“Let’s go home,” Tessa told Dillon and Makayla.
Makayla rode shotgun in pink her boots, the navy skirt hiked up over her knees.
The surface of the lake was the color of old gold. The trees along the shore were almost unnaturally bright green as the sun slid behind the mountains, which had turned a deep plum color.
“Mom?”
“Mm-hm?”
“Is Dillon coming over for a long time?”
Tessa glanced in the rearview at the truck behind them. Dillon’s hat was just visible above the steering wheel.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “We’re going to have a conversation, and after that I’ll know better.”
“Is the conversation a good one?”
She thought about the chair on her porch. “I hope so.”
“Okay.” Makayla looked out the window. “Can I ride Murphy after dinner?”
“You can ride Murphy until dark if you’d like.”
“Can I?—”
“Whatever it is, yes. You earned it. Stop while you’re ahead.”
Makayla grinned and went back to looking at the lake.
Tessa drove on with her finished rocking chair waiting for her on her porch, and a man in a dark sport coat following her home in his truck, and her daughter in the seat beside her humming absently, the closing eight measures of the Bach’s Partita in E Major.
20
Tessa parked beside the porch. Dillon’s truck rolled up behind her and stopped. Makayla burst out of the car, slammed the door, and was halfway to the porch before Tessa had her own door open.
“Mom—”
“Yes.”
“Can I?—”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t even?—”
“Whatever it is, the answer is yes, Makayla. Today is a yes day.”
“Then I’m going to change clothes and ride Murphy until the sun goes down.”
“Take your violin—or should I say fiddle—upstairs first.”
Makayla hugged the case to her chest, beamed at her mother, and disappeared into the house.
Tessa stood beside her car with the keys in her hand. Dillon’s door opened and shut behind her. She listened to the crunch of his boots on the gravel and tried, unsuccessfully, to slow her pulse down to something that resembled dignified.
“She’s going to ride that horse into the ground,” he said, coming to a stop beside her.
“She earned it.”
