Tess is at the picnic tablebecause Maggie made cornbread.Tess and Maggie have been doing a thing for three months where Maggie teaches her one recipe a week and Tess teaches Maggie one technique a week, and between the two of them,they’vegenerated enough baked goods to incapacitate the bunkhouse three times.
Tess is wearing a blue sundress, her hair around her shoulders.
Mine. All mine.
Tank wanders over to me at the porch rail,beer in one hand,being stalked bya soft baby goatcalledBaked Bean.
“Sullivan.”
“Tank.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s the program?”Tank asks.
“Better than the first time.”
We watch the yard.
Tank takes a long pull on his beer.“You know,the day Jessie came up here, Imade a decisionin about forty-five seconds that I have notonceregretted. And the deciding part of it was the easiest day of my life.”
He turns to look at me.“What I’m saying is?—”
“Yeah, Tank, I know what you’re saying.”
He nods.He pats me on the shoulder.“All right.”
He wanders off, Baked Bean hot on his heels.
Jessie comes over a minute later, sketchbook under her arm, hair in a braid, and stands with me at the rail.
Jessie has been one of mine since the day a mare spooked at thelumberyardand an old episode caught me sideways. Tank ranthe four-count. Jessie handled the horse slowly, calmly, and without theatrics, and got the trigger out of my eyeline before the worst of it took hold. Shedidn’tmake a thing of it. Shedidn’t look at me differently the next time Icameto the yard.
Then I left for Hollow Peak, and three months later,I came back with Tess.Jessie folded Tess intoHavenridgethe way she once folded me, without asking what was missing, just filling it. She took Tess up to the alpine lake the first weekend we were here. She put Tess’s name on a flour-dusted apron in Maggie’s kitchen the third week. She left a sketch on the dashboard of my truck last Tuesday—two pairs of boots inside a doorway, nocaption, no signature.
“Six,” she says, knowing she’s one of the very few people who get to call me that.
Still,I can’t let it go unanswered. “Smudge.”
She frowns.“Don’t call me Smudge. Tank calls me Smudge. Don’t make me regret befriending you.”
Ichuckle.The women in this place are kinder than I deserve and tougher than I expected, and I’ve stopped being surprised by either.
Jessie nudges my elbow.“Look at you attending a barbecue andspeaking in more than grunts, you overachiever.”
I look at Tess, who’s still chatting with Maggie.
Jessie follows my gaze.“The right person makes a difference, huh?”
“Yeah.” My voice catches. “It does.”
Tess is calling me.
She’s at the picnic table, half a piece of cornbread in one hand, the other hand waving at me with the imperious flapthat has been running my life since I first met her. Maggie is laughing,and so is Jenna.Even Delaney is laughing, and Delaney rations laughter.
