He picked it up and looked at it again.
He put it down once more, opened a case file, and tried to work for a long time before giving up entirely.
He drove home that night in silence, pulled into his driveway, and sat in the dark because it was easier to hold on to crazy ideas alone in darkness. And he had one now.
What if Lexi was wrong?
He didn’t have an answer yet. But the question itself—the fact that he’d finally let himself ask it—broke something open in him that had been sealed shut since the day Lexi walked out.
He didn’t know what to do about that, either.
9
Tessa had never been fishing in her life, and she was perfectly happy keeping it that way.
The plan was simple. Dillon was taking Makayla fishing at the lake on Saturday morning—something about testing whether June could handle a short trail ride. But Tessa suspected the outing was yet another of his creative medical justifications for spending time with her daughter. She was going to use the morning to reshoot a few gown photos in Mick’s workshop. The lighting in them had been flat, and the New York boutique wanted everything submitted by Wednesday.
That was the plan. The plan was good. And it involved absolutely no hooks or worms.
And then Makayla had appeared in the kitchen doorway in her pink boots and braided hair—Dillon’s handiwork. He’d somehow learned to do it better than Tessa, which she was trying very hard not to feel envy about. “We’re going now.”
“Have fun,” Tessa replied cheerfully.
A pause. “Mom, you should come with us.”
“I have work to do, sweetheart.”
“You always have work to do.”
Makayla didn’t deliver it as an accusation, but it was painfully true. Thing was, work was how Tessa organized the world into manageable pieces and avoided the quiet catching up with her.
She heard the crunch of Dillon’s boots on the gravel outside, and her pulse leaped in anticipation. Normally, she ran screaming from her involuntary reaction to him. But this morning she looked into her daughter’s pleading eyes and made a snap decision before the rational part of her brain could intervene.
“Let me change my shoes.”
Makayla’s face lit up like the sun. She darted outside and yelled “Mom’s coming!”
Twenty minutes later, Tessa was sitting on the tailgate of Dillon’s truck at the lakeshore, watching Dillon attempt to teach Makayla how to fly cast.
June stood knee-deep in the shallows of Lake Stillwater dozing blissfully, while Makayla stood on the bank trying to cast her lure into the lake and hooking a clump of switchgrass behind her with impressive consistency.
Dillon stood behind her, adjusting her grip. “Flick your wrist at the top of the arc. Don’t muscle it.”
“I’m not muscling it.”
“You’re casting a fly line, not lassoing a steer.”
“How do you lasso a steer?”
“Completely different lesson. One catastrophe at a time.”
Tessa watched the line sail sideways and tangle in a willow branch overhead to Makayla’s right.
Dillon grabbed the end of the trailing branch, pulled it down within reach and patiently untangled the lure. Again. For at least the twentieth time.
She should have brought her camera. The light on the water was exquisite—morning sunrays slanted through the bud-laden trees along the shore and turned the lake’s surface into hammered copper. The mountains across the lake were clothed in blue and purple and the ski runs at Valhalla were considerably smaller than last week. Spring was coming to the Stillwater Valley.
She used to love to ski. But that was a thing she and Mick had done. She couldn’t bring herself to do it anymore.
