Behind us, Tank asks loudly,“Where are they going?”
“Tank, sit down,” Jessie replies.
Maggie chimes in. “Eat your cornbread, Tank.”
The creek path is fifty yards from the house, running between two stands of birch that Tess spent her first weekend hereidentifyingby leaf shape. She goes beside me without question, her hand in mine, her sundressswishingseductivelyas she walks.
She doesn’t ask where we’re going.
I stop at the bank, where the ground is solid and the creek is steady and unhurried. I turn to face her.
Tess looks up at me, and the afternoon light hits her glasses.
“Sullivan.”Her voice is careful.“Your face is doing a thing.”
“Yeah.”I clear my throat.“Give me a second.”
She gives me three.
She stands in theafternoonlight with her hands at her sides and her glasses slightly crooked on her nose, which is where they always are, which is where they always will be. Patient as she wason that porch step. Patient as she has been about everything that matters.
“Tess.”
“What’s happening, Sullivan?”
I didn’t bring a ring. I planned to do this in a room with a stove and a kettle and a blue mug, the wayshe’dremember it.The wayI’dbeen turning it over in my mind for two weeks.I’m not in that room.I’m at a creek.
Her hand is in mine, and the Sutton family isroughly thirtyyards behind me. I stood at the picnic table, said the word “family” and truly meant it. The moment is now.
“Tess Carter.”
“Sullivan Mercer.”
I smooth my thumb over the back of her hand. “You showed up. You wavedat a cabin youdidn’tknow was occupied. You threwTupperware ata stranger’sback.You fell through your own porch step and laughed at it.You gave me a porch step tofix,and I’ve been fixing things in your name since. I would like, please, to keep fixing things in your name. I would like to keep being a man with a list. I would like?—”
Tess squeezes my hand, tears sliding down her cheeks. Her smile is the clearest, most certain smile I have ever seen on her.
“Sullivan—”
“I’m not done. I’ve spenta significant portionof my life believing I was the kind of man who’s safer at a distance. I mademy peacewith that. Or I thought I had.”Iholdher gaze.“And thena woman arrived with a box and a stand mixer, and I ran out of things to tell myself.”
The creek flows on, steady and unbothered. A bird calls among thebirches.
“I would like to ask you tostay forever,” I say gruffly.“And I’d like to do it simply, Tess, because everything I love about you happened to me in simple ways, and I would like to keep that pattern.”
“Is that—”She stops, then starts again.“Sullivan Mercer, are you…”
“I would like to be your husband.” My voice cracks.
A sound comes out of her: half-laugh, half somethingshe’sswallowing back.
“Yes.”
There it is. One word, and the ground beneath meisdifferent.
“Tess.”
“Yes, Sullivan.”
