“They’re fine. I had to fight to keep her from sleeping in the barn with him, though. She’s already out there brushing him. He’s going to spoiled rotten in no time.”
“Best way for a horse—and a kid—to be.”
She nodded. Paused. Sighed. “I found out yesterday after you dropped off Murphy that my grandfather doesn’t know my name anymore. He’s asking for his mother now. She’s been dead since 1972.”
Dillon didn’t know what to do his urge to gather her up in a hug, so he ignored it and sat down on the top step instead. “I’m sorry,” he said soberly.
“Me, too.” Then she said, in a different voice — softer, more open — “Arlo came over yesterday and sat with me for two hours. Didn’t ask a single question. He told me about Fern’s father having dementia, and how she used to drive over to the nursing home every Sunday and let him order pie from her because he thought she was a waitress.”
Dillon’s heart ached. He didn’t say anything.
“I thought all night about how I went my whole life thinking family was a noun.” Her voice was steady, but it wasn’t easy. “I thought family was a fixed thing you were born into and stuck with whether it treats you well or not. But it turns out family is closer to a verb. It’s the people who show up for you. The ones who stay.”
She gazed out at the lake. The morning light was pale and clean and a little too bright as fog rose off the still water in thin wisps.
“My grandpa showed up for me when I was small,” she said. “Fern showed up for Arlo. Now Arlo’s doing it for me.”
He nodded slowly. She was not wrong. Family was measured in much more than shared blood or the same name.
She continued, “I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with the version of myself I’m becoming out here. Because this person is a stranger to me.”
He looked down at his hands for a moment. They were a lot easier to look at than her pain was.
“Months before Lexi left, she started filling boxes with her stuff and hauling them out, and I barely noticed because I was always at work.”
He registered that he was telling her something he’d told no one. Not Hank. Not Reno. Not even the well-meaning therapist his mother had bullied him into seeing after the divorce.
“The thing she said to me about having nothing left for a woman—it wasn’t an attack or cruelty. It was just the truth. I wasn’t there for her. Emotionally or in person.”
He made himself look up.
Tessa was looking at him warmly. “You came when I called,” she said. “My first day here. When I had no idea what to do about the cat. Or the horses or the llama, or the geese. You came even after I was rude to you. I expect you grumbled to yourself about me the whole drive out here and had a good smirk at getting to make me eat crow, but you came.”
A smile came to him without bidding. “I only grumbled a little. Mostly, I relished you having to eat your words.”
She smiled back but waxed serious again quickly. “Every time since when I’ve needed you, you’ve come. When Pete needed help, you went. When Arlo took you into Mick’s shop, you stayed. When you bring Makayla home from school on Fridays, you always come in and tell me what she did that day, even though you have ten other places to be.”
She paused.
“You do nothing but show up for people, Dillon.”
He shook his head in denial.
Tessa continued more forcefully, “I don’t care what Lexi said. I know what you do. Who you are.” She set her mug down. “Lexi told you a lie because she was angry, but you took it as gospel truth and believed her.”
He stared at her blankly. Was it possible?
Tessa gestured at everything around her. “You’re sitting on my porch at seven in the morning with a pig snoring between us. You. Show. Up. It’s the most fundamental thing about you. It’s why I trust you.”
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t wreck him.
She added, more softly, “It’s also why I’m scared of you.”
“Why?” he blurted.
“Because the only other man I ever loved was also a man who showed up for people. He died showing up for someone else. I didn’t think it was possible to meet two men in one lifetime who are so good all the way down to their bones. But here you are.”
The world narrowed to the porch and the woman in front of him. He stood up slowly. Not because he meant to, but because the porch step was too far away from her.