He leans down, voice pitched low enough for only me to hear. “See you at the field, Katie.”
When he walks out the door, Knox whistles low. “You two really think you’re fooling anyone?”
Kinsey shakes her head. “Oh, they’re fooling someone. Just not us.”
Chapter four
Cam
The quiet hits harder than it should when the door clicks shut behind me. One sound, and the house feels too big again. I drop my keys in the dish—little clatter, no echo back—and toe my shoes onto the mat. ESPN goes on out of habit, more background noise than interest. The couch is still perfect from this morning, throw folded too neatly. Nothing here moves unless I move it.
The kitchen is exactly the same. Same skillet. Same half-forgotten bag of vegetables. Same chicken breast thawing because it’s what I always make when I don’t feel like thinking. I set the pan on the stove and start chopping. Not because I’m hungry—because it keeps my hands busy. Cooking has always been the one thing I can do on autopilot.
The sizzle of the pan is the first sound that feels alive in the whole house. It nudges a memory loose—the way Mom used to hum over the stove, telling us dinner mattered even when it was nothing special. “Food tastes better when someone’s across the table,” she’d say, sliding plates to my brother and me. I never understood that line back then. Tonight, eating alone again, I get it in a way I wish I didn’t.
I flip the chicken, and the smell brings back another picture—her hands working quick, moving with this stubborn determination that held our whole world together after Dad left. I’d been twelve. One day he was in his recliner yelling at the Pirates’ bullpen, the next his truck was gone and Mom stood at the sink gripping the counter like it was the only thing keeping her upright. I didn’t decide to grow up fast; the house just needed someone who wasn’t falling apart.
I plate my food and eat standing up, watching the TV without seeing it. My fork scrapes ceramic. The house stays quiet.
It’s not a bad life. The job pays the bills. The baseball kids keep me grounded. Cedar Falls is predictable in a way most people would kill for. But there’s always that moment after a game, when the kids wave and head toward families waiting in the lot, and I’m the one locking the field gate behind them. No voices calling my name. No footsteps running toward me. Just me and the echo of everything I don’t say out loud.
I rinse my plate and slide it into the dishwasher. The quiet folds in close again. Too close. I lean on the counter and let the thought I keep dodging finally surface.
What would this house look like with somebody else in it?
I picture crayons scattered across the table because Evie refuses to keep them in the box. Her running down the hall in socked feet, announcing emergencies involving invisible dragons or loststuffed animals. Then I picture Kate—hip against the counter, stealing a bite off my plate, pretending she’s not watching me while I cook. Filling the space without even trying. The image settles in my chest, warm and dangerous.
I crack open a beer and drop onto the couch. The cushions dip without protest; they’re used to holding only me. Cedar Falls quiet hums outside—streetlights, a dog barking two houses over, Mrs. Lanford’s phone call starting right after Jeopardy like clockwork. Usually that kind of calm steadies me. Tonight it just sharpens the edges.
Kate’s name glows on my phone screen where our text thread sits at the top. My thumb hovers. I could send something light. Safe. You make it home okay? Or a joke about Haddie’s Facebook post claiming she spotted a black bear behind Lowry’s again.
But she’s probably reading to Evie, or trying to keep her eyes open while the kid makes up half the story from memory. She deserves that uninterrupted calm. So I set my phone down and let the quiet wrap around me again.
Mom used to say the world was split between people who helped because they had time, and people who helped because they had heart. She never had time, but she was always there—lunches packed, uniforms dried, the world held together by her hands alone. I didn’t realize until I was older that she was teaching me what love looks like. Not loud. Not flashy. Just showing up when it counts.
And maybe that’s why Kate affects me the way she does. Because I see those same quiet battles in her—the ones she doesn’t name, the ones she doesn’t want anyone to notice. And even if we’re not calling it anything but friends, some part of me already knows I’ll show up for her long before she needs to ask.
Chapter five
Kate
Evie dozes off before we reach our street, her head tilted toward the car window, a chocolate smudge stamped on her cheek like a souvenir from the day. She’s still clutching the baseball card Cam slipped her after practice, fingers curled tight around it as if someone might try to take it. The man knows exactly how to win her over. I’m trying very hard not to think about how good he is at winning me over, too.
I ease her out of the car, her little body warm against my shoulder, and carry her inside. She settles into the couch the moment I lay her down, curling into her blanket and pulling her stuffed dinosaur close. She doesn’t stir—not even when I brush the hair from her forehead. She’s grown so much this year, but inthese moments she feels impossibly small, and I feel impossibly responsible for keeping her whole.
Our house greets me with its usual mix of charm and chaos. Two bedrooms tucked into the corner of downtown Cedar Falls. Dishes crowd the sink, crayons spill across the coffee table, and the same basket of clean laundry sits unfolded on the armchair like it’s waiting for a miracle to put itself away. It’s home. I love it with every tired, hopeful piece of me. But when the day has wrung me out, the quiet carries its own kind of ache.
I kick off my shoes and move through the motions that keep us afloat—start the dishwasher, clear the table, gather the mail. The stack grows with its usual collection of responsibilities: a gas bill that’s higher than last month, the camp payment reminder I’ve been avoiding, and a glossy flyer from the community center advertising swim lessons. Evie would love them. I already know I’ll find a way to make it work, even if it means rearranging something else and pretending I don’t notice the pinch later.
The math of single motherhood never balances neatly, no matter how many times I rewrite the numbers.
The refrigerator clicks when I pull it open, the kind of small mechanical protest that reminds me this house is held together by appliances older than Evie. There’s half a bottle of white wine on the top shelf, the cork pushed back in at an angle. It’s been open too long to be worth drinking, but I pour what’s left into a glass anyway and brace one hip against the counter while my eyes travel to the whiteboard stuck to the fridge.
Groceries. Library budget meeting on Friday. Oil change. Evie’s birthday planning. Mortgage due.
It’s a simple list that I continue to tell myself is manageable because it has to be. There’s no committee here, no backup planor partner to divide things with. Just me deciding which task becomes a priority and which one waits its turn.
People love to tell me I make it look easy. But they don’t see the five a.m. mornings when I cling to a cup of coffee just to feel human. They don’t see me stretch paychecks, or count out crumpled receipts on the kitchen table after Evie’s asleep. Exhaustion blurs into routine so seamlessly that sometimes I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
