If I can endure getting a broken tooth repaired, I can do this. If I can run into burning buildings, I can confess to a stupid bet.
But I’m stalling. Because telling Winnie the truth means risking everything we’ve created. And I’ve already lost too much—I can’t lose her, too.
Back at my house that night, I can’t settle.
I pace. Shower. Pace some more. Try to watch hockey on TV, but can’t focus.
My phone rings with a call from my mother.
“Hi, sweetheart. I saw photos from the opening. The bakery looks beautiful. Congratulations!” She explains she would’ve been there, but was scheduled to shoot a wedding.
“Thanks. It was a good day.” Despite what she said about work, it would have been even better if she were here, but after I graduated high school, she left Huckleberry Hill and hasn’t been back since. Too much history, hard memories, I suppose.
“I also saw photos of a lovely young woman. Red sweater, bright smile?”
Of course she did. Mom has a sixth sense for this kind of thing, even from afar.
“That’s Winnie. She works for Parks & Rec.”
“Is she the reason you’ve been so busy lately?”
“When am I not busy?”
“This isdifferent.”
“Different how?”
“You were smiling.” Mom’s voice softens. “Your father would want you to be happy, you know.”
The mention of Dad makes my throat tight. But then I nearly drop the phone. She never voluntarily brings up my father. It’s a hot-button topic that could send her to bed for days.
“You deserve a full life, Patton. Love, family, joy, all of it.”
I’m quiet, emotions churning.
“I know you’re scared,” she says, which feels a lot like permission to speak freely, honestly, and unload the burden I’ve been carrying.
“I don’t know how to love someone and risk losing them. Or worse, them losing me—and the suffering that could ensue.”
She’s quiet a beat and I fear I’ve gone too far.
Then my mother says, voice stronger than I’ve heard it in recent memory, “You do it anyway. Because the alternative, living half a life because you’re too scared to live a whole one, isn’t something anyone wishes for when it’s too late.”
We talk for a few more minutes before saying goodnight, but her words stay with me.
Have I been living a half life? When my father died and she retreated, I stepped in, did everything. Then, as a hotshot followed by a smoke jumper, I laughed danger and death in the face. I was very much alive. But what about now? I’ve been playing it safe, keeping everyone at arm’s length, building walls so high no one can scale them.
Until Winnie.
But she didn’t scale the walls. She just walked right through them like they didn’t exist.
I pull up social media, scrolling through the photos she posted from today. The bakery looks incredible. The crew looks happy. And there’s one of me—caught mid-laugh at something Austin said, completely unguarded.
Her caption reads:Welcome to Huckleberry Hill, @CrushCakesBakery. Lieutenant Cross, on behalf of everyone in this town, we are certain you’ve made Captain Kendrick proud.
Would he be proud of me lying by omission? Keeping the bet from Winnie, never mind the stipulation in the will?
My phone buzzes with a text.
