“Mr. Reno has not, in fact, seen the giraffe.”
“He doesn’t need to. He knows.”
Grace shot him a wry look as she climbed in the truck, and Reno did his best impersonation of knowing nothing about anything.
The cottage was a low yellow shape at the end of Pine Street with maples leafing out around it and the lake stretching gray-blue beyond. He hadn’t lived anywhere this quiet since he was a kid. Every time he turned into the drive, he got a strong sensation of arriving somewhere on purpose.
Lily blew through the front door and immediately commenced setting up a tea party for her stuffies on the living room rug. Grace went to the kitchen to start supper. Reno carried the two gallons of trim paint and the new roller and angled brush around the side of the house to where the eaves needed it most and propped a ladder against the wall.
He’d done the back porch trim yesterday between the bakery and supper. The work was simple, his hands were good at it, and his brain liked having something to do that wasn’t arguing with itself.
He set the first stroke at the corner under the kitchen window and started moving along the run.
The kiss was still front and center in his mind where he’d carried it the entire drive home. The flour on her lips and a hint of lemon were the parts he kept circling back to.
Which, he suspected, was his brain’s way of avoiding naming the bigger part of it. Something in him had moved over to make room for something else, and he had no name for this new sensation filling both his heart and his mind.
He’d had thirty-three years getting to know the shape of himself very well, but as of about an hour ago, that shape was completely different. Unrecognizable.
She’d been so calm about it. I’ve been wanting to do that since the day you fixed my dock. As if it had been a simple uncomplicated desire she’d been waiting to fulfill.
He laid down a long, even stroke of white paint.
She’d also communicated very clearly that the next move was his. If her kissing him had taught him nothing else about her, it was that she was an honest woman. She would accept whatever he offered her as it was, no embroidery and no apology. If he came back to her with a real kiss tonight, she’d be okay with it. If he came back to her with a serious and difficult conversation, she’d take that, too.
As much as he wanted to kiss her again, he knew he owed her a real conversation before he had any business offering her a real kiss.
He refilled the brush and painted the next section of trim.
For three years he’d carried his guilt like a stone he couldn’t set down. Two days ago, on the porch with the cat in his lap, he’d started to feel the stone get lighter. Last night, lying in the guest room listening to her sniffle quietly across the hall, he’d felt it lighten even more. And in the bakery this afternoon, when she rose up on her toes and laid her hand on his chest, the stone hadn’t been part of the equation at all.
She’d kissed a man who hadn’t told her who he was. That was the kind of dishonesty he couldn’t live with, even if it was the dishonesty of omission. She’d taken a risk and laid herself bare before him. The least he could do was return the favor.
He would tell her tonight. After Lily went to bed.
And he just prayed she wouldn’t kick him out of her house and out of her life when she heard what he’d done.
He painted the rest of the trim under the eaves on this side of the house and his knee, for once, didn’t complain too loudly about balancing on a ladder. He prayed that meant it was continuing to heal.
He came down the ladder when the smell coming through the kitchen window changed from sautéed onions to something with chicken in it and a hint of paprika. It made his mouth water and his stomach rumble.
Grace looked up from the stove when he stepped in. “Wash up. We’re almost ready.”
He washed up. He took the dish she set on the counter, chicken and rice with red peppers, and carried it to the table.
Lily was already at her booster seat, where she had arranged Cinnabun, two seals, and Lord Baxter the basil in a small audience beside her.
“They’re allowed to watch but not eat,” Lily informed him.
“That seems fair.”
“’Cuz they’re toys and a plant and don’t have mouths.”
“Also fair.”
He took his usual place across from Grace. Lily recited her standard four-year-old blessing, which ended with her thanking God for several specific seals by name and for the donkey at Aunt Tessa’s.
He didn’t reach for the rolls to butter Lily’s for her and in a moment, she held one out to him without looking away from her toys.
