A beat. Then: Promise?
Promise.
The little dots of her typing appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Finally:
Mom doesn’t know I asked you. Don’t tell her. I want you to surprise her.
He read it three times.
Makayla was running her own diplomatic gambit. She’d noticed her mother was hurting. She was inviting him for both of them, without consulting Tessa, because she wanted her family back together.
An image of the picture she’d drawn that still hung on his refrigerator popped into his mind. The three of them sitting in rocking chairs on Fern’s porch. That was the family she wanted.
He’d bought her jeans and pink boots, learned to French-braid her hair, attended a tea party in a purple tiara, taught her to ride a horse, then gave her a horse, and listened to her sing harmony to country songs in his truck. He’d done all of that and somehow believed that, if he stopped showing up, he could go back to having no responsibility to her.
That was, he registered with a kind of belated hilarity, a lie. A massive, full-color, Sunday-funnies lie.
He’d been her dad in every way that mattered for weeks.
The only question was whether he was going to keep being her dad in the way she deserved, which meant showing up at her talent show tomorrow without making her wonder for one second whether he’d come.
He texted back: Mum’s the word. Save me a seat.
Her reply came in under five seconds:
He set the phone down, walked out of the clinic, and drove toward the lake.
He didn’t go to Tessa’s house. He drove past the front gate, past the long gravel drive. He turned at the eastern fence line and pulled onto the rough dirt tractor lane that ran beside the property and into the woods. From there, he could approach Mick’s woodshop without being visible from the kitchen window.
The shop was dim and cold. He flipped on the lights.
The chair sat where he’d left it ten days ago.
He picked up the sandpaper.
He worked for an hour without thinking about anything but the wood under his hands. The shop was quiet enough that he could hear the wind through the gap under the back door and the distant honking of Canadian geese on the lake. He worked his way around the chair twice, raising the grain, smoothing the edges a little bit more, making sure it was perfectly smooth all over.
The door opened behind him. “Heard you was here,” Arlo said.
“Heard from who?”
“Brown Dog growled. Looked out and saw your truck sneakin’ down the back lane and figured you were heading here.”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
“You was sneakin’. It’s all right. There’s times for sneakin’.” Arlo set a thermos and two enamel cups on the workbench. “Brought coffee. Figured you’d be at it a while.”
Arlo poured a cup, slid it across the bench, and lowered himself onto the rolling stool with a small grunt. “You finishin’ that today?”
“Going to try.”
“Good.” He sipped his coffee. “Need a hand?”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I know I don’t.” He picked up another sheet of sandpaper from the workbench. “Where do you need me?”
Dillon pointed at the rocker arms with his sanding block. “There. They’ve been rough since I joined them. I never got them right.”
