"He looks just like Mason," Gran announces with a chuckle.
"Poor kid," Charlie mutters, and Mason levels a look at him from across the room.
Evie taps my shoulder, her chocolate-brown eyes enormous. "Sunny, can we go see the ducks? Kevin misses me."
"Kevin is a psychopath, Button," Charlie interjects. "He doesn't miss anyone."
"He loves me, Uncle Charlie." Evie squeezes his face between her plump little hands.
"Of course we can, honey," I answer, holding my arms out to her. "Come on. Let's go see them now before dinner time."
I set her down and she takes off like a shot through the front door. "Wait for me, Evie," I call out, following her.
The duck enclosure has expanded since the landscaper's last visit, with a second shelter added near the far fence and a proper gravel path leading from the yard to the gate.
Gerald spots us from the bridge and launches himself off the railing, grunting his excitement as he waddles toward us.
Evie drops to her knees the instant we are through the gate and opens her arms. Gerald walks straight into them. Karen follows, then Biscuit and Dolly, and within seconds Evie is surrounded by four ducks narrating their lives in exhaustive, noisy detail.
"Gerald has been sad because Wadsworth won't share the pond." She scratches his head with a gentleness that belies her volume. "And Kevin has been mean to the ranch cat again."
"How do you know all this?"
"Uncle Charlie sends me videos every morning." She says this as though it is the most obvious thing in the world.
I sit in the grass beside her and let the ducks investigate my boots. Kevin approaches from the far bank, making the low warbling sound he reserves for people he's deemed acceptable. He settles beside my knee and tucks his bill against his feathers.
"He likes you," Evie says.
"Kevin and I have an understanding."
"What's an understanding?" she asks, her cute nose wrinkling.
"It means we have a deal. If I don't try to pick him up, he won't bite my fingers off."
Evie giggles. "Kevin's silly."
We stay with the ducks until Evie's attention shifts to a butterfly crossing the enclosure, and then she announces that she's hungry and ready to go inside. I latch the gate behind us, brush the grass from my jeans, and we trudge across the yard.
Evie bursts through the front door ahead of me, already hollering for Rachel, her purple boots clattering toward the kitchen. I follow her in and turn toward the living room and come to a screeching halt.
Charlie's standing near the fireplace with Levi propped against his shoulder, one broad palm spanning the baby's entire back. He's rocking slightly, an unconscious motion, and his other palm pats the blue blanket in a rhythm so gentle it looks instinctive. The baby's face is turned toward Charlie's neck, and a tiny fist has closed around the collar of his shirt.
My breath freezes.
I've seen Charlie handle horses. He's lifted me from a saddle, carried me across a room, and pinned a grown man to cobblestones. But this, his jaw tipped down, his lips near the baby's dark hair, his entire body gentle in a way that turns allthat size and strength into something careful and reverent, this undoes me.
The image forms before I can stop it: Charlie holding a baby with my eyes, as he rocks with our child pressed against his neck.
He glances up and catches me staring. The grin he gives me is the easy one, unbothered, as if holding his nephew is the most natural thing in the world.
"He spit up on my good shirt," Charlie says, still swaying. "Twice."
"It suits you." My voice drops lower than I intend, and his grin falters. His eyes narrow, searching my face, reading whatever he finds there the way he reads a horse, missing nothing. The air between us pulls taut.
Rachel appears and reclaims Levi with a practiced scoop. "Quit hogging my baby, Charlie."
"He likes me better."
