“He went down at the knees.”
“He did not go down at the knees,” I argued, but not much.
“He was going down. Cruz saw it.”
“Cruz said he didn’t see anything.”
“Cruz was being diplomatic,” Mitch countered. “It was a whole thing.”
“Sterling is going to be very annoyed that you keep telling that story.”
“Sterling is going to be annoyed and also a father, and those two things happening at the same time is going to be the most entertaining thing I have ever witnessed.”
“You’re going to be insufferable about it.”
“I’m going to be insufferable about it forever.”
“Good.” I meant it completely. Every syllable. The kind of good that lived behind your sternum and didn’t need evidence or argument.
Then, quieter, I named the thing that actually cost me. Not Sterling’s absence exactly, but the milestones. The first real kick Mitch had felt, and Sterling had missed it. The framed walls going up, and Sterling hadn’t stood in them. The warm yellow paint already picked out and sitting in a can in the bunkhouse, and Sterling didn’t know.
“He’ll see it,” Mitch said.
“I know. It’s just…” I stopped. The sentence didn’t have an end that felt adequate to the weight of what I was carrying.
Mitch didn’t push. He just waited, his hand still warm on my stomach, and said, “Yeah.”
The quiet held. Then I asked, very quietly, the question that actually mattered: “Do you think he’s coming home? Not back. Home.”
Mitch didn’t hesitate. Not even a breath. “Sterling said home like a man who finally understood what the word meant, and that is not something a person forgets. I’ve been watching him for months. That man does not say things he doesn’t mean. He barely says things he does mean. When he said home, he was making a decision out loud, and Sterling makes decisions the way he does everything else, completely and without reversing course.”
“That’s very reassuring coming from the man who also said Sterling was going down at the knees.”
“Both things can be true.”
“Can they?”
“He can be undone by you and still be coming back. Those aren’t opposites. That’s actually the whole point.”
I sat up. Wiped my face with the back of my hand. The wood stove had settled into its steady rhythm, and outside the window the pasture fence held the morning light the way it had been holding it for hours, patient and certain.
“We should go check on the house,” I said. “The crew is framing the kitchen today and I have opinions about the window placement over the sink.”
“I know. The whole ranch has heard the opinions.”
“The opinions are correct.”
“Obviously.”
Mitch stood and pulled me up with both hands, steady and certain, his grip firm without being tight. I leaned into him for one more second before we went, my forehead against his shoulder, his arm warm around my back, and the contact was deliberate and grounding and exactly what I needed.
I was going to see Sterling walk through the door of that house. I was going to show him the yellow paint and the east-facing window and the kitchen with all the counter space, and Sterling was going to stand in the middle of it looking like a man who could not believe this was his life.
I was already planning that face. The firm set of his jaw when something landed that he hadn’t prepared for. The crease beside his left eye doing that thing it did when warmth broke through.
I was going to hand him a cup of coffee made exactly the way he took it. Sterling was going to drink it without a word, and that would be the whole thing.
That would be enough.
