“No, this is great,” she said, putting her bag down and pulling out her spreadsheet again. “Let’s talk.”
We talked for about forty minutes.
She was good at it—better than me, probably, which I hadn't expected and probably should have. She had questions ready, asequence to them, the kind of organized thinking that came from years of managing things that couldn't fall apart. Parental rights. Financial arrangements. What happened if it took longer than the twelve months. What happened if it didn't take at all.
I answered everything straight. She wrote things in the margin of the spreadsheet in that small tight handwriting, occasionally stopping to ask a follow-up that cut right to the thing I'd been hoping she wouldn't think to ask, and I answered those straight too.
At some point it stopped feeling like a negotiation.
I'm not sure when exactly. Somewhere between the financial discussion and the part where she asked about the property—practical questions, where the cottage sat relative to the main house, what the access road was like, whether she'd need a truck with clearance—and I found myself describing Holt Creek the way I almost never did, which was honestly. The creek in summer. The way the cedar breaks the heat in the afternoon. The limestone, the way it holds the warmth at night and the cool in the mornings. She listened with her chin slightly tilted up and her eyes somewhere in the middle distance, seeing it before she'd seen it, and I stopped talking and just watched her do that for a second before I remembered myself.
"You'll want to know about the living situation," I said.
She looked back at me. "The goat situation, you mean."
"That too." I leaned back on my hands. "My brothers live on the property. Wyatt—he's a vet, has a place near the barn, close enough to get to the horses in an emergency. Dakota's in the main house still, when he's not on the circuit."
She frowned. “The circuit?”
“Rodeo,” I said. “He’s travelin’ now, but he’ll be home over the winter.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Yeah…that’s really cool, actually.”
I smiled. "And my cousin Sawyer. He's in the bunkhouse most of the time."
She absorbed this. "So it's not just you."
"It's never just me." I said. “Somebody’s always comin’ and goin’. Guess that’s why it never felt lonely enough to settle down.”
There was this interesting look on her face…almost a smile, bashful.
“I don’t know what that’s like,” she admitted. “I’m an only child. It’s always been kinda lonely.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
She looked at the spreadsheet. Then back at me. "Are they—your family—do they know about this?"
"They know I have a problem to solve." I met her eyes. "They don't know the specifics yet."
"But they will."
"Yes."
She nodded slowly, working through something. "And your parents?"
"Retired. They live in town now." A beat. "My mother will know within forty-eight hours of you arriving. That's just how she is."
She looked just a little alarmed. "Is she?—"
"She'll like you," I said. I didn't know why I said it. I was reasonably sure it was true.
She laughed. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know you well enough to want to knock you up,” I said.
She blushed bright red. My heart hammered and I covered my face, rubbing my eyes. “Jesus—I’m sorry. My mother would be ashamed to hear me?—”
But Millie was laughing, loud and unrestrained. “No, that’s okay. This is…weird. And to be quite honest, I want you to knock me up, so…”
