“Hey, Daisy.” Emerson stuck his head into the playroom. Tried to pretend his blood pressure was totally normal. “Time to go, okay?”
She blinked up at him, eyes already sleepy. “Hokayyy. Lemme get Moomoo.”
Once the beleaguered, oversized cow stuffy was acquired and stuffed under Emerson’s arm, Daisy’s backpack slung over his other shoulder, he stood in Jayden’s foyer, watching their daughter hug him.
“See you next week, Poppy,” she said, and Jayden rubbed her back, a firm, reassuring swirl against her spine.
Like he used to do for Emerson, too. Emerson could still feel it, a ghost underneath his shirt, anytime he watched Jayden hug Daisy.
“See you next week, Da-dee,” Jayden said to Emerson once he straightened again, a small smile forced onto his mouth. A bit of a peace offering, maybe. But Emerson never truly knew, now, whether to trust Jayden’s smiles. He used to know all of them, every variation of Jay’s face, every emotion hidden within. But he increasingly didn’t know how to navigate them. He especially didn’t know today.
But this was always the hardest part of every dropoff and pickup, even when they weren’t preceded by a conversation that made Emerson’s confused heart strain inside his chest.
The goodbye. The smile. The not knowing.
“See you next week, Poppy,” Emerson said.
And then he turned and took Daisy’s hand. And ascarefully as he could, he secured her and Moomoo in the back of Short King Farms’s white van, ready for another three-hour drive over the mountains to the place that was once her only home.
five
“Luca’s here!”
Daniel shouted the announcement into the house before pulling Luca in for a hug. One arm slung over Luca’s shoulder, the other wrapped around his torso, meeting in the middle of Luca’s back. Luca’s arms mirrored the action across Daniel’s, a hug both hard and intimate: the signature Yaeger family greeting.
“Hey, Luca.” Kjell walked down the hall toward them, the sunlight from the kitchen beyond backlighting his form. “Want a drink?”
Luca blinked at him before Kjell initiated the same hug routine. It was slightly less aggressive than Daniel’s, considering Kjell was holding an open can of beer.
Luca should have remembered Kjell would be here this week; his mom must have mentioned it to him. It was Dagny’s last August sendoff dinner before she headed out of Greyfin Bay for her last year of college. Of course Kjell would come down from Seattle for it. Even if he had been the only one to actually leave this town—word was still out on where Dagnywould settle after she graduated—he was still the oldest sibling. He still always showed up.
Luca had just been so distracted by what he was going to do today that he must’ve forgotten anything else.
“Yeah,” Luca answered, a moment delayed. Although maybe he shouldn’t drink today. Maybe he should be at his sharpest for whatever reaction his dad was gonna have when Luca informed him he wouldn’t be on the boat next week when it took off on another long stint of finding coho and sockeyes.
Next week.Fuck. He should have done this better, at least been able to give more warning. Maybe a better son wouldn’t have told Emerson King he could start working on his farm first thing Monday morning.I should actually work at least one more run with my dad and my brothers, he should have said.
But the farm had been beautiful, and Emerson King was both competent and sad while wearing the hell out of a pair of blue jeans. Luca had felt semi-good—about waking up the next day, aboutanything—for the first time in a long while. He hadn’t necessarily made his best decisions.
Luca followed his two older brothers through the family kitchen and onto the back deck, where he headed straight for the ancient Coleman cooler and got himself a fucking beer.
“Hey, Luca.” Dagny padded barefoot over the worn red slats of the deck, giving him a smile. One he easily returned as they slid an arm around each other’s backs, the more casual Yaeger family side hug. She rested her head on his shoulder while the beer dripped melted-ice water back into the Coleman. Luca flipped it closed with his foot.
“How you feeling, Dags?”
Dagny didn’t shrug, or look away, or sayokay. She always thought about her answers first. Always had, since she was a little girl. It was an inspiration to Luca, over and over, everysingle time he heard the silence of her thinking, the eventual honesty of her answers.
“A little melancholy. A little scared. But in the nice way, you know?”
Luca looked at her. Her hair was almost bleach-blonde from the sun at this time of the summer, pulled up into a smooth ponytail. She was both the youngest and the odd one out: a girl for Adrian and Leah, finally, after four boys. The only one to take on their mother’s fairer Norwegian genes instead of Adrian’s darker hair and Mediterranean skin tone.
“Yeah,” Luca said. “That makes sense.”
He felt the same way—a little melancholy, a little scared—but he wasn’t so sure about the nice part.
“You shouldn’t be scared, though,” he added. “You’ve been ready for adulthood since you were in diapers.”
Dagny rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
