It occurred to her, sitting there with her feet hanging off the tailgate and the morning sun warm on her face, that this was the first time she’d been to the lake since Mick died. It was nice. Really nice. The quiet lap of water on the shallow, gravel shore was deeply soothing.
Makayla’s lure finally sailed out over the water and sank below the surface. She shrieked and bounced on the bank, startling June into shying, her massive hooves smashing through the shallows and sending up a rooster tail of water that caught Dillon full across the chest.
He looked down at his soaked shirt, looked at the horse, looked at Makayla, and said perfectly deadpan, “I should have been a dentist.”
Tessa burst out laughing.
Dillon glanced over at her, surprised. She caught his expression before he could rearrange it—an unguarded moment of warmth and wonder that disappeared so fast she might have imagined it.
Except she was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined it.
Makayla and Dillon fished and Tessa steadfastly declined to touch any bait, tackle, or aquatic creature for the next two hours. Makayla caught nothing. Dillon caught two fingerling trout and released them both. June waded out until her belly touched the water and took a leisurely nap. She clearly enjoyed retirement.
It was kind of Fern to take in the draft horses and give them these years of relaxation and just getting to be horses.
Tessa loved the water. She loved watching Makayla’s complete absorption in something that had nothing to do with lessons or schedules or achievement. The sound of the lake lapping against the shore soothed her. She lazily registered the clean, mineral smell of the water and the way the mountains reflected upside down in the glassy surface near the bank.
If she was being honest with herself in a way she generally avoided, she also loved the sound of Dillon’s low voice coaching her daughter and how his laughter danced across the water like a skipping stone.
Whereas Mick had been all eager energy, excitement, and constant motion, Dillon had a calm about him that she soaked up like a parched plant soaked up rain?—
You are not in the market for a man.
But if she were, it would be a man like Dillon. Smart, steady, thoughtful, witty?—
Stop, already!
She redirected her attention to the landscape because it didn’t have blue eyes or broad shoulders or an infuriating habit of being exactly the kind of man she had no business wanting.
That afternoon, with Makayla upstairs practicing her violin and the animals fed and medicated, Tessa did something else she hadn’t done in a very long time.
She cooked a meal from scratch.
Not the functional cooking she’d been doing since they moved to the farm—reheating soup, assembling sandwiches, boiling pasta with jarred sauce because those were the meals of a woman running at full speed between a store, a photography business, and a barnful of animals.
This was different. She found a recipe card in Fern’s kitchen drawer, written in her mother-in-law’s loopy hand on a stained index card. Chicken and Dumplings — Mick’s Favorite.
She stood at the counter holding the card and felt the familiar press of grief against her ribcage. This was Mick’s favorite? How come he never told her? Had she been so busy being the opposite of everything her parents expected that she’d never stopped to learn this small, ordinary thing about the man she married?
She put the card on the counter and went to the store.
The recipe was simple—a whole chicken, vegetables, broth, and the dumplings themselves, which were nothing more than flour, butter, milk, and baking powder dropped by spoonfuls into simmering broth. Fern’s notes on the card’s back side were characteristically blunt.
Don’t overwork the dough or the dumplings will bounce like rubber balls.
Get a rotisserie chicken from the store and claim I cooked it myself.
Use a whole stick of butter because we’re not put on this Earth to diet.
It’s ready when it smells so good Arlo knocks on the door. Don’t let him in.
She smiled at her mother-in-law’s dry humor. She wished she could’ve gotten to know this side of Fern. Maybe the two of them would have gotten along better if they’d figured out how to share their senses of humor with each other.
While the chicken bubbled in its broth, she stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the afternoon light on the pasture. Biscuit and June stood together in their paddock, dozing. Loretta was mouthing a weed by the fence as if deciding whether it was edible or not. Captain and Maple lay together by the barn door, the goat’s head resting on the dog’s back.
From upstairs, Makayla’s violin drifted down through the floorboards. A Bach partita, technically flawless, each note placed with the mathematical precision of a child who’d been trained to play perfectly since before she could read.
And then the music shifted. So subtly that Tessa almost didn’t catch it. The Bach melody bent—a slide between notes that didn’t belong in the score, a slight rhythmic looseness that made the phrase swing instead of march. It lasted only a few measures before snapping back to the written music, as if Makayla had caught herself straying and quickly corrected.