We sat in companionable quiet. The kind that didn’t need filling. Me circling things in the seed catalog with a pencil that needed sharpening. Sterling moving markers around on his map, each one placed with the deliberate care of a man who treated paper like it was something that could betray him if he wasn’t precise.
Outside, Mitch was doing something loud and physical that involved a hammer and intermittent swearing, the specific cadence of a man who had decided that force was an acceptable substitute for finesse.
I turned a page. Circled a variety of carrot that promised“exceptional sweetness and vigorous growth”in type that looked like it had been set by someone who believed their own marketing.
“He’s going to hit his thumb,” I said, without looking up.
Sterling said nothing. His hand moved a blue marker two inches north on the map, adjusted it a quarter-inch east, and settled.
Thirty seconds later there was a specific, colorful curse from the direction of the barn. The kind that involved at least three syllables and a creative deployment of the word “fuck” as multiple parts of speech.
I looked up.
Sterling was looking at me. The corner of his mouth was doing the thing—stronger this time, the warmth spreading from the crease to the whole left side of his face, and his eyes held mine across the table with an expression I hadn’t seen there before. Not the flat green assessment. Something warmer. Something that looked, for approximately two seconds, like appreciation.
I grinned at him. Wide and unrepentant, the kind of grin that said I told you so without needing the words.
He looked back at his map. The warmth at the corner of his mouth didn’t go away.
I stored it. Added it to the collection. That made eight. Eight almost-smiles in four months, and two of them had happened in the last twenty-four hours, which was either a statistical anomaly or evidence that something fundamental had shifted, and I was leaning toward the latter.
When the catalog started to blur—too many carrot varieties, not enough coffee—I got up to start lunch. Pulled the Dutch oven from the shelf, set it on the range, and reached for the onion on the counter.
Sterling’s voice came from behind me, low and flat. “What are you making?”
“Beef stew.”
“I don’t like that.”
I kept chopping the onion. “That’s interesting.”
A pause. The kind that meant Sterling was recalibrating, running the conversation through whatever internal filter he used to decide which responses were worth deploying.
“I just told you I don’t like it,” he said.
“I heard you.”
Another pause. Longer. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head, the weight of Sterling Callahan’s attention, which was considerable and not something he gave lightly.
“You’re making it anyway,” he said.
“Mitch loves it.”
“I’m not Mitch.”
“I know,” I said pleasantly, and kept chopping.
He made a sound. Low, rough, caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement—the kind of noise of a man who had encountered a resistance he hadn’t planned for and wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize.
I heard the chair creak as he sat back down, the soft rustle of paper as he returned to his maps, and the silence that settled around us was the kind that felt earned rather than uncomfortable.
Mitch came back twenty minutes later with his left thumb wrapped in electrical tape and the expression of a man who refused to acknowledge any predictability in his own behavior. He saw the Dutch oven on the range, smelled what was in it, and immediately said, “That’s my favorite.”
“I know,” I said.
Sterling didn’t look up from his map. “He knew you were going to hit your thumb.”
“I didn’t hit my thumb,” Mitch said.
