Chapter 30
Molly
The ladder creaks under Taz's weight, and I shade my eyes against the afternoon sun, watching him nail the last cedar shingle on the porch gable into place.
"Before you climb down, third row from the bottom," I call. "Left side. The gap."
He leans back to look. "Please tell me you charge other roofers for this service."
"I was going to put it on your tab," I tell him. "You already owe me a window that opens without a personal struggle."
His shoulders drop as he studies the gap. "How do you even—you're standing forty feet away."
"I have excellent vision," I say. "Also, you've been staring at that same spot for five minutes like you're hoping it'll fix itself."
He climbs down the ladder with that particular grace of his, the one that shouldn't work for someone his size but does. The June light catches the silver starting at his temples, more than there was in spring. He looks good with it, which is deeply unfair to the rest of us trying to age quietly.
"One shingle tomorrow," he says, brushing sawdust from his jeans. "Then I'm retiring from roofing. My knees have handed in their notice."
"I'll write them a reference," I say. "They showed up, worked hard, and only complained within earshot of everybody."
His mouth twitches, fighting the smile he's been wearing more easily these past few months.
The crew made the roof sound last autumn.
These last weekends have been for cedar trim, porch repairs, and the cabinets my grandmother picked out forty years ago.
Taz has managed to turn the final shingle into a personal enemy.
Clem makes a sound from her playpen on the porch, half squeal, half demand, and I go to scoop her up. She's getting too big for the pen, almost eleven months now and desperate to walk. She grabs my hair immediately, yanking hard enough that my eyes water.
"Okay, little monster," I say, detangling her fist. "We talked about this."
"Ba," she says firmly, like that settles the matter.
"Your daughter has opinions," I call to Taz.
"She gets that from you," he calls back.
I carry her down to where he's standing, surveying the farmhouse like he does every time we're here, cataloging what's fixed and what still needs work.
The porch rails are painted. The windows are reglazed.
A swing for Clem hangs from the oak that used to shade my grandmother's bedroom, the one that lost a limb last summer and was assessed as sound before we hung it.
The hives are back in the east field. Miguel helped me move them home from his orchard last month, twelve colonies strong and busy through the summer. Sagebloom Honey has orders through Christmas.
"Maggie asked what time dinner is," Taz says, checking his phone. "And whether Clem needs more of that specific yogurt she likes, because she bought eight containers just in case."
"Your mother is going to spoil her rotten," I tell him.
"My mother has been preparing to spoil a grandchild since I was old enough to complain about her plans," he says. "I'm not getting in her way."
His phone lights up again. He checks the name, then looks at me.
"Hollis," he says. "He asked about a call Tuesday evening. I haven't agreed."
"Is there a reason it has to be evening?" I ask.
"He's traveling," Taz says. "I can offer Wednesday morning instead."
"Then do," I tell him. "Tuesday I'm teaching you where the jars live. You keep returning them as though the shelves are a lottery."
"I was sorting by size," he says, deeply offended on behalf of his system.
"And I was sorting by what was inside," I say. "A bold innovation in food storage."
He types a reply. "Wednesday. Done. I'll be available for remedial jars."
That's how the change happens now. An ordinary question, an answer he stays to hear. I don't have to make a crisis of wanting his company.
My ring is still on its chain around his neck. Sometimes I catch him touching it through his shirt.
After I forgave him, we agreed to give ourselves until summer before renewing our vows. Months of ordinary life together, with the proposal itself left as his surprise. Now summer is here, and the question seems to follow us around the house.
"She wanted us there at six," Taz says. "But she also said we should take our time, in that voice she uses when she's up to no good."
"What kind of no good?" I ask.
"Couldn't tell you," he says.
But he's not quite meeting my eyes, and there's a tension in his shoulders that wasn't there a minute ago.
"Tazio," I say.
"Hm?" he says, suddenly fascinated by the fence line.
"What's happening at six?" I ask.
"Dinner," he says. "With my mother. Like I said."
Clem grabs his shirt collar and tries to eat it. He lets her, which is such a dad move that my chest aches.
"If your mother has bought another high chair, you're explaining where we'll put it," I say. "The last one could seat a visiting head of state."
He rubs the back of his neck and won't quite look at me. "I'm not worried about furniture."
"That narrows it to everything else you've been refusing to look me in the eye about," I tell him.
