"There he is," he said, easy as anything. "We were startin' to wonder."
"Fence line," I said.
My mother was already up, moving to the stove. "Sit down. Both of you. There's enough."
Millie had turned when I came in and she was looking at me now with something warm and a little uncertain in her eyes, like she wasn't sure yet what the protocol was for this—for the morning after, for the communal kitchen, for all of it.
I pulled out the chair next to her and sat down.
"Hey," I said, quiet enough that it was just for her.
The uncertain thing in her expression settled.
"Hey," she said back.
"Sawyer makin' you feel at home?"
"We've been talking for an hour," Sawyer said from across the table.
"About what?"
"Oh, everything," Millie said, and she was smiling now, that full unguarded smile. "He told me about the horses. And the film stuff. And then your mother told him to stop showing off?—"
"I wasn't showing off," Sawyer said.
"You absolutely were," my mother said, from the stove.
Wyatt pulled out a chair and sat down across from Millie, those careful eyes moving over her, measuring, for just a moment. "Wyatt," he said. "Gage's brother."
"Millie," she said, and to her credit she didn't flinch at the assessment in his gaze.
"I know," he said. "He mentioned you."
She glanced at me. "Good things, I hope."
Wyatt considered this with more seriousness than was strictly necessary. "Mostly."
"Wyatt," I said.
"I'm kidding." He reached for the bread. "Mostly."
Millie laughed, surprised into it, and something in Wyatt's expression shifted just slightly—not a smile, but an acknowledgment. She'd passed something without knowing she was being tested.
My mother set a whole spread of sandwich materials on the table with a stack of plates, and sat back down at the head of the table.
Then we ate.
Meals in my household were always an experience—and I was beyond grateful to Mom for continuing to come back and feed us even when she really didn't have to. She'd had six kids to deal with most of her adult life—us three boys plus my Uncle Austin's kids after he and his wife passed—and I didn't think she'd ever stop coming home to make lunch. She was just as much a part of the ranch work cycle as we were.
The table settled into that particular lunch rhythm I'd grown up with—the comfortable overlap of conversation and thepassing of things without asking, nobody waiting to be served, everybody just reaching. I watched Millie find her footing in it, watched her stop hesitating and just grab the mustard when she needed it, and felt something loosen in my chest.
Then the screen door opened again and Neto came in, hat in hand, followed by my father in paint-stained linen pants and a faded t-shirt I was fairly certain had been old when I was born, his silver hair pulled back at the nape of his neck—and behind them both, Haven Sinclair, still pulling her work gloves off, her dark braid dusty from the morning.
Neto nodded at the table generally. "Mrs. Holt." He'd called my mother that for thirty years and she'd stopped correcting him fifteen years ago.
"Neto." My mother was already up, adding plates. "Sit down."
My father dropped his canvas tote by the door and came to the table with the unhurried ease of a man who had never once felt unwelcome anywhere in his life. He saw Millie and his whole face opened up.
