Tessa frowned. She wasn’t a musician herself, but she’d listened to enough of Makayla’s practicing to know that deviation from the score was not something her daughter did accidentally. Makayla was meticulous. If those notes had bent, it was because she’d bent them on purpose.
The thought floated through her mind and kept going, unexamined. She had dumplings to make.
She mixed the dough the way Fern’s card instructed—gently, with a fork, until it was shaggy and rough and nothing at all like the smooth, uniform textures Judith had demanded of every recipe in the Northcott kitchen. She dropped spoonfuls into the simmering broth and watched them puff and rise, pale and lumpy and exactly right.
The kitchen filled with a smell so warm and homey it made her heart ache.
Makayla came downstairs drawn by the smell, eyes wide. “You cooked?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. I am capable of feeding us something that doesn’t come from a can or a box.”
“Since when?”
She rolled her eyes as set two bowls on the table. “It’s Granny Fern’s recipe. Chicken and dumplings.”
Makayla sat down, tucked a napkin in her lap, and took a bite. Her eyes closed. “Mom.”
“Oh no. Is it terrible?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve eaten in my entire life.”
Tessa highly doubted that. But she had to admit it was warm and filling. They ate it together at a table Mick had built with his own hands, and it was nice. Really nice. For the first time since they’d moved to the farm, the house didn’t feel like someone else’s. It felt, however temporarily, like theirs.
Hamlet waddled over from the couch and positioned himself beneath the table with strategic patience. He obviously knew that if he waited long enough, Makayla would set her empty dish on the floor and let him lick it clean. Tessa looked down at his bright brown eyes and his hopeful, slightly open mouth.
“Sorry, Pig,” she told him. “This has onion in it and that’s toxic to pigs.”
She’d read that in Fern’s chicken guide, of all places. She was learning things she’d never imagined needing to know, and it was starting to feel less like survival and more like competence.
Dillon came by Sunday morning to check June’s heart after her big outing yesterday. He pressed the stethoscope to the old mare’s chest just behind her left front leg and stood motionless, eyes closed, face intent, while June turned her head and lipped at his shirt pocket in search of the peppermint she knew was there.
Tessa watched him pull the stethoscope from his ears and was startled to clock that she was anxious about the mare’s health. “How’s she doing?”
“Sable. No change in the murmur from last week.”
“She ate all her meds this morning. No molasses. First time.”
“Good. You’re winning her over.”
“No, you’re winning her over. She held out on me until she heard your truck, and then she gobbled up her pills like an angel. She won’t eat for me unless she knows you’re coming with a peppermint chaser.”
“That’s not true.”
“It absolutely is. You bribe my horse.”
“I do not?—”
“You do, and you’ve corrupted her. She used to have principles. Standards. Now she performs for your candy like a circus pony.”
“I’d hardly call standing still while I listen to her heart performing.”
“She batted her eyelashes at you.”
“Horses don’t bat their eyelashes.”
“June does. And she does it at you. She’s shameless.”
The shameless horse in question nudged his shoulder hard enough to knock him off balance, demanding her treat. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced two peppermints. He unwrapped on crinkly plastic wrapper and gave the round disk to June, who took it with the delicate precision of a duchess accepting a canapé. As the horse loudly crunched the hard candy, he held the second one out to Tessa.