Loretta took a very deliberate step forward and fixed her gaze, with the focused serenity of a monk at prayer, upon the cuff of Tessa’s last remaining silk blouse.
“No,” Tessa declared forcefully. “Absolutely not.”
Loretta took another step.
“I mean it, Loretta. This is my last good blouse.”
Loretta’s ears swiveled forward and Tessa saw unmistakable mischief glinting in the donkey’s dark eyes.
“Don’t you dare.”
The donkey’s head stretched forward. Her upper lip began to move.
Tessa looked down at her sleeve. Looked up at Loretta. Looked down at her sleeve again. And for reasons she couldn’t articulate, she started to laugh.
It bubbled up out of her chest like a hiccup and by the time it escaped was a full blown cackle. She laughed at Loretta. She laughed at the silk cuff. She laughed at herself for believing two months ago that it would survive farm life. She laughed at the pig on her sofa and the chicken in her hat and the cat who dispensed contempt every morning like clockwork.
She laughed at how her coffee always went cold before she could finish it, at her mother’s outrageous behavior, and most of all she laughed at herself—thirty-three years old, standing here arguing with a donkey determined to eat her blouse. It was all so completely, totally absurd.
Loretta, unsettled, took a step back.
“Oh, now you’re not so tough,” Tessa said, wiping her eyes. “It just takes the human having a mental breakdown to back you off, does it? Well, I’ve got your number now, bucko.”
She dissolved into a fit of giggles.
She really had lost her mind.
Loretta turned and trotted back to the pasture with the injured dignity of a socialite to whom a salesperson had just been rude.
Tessa watched her go with a mix of triumph and lingering humor. She wiped the tears from her face, feeling worlds better after her mini-meltdown, if that’s what that had just been.
I am not the same person I was two months ago, that’s for sure. Truth be told, she’d changed a lot over the past four years. And she had no idea who she was going to be in a year. But she knew who she was not going to be anymore.
She was done worrying so much. Life was too short to let it pass her by while she fretted over the small stuff. She wanted to hang on to the feeling she’d gotten today when she laughed at all of it. Laughed at being tricked into moving out here, laughed at her mother, and most of all laughed at herself. She was done taking herself so seriously. This relaxed, free attitude felt good. Really good.
She picked up the garment bag and walked across the yard to the workshop, only vaguely noting that she didn’t automatically think of it as Mick’s workshop anymore.
That, too, wasn’t a bad thing. Life was also too short not to move on after loss and grief. There was a time for sadness, of course. But afterward, she’d forgotten to make time for laughter. And joy. And living.
Inside the workshop, she unzipped the garment bag and hung the gown on a hook Mick had put into an overhead beam for some purpose and turned to set up her tripod beside the workbench.
And that’s when she saw the rocking chair.
It was larger than Fern’s but had the same scooped oak seat, shaped arms, and gently curved back. The piece looked finished, but the wood was still raw. It hadn’t been oiled yet. Which meant it had been built recently. Only Arlo and Dillon came in here, and Arlo hadn’t been here near enough to have created this beautiful piece.
She walked over and put her hand on the back of the chair. The wood was silky smooth under her palm. The joins were tight. It was sized for a woman about her height.
She sat down in it very carefully, and it fit like it had been measured for her. Even though its curves were delicate, feminine, it felt solid. Made to last for generations. She gripped the curved ends of the chair’s arms and made herself breathe.
Dillon had been building her a rocking chair.
He’d come out here, night after night, to build her a chair that would sit on her porch beside her daughter’s.
But he hadn’t been here since the day her mother called. The chair was almost but not quite done, and he hadn’t been back to finish it. Was he ever coming back to oil it and seal it?
Tessa looked up at the beam where she had hung the gown, and at the window where the morning sunlight was just peeking through, and suddenly knew, with a cold, accurate clarity, that he was not planning to finish the chair. Ever.
He’s not going to finish it because he thinks I’m leaving.