I shot him a look. The horse kept going, unbothered.
He didn’t give up. Kept talking me through it, calm and unhurried, the same way he did with Mia. The same way he’d worked with Honey. Like he expected progress, not perfection. Like he wasn’t keeping score.
Dinners started to matter more than I expected.
The three of us around the kitchen table, passing dishes back and forth, voices overlapping. Mia talking with her hands, jumping from one story to the next. Liam and I trading looks over the rim of our glasses—small, quiet acknowledgments that saidare you seeing this?
One night, while Mia was deep into some drama involving her friend Sofia and a missing pencil case, it hit me.
Not as a thought. As a settling.
This was what I’d wanted her to have.
A table where people stayed. Where no one raised their voice. Where no one disappeared halfway through dinner. A place that didn’t feel temporary.
And then—lower, slower—I realized something else.
I wanted it too.
Not just to build it. To sit in it. To eat without tracking exits. Without listening for the shift in tone that meant it was time to get ready to leave. My shoulders eased without me telling them to. I laughed at the pencil case story and didn’t miss half of it running through contingencies.
I stayed.
I watched Liam laugh, full and easy, watched Mia roll her eyes at him, watched the space between us hold.
For once, I wasn’t bracing.
Wasn’t guarding.
Wasn’t alone in a room full of people.
I didn’t have a word for it yet.
I just knew I’d stopped feeling lost.
The crew cookout happened on a Saturday in late May.
Cal and Lucy arrived first, Gabrielle toddling between them on unsteady legs. She was walking now, a little over a year old, and Lucy kept one hand hovering near her shoulder while Cal carried the diaper bag like it contained classified documents.
Owen showed up with two coolers of beer and a bag of ice, because apparently, you could never have too much of either. The rest of the crew trickled in over the next hour, filling theyard with noise and laughter and the smell of burgers on the grill.
I watched Liam move through the crowd, comfortable and easy, slapping backs and trading jokes. This was his element. Surrounded by people who loved him, on land that had been his family's for generations, doing the simple work of feeding people and making them feel welcome.
He caught my eye across the yard and smiled. Not the easy grin he gave everyone, but something softer. Something just for me.
I smiled back before I could stop myself.
“You’re different lately.”
I turned to find Lucy beside me, leaning against the pasture fence, Gabrielle drowsing against her shoulder. Lucy had that knowing look she got sometimes, the one that saw too much.
“Different how?”
“Lighter.” She tilted her head, studying me. “Less like you’re waiting for something bad to happen.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. She wasn’t wrong.
“It’s a good thing,” Lucy added. “You don’t have to carry everything alone anymore. That’s what family’s for.”