He laughs, but it's got an edge. "Can we just—go look at the field? The light's good right now."
The light is good. It's that golden hour my grandmother used to love, when the whole valley goes soft and amber and the mountains turn pink at their edges. The field stretches out behind the farmhouse, wildflowers and clover and the white boxes of the hives in neat rows.
We walk the path I used to walk as a kid, Clem on my hip pointing at everything and making her urgent sounds. Taz's hand finds the small of my back, steadying me over the uneven ground.
"Remember the first time you came out here?" I ask.
"You made me harvest honey in borrowed coveralls that were three inches too short," he says.
"You looked ridiculous," I tell him.
"I was trying to impress you," he says, red creeping up his neck even now.
"The cuffs stopped halfway up your calves," I say. "Grandma asked if you were expecting a flood."
"Your grandmother watched me wedge myself into those things and didn't offer the larger pair until lunch," he says. "She enjoyed herself."
I laugh, and Clem laughs too, delighted by the sound even though she doesn't understand the joke. The hives are humming ahead of us, that low steady vibration that's always meant home.
"I want to raise her here," I say. It comes out sudden and unplanned. "I want her to know this place like I did. The bees and the fields and the mountain mornings."
Taz is quiet for a moment. "Yeah?"
"I know we talked about the LA house," I rush on, "and I know your work is—"
"Molly," he says.
"—but I could run Sagebloom from the honey house at Topa Ridge," I keep going, "and you could do your board calls from anywhere, and—"
"Molly." He stops walking. His hand on my back becomes his hand turning me to face him. "I've been waiting for you to say that."
"You have?" I ask.
"Why do you think I've been out here every weekend rebuilding your grandmother's roof?" he asks.
"Because I asked you to?" I say.
"Because this is where you belong." His voice is rough. "This is where we belong. Both of us. All three of us."
I stare at him. Clem yanks my hair again, but I barely notice.
"The ranch is twenty minutes away," he says.
"The honey house isn't going anywhere. Williams Land hell, it ran better when I wasn't obsessing over every detail.
And this—" He gestures at the field, the hives, the farmhouse with its nearly finished porch trim.
"This is what you've wanted since before I met you.
I'm not going to be the reason you don't have it. "
"Taz," I whisper.
"I know I got a lot wrong. I know I—" He stops, swallows.
"I spent so long building things I thought mattered that I almost lost the only thing that actually does.
I'm not doing that again. If you want to raise our kids here, then we raise our kids here.
If you want to build Sagebloom into the biggest honey operation on the coast, I'll help you build it. Whatever you want, Molly. I mean that."
There's movement at the edge of the field. I squint against the golden light and see them: Maggie in her blue dress, holding a bundle I can't make out. Az and Eli coming up the path from Juniper Hill, Eli carrying baby June on his hip. They're all walking toward us.
"What is this?" I ask.
Taz takes a breath. "A proposal. A proper one, like you asked."
My heart stops. Actually stops, just for a second, and then starts again twice as fast.
"Tazio," I breathe.
"I wanted the people who matter here. I wanted you to hear this with people who love us standing beside you." He reaches into his back pocket, and his hands are shaking. I can see them shaking. "I wrote it down. On paper, because—well, you know why."
Because eight years ago he wrote his vows on his forearm in ballpoint pen, and I married him anyway.
Maggie reaches us first, her eyes already wet.
She takes Clem from my arms without a word, and Clem goes willingly because Maggie always has crackers.
The bundle turns out to be a tiny bee suit, and she zips our daughter into it right there in the clover, antennae and all.
Az is beaming. Eli is trying not to cry.
Baby June is sleeping through all of it.
"Everyone knew about this except me," I say.
"We've been planning it for a month," Az admits.
"You kept a secret for a month?" I ask her.
"It was really hard," Az says.
Taz pulls out the folded paper. It's been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases are soft, almost worn through. He unfolds it now with those shaking hands, and I can see his handwriting from here: messier than usual, crossed out and rewritten.
"Molly Edward," he starts.
"Oh god," I say.
"Don't interrupt me," he says. "I've practiced this."
"On a horse," Eli says. "I caught him practicing on a horse."
"She stayed for the whole speech," Taz says.
"You were holding a feed bucket," Eli says. "Try that with Molly and see how it goes."