He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, a gesture that’s become ours, and then steps back before either of us can do something stupid, like close the distance between us.
“Good night, Eleanor.”
“Good night, Wyatt.”
I watch him walk to his truck, and he waves before climbing in. I wave back, and I go inside and climb the stairs to my apartment and sit on the sofa.
I think about waterfalls and the almost kiss, about Meredith’s ankle in the garden, about Wyatt’s hands, gentle on his grandmother’s ankle, the worry in his eyes. I think about what I said, I’m starting to think I might stay, and realize it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
And it really didn’t feel scary.
It felt like the truth.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Wyatt: Thank you again for today. You’re kind of amazing, you know that?
I smile and type back.
Me: Well, you’re kind of amazing yourself. See you next Saturday for gardening and a mystery dinner. Not that I won’t see you at work every day between then.
Wyatt: Can’t wait. And Eleanor?
Me: Yeah?
Wyatt: I meant what I said about falling for you.
I stare at the text for a long moment.
Me: I meant it too.
I set my phone down and look around my apartment, Mavis’s apartment, with its turquoise sofa and eclectic furniture and wall of photographs, and the life she built there, and the family she chose, and the home she made.
And for the first time, I can really picture myself doing the same thing.
Building a life here.
Choosing this family.
Making this home.
The following week establishes a new rhythm. Every morning before the bar opens, I drive over to Meredith’s house with something: breakfast from Dixie’s Diner, fresh flowers from the grocery store, a book I found in Mavis’s collection that I think she might like.
At first, she protests that I’m fussing over her, but by Wednesday she greets me at the door with coffee already brewing and a list of things she wants to show me in her garden. The tomatoes are coming along, she says Thursday, hobbling beside me on her still-tender ankle as we walk the rows of her backyard garden.
“Another few weeks and they’ll be ready for pickin’.”
“How do you know when they’re ready?”
“Oh, you’ll feel it. You just give a little squeeze. And the color, well, it deepens. It gets richer.”
She points to a cluster of green tomatoes hanging on a vine. “See those? They’re close. Maybe ten days out.”
I crouch down to look at them, and something in my chest expands. These are nothing like the little sad tomatoes I grew as a child. These are robust and healthy and have clearly been loved.
“Mavis used to help me with my garden,” Meredith says. “Every spring, she’d come over, and we’d plan out the beds together. She had a good eye for it. She knew exactly what to plant next to what. Which plants liked each other and which didn’t.”
“I didn’t know that.”
