I just had never once in my life voluntarily led with it.
Which meant I had no idea how to start. Cracking myself open in front of people I barely knew wasn't exactly my strong suit.
“My porch is rotting.”
Silence.
“Three of the boards are completely shot. I keep meaning to replace them, but there's always something else.” I glanced around the table. “I've been stepping over the same broken plank for two years.”
Emily stared at me. “That's your sad story?”
“Is that not good enough?”
“Cal.” Rosie gave me a look that landed somewhere between fond and exasperated.
Evan leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Man, should have called me. We'd have fixed it in one afternoon.”
“It's not that I don't know how to fix it, I just don't have the time.”
“So call me. We own a construction company. Replacing porch boards is about as complicated as making toast.”
I looked at him. Then at Emily, who raised an eyebrow as if to sayhe's not wrong.Then at Rosie, who was watching me with that quiet expression she got sometimes, the one that saw too much.
Two years. I'd been stepping around the rotting plank for two years, and Evan Spencer could have fixed it in an afternoon. Probably would have done it the first winter if I'd just?—
Not helpful. Moving on.
I cleared my throat.
“Fine. I have a better one,” I said.
They wanted something real. Something that cost something to say out loud.
The thing was, I knew how to work. I knew how to show up at 3 a.m. for a colicky horse, how to stay calm when everything was going wrong, how to keep moving forward when there was nothing left in the tank. What I did not know was how to sit across a diner table and sayhere is a thing that hurt mewithout feeling like I'd handed someone a weapon they could wield against me.
But Rosie was watching me with that patient expression, and the table was quiet, and I'd driven twenty minutes because she'd asked.
“When I bought the practice,” I said, “I called my dad to tell him.”
I stared at the brownie, remembering that conversation. How excited I'd been. How sure he'd be proud.
“First thing he said was 'What's the revenue look like?' Then he wanted to know if I'd gotten the equipment appraised. If I'd negotiated the price down.” I looked up. “Never asked if I was happy. Never said congratulations. Just... numbers.”
Nobody jumped in to fill the silence.
“I was,” I added. “Happy. First time in a long time. And I didn't have anyone to share that with.”
The silence stretched another beat.
Then Rosie pushed the brownie across the table toward me.
“You win.”
“I haven't heard everyone's stories.”
“You win,” she said again, quieter this time.
I looked at the brownie, then at her. Something passed between us that I didn't have a name for yet.