Dawson nodded. “When my brother came back to Three Rivers, we suddenly had a whole slew of conversations to have. See, my daddy had changed his will, thinking Duke would never come home. So he’d named me as the sole successor of the ranch.”
Caroline watched him, keen interest in her eyes. He shifted, a tiny current of discomfort running through him, what with Shiloh listening too. “So we started having a lot of conversations,” he said. “I hated them, because I don’t want to talk everything to death.”
“Talking is real hard for me,” JJ said.
“The best part of communication,” Caroline said. “Is that it can be learned—with practice.” She moved to stand in front of JJ too. “So you just have to practice doing it, and you’ll find you’ll get better and better at it every time youneed to do it.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” JJ said.
Dawson exchanged a look with Caroline, and she clearly wanted him to give the advice. He didn’t know how to counsel twenty-year-olds any better than four-year-olds. But God gave him the words as he opened his mouth and said, “Do you check in with your parents when you get home late at night?”
“Yes, sir,” JJ said.
“So you will tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Is your momma the only one awake, or is your daddy up too?”
“They’re both up,” JJ said.
Dawson nodded, expecting no less from Jeremiah Walker. “So tonight, when you get home, you walk into their bedroom and you say, ‘I have to talk to you about something.’ And you sit down on the end of the bed, and in the dark—it’s so much easier to talk in the dark when you’re first starting out—you tell them, ‘I want to take over the ranch, and I need help knowing what to do next.’”
“Ifyou want to take over the ranch,” Caroline said.
“Right,” Dawson agreed. “Or you say, ‘I want to go to that vet technician class I told you about a few weeks ago,’ or ‘Hey, I heard of this vet technician class I want to do, and I need your help in knowing how to enroll.’ Or ‘I want to run away to the circus, and I’m packing tonight. Don’t worry. Idon’tneed your help with it.’”
He grinned at JJ, who finally smiled back. “Okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“They’ll turn on the light,” Dawson said. “And then it gets harder. But son, if I know one thing about your momma and daddy, it’s that they just want to help you. They want you to be happy. They probably have a dozen ideas for what’s best for you, and they’re just waiting foryouto open the door with the one you think you want to hear about.”
“Right,” he said. “Okay.”
“You only have to be brave for as long as it takes to get the first sentence out,” Caroline said. “Trust me on that. Once that first sentence is out, the rest will follow.” She nodded, her expression kind but also filled with intensity. Dawson wanted to hear more about how she’d practiced her hard conversations, because she was so good at saying just what she wanted.
“Thanks again,” JJ said, and he quickly hugged them both. “Thanks for dropping the food by, Shiloh.”
“What? Oh, sure.” She took her bowl over to the sink and rinsed it out. “I have to get going. My momma needs me at home.”
Dawson doubted that very much, but he didn’t argue. JJ didn’t either, and the three of them left, still calling good-byes as the door closed.
They’d left the street and the neighborhood and started back toward Caroline’s where they’d been planning to climb up on the roof and eat ice cream,whispering and laughing into the night until they were too tired to continue, when Dawson remembered the ice cream.
“Doesn’t matter,” Caroline said, her fingers in his tightening. “I’ve got Biscoff.”
“I’m gonna need the story of the Biscoff,” he told her.
“Yeah, well, get in line, Mister. You have a million stories to tell me still.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.” He pulled into her driveway but didn’t immediately get out. “Would you go out with me on Valentine’s Day?”
She turned to face him, surprise etched in every line of her face. “You’re asking me out? It’s not implied?”
“Are we to implied dates?”
“I mean…I guess—I don’t know.”
“I’m asking you to be my Valentine,” he said with a smile. “Yes or no?”
