "I'll need an interpreter and possibly your arm."
His smile starts, then he reins it in. "Printed. With diagrams."
"Good," I say. "Clem can supervise whoever carries it. She has strong opinions about incompetence."
"She's entitled to them," he says to the window.
I lower the window before he can mistake this for an invitation. He moves the last box out of the doorway and tests the stack with his hand.
When he's done, he stands at the bottom of the porch steps and looks up at the window where I'm hiding. I know he can't see me through the curtain. I know I'm just a dark shape behind the fabric, if that.
But he tips his hat anyway. A small gesture, old-fashioned and ridiculous and so completely him that it makes my chest ache.
Then he gets in his truck and drives away.