"Thank you."
He stands there for another second. Then he says, "Boy seems happy."
"He is."
"That's a good thing."
"Yeah."
He doesn't move.
I'm not looking at him. I'm staring at the empty coffee cup he set on the counter.
"Hadley."
I look up.
He's closer than he was a minute ago.
I don't remember him crossing the distance.
The white hat is shadowing his face the way it always does, but I can see his eyes under the brim—pale, sharp, watching me the way they've been watching me for two months.
"Yeah?"
He opens his mouth. He closes it. He nods once and touches the brim of the hat. "Evenin', Hadley."
He walks out of the bunkhouse.
I stand at the kitchen island and I listen to his boots on the porch and on the gravel and across the yard until I can't hear them anymore.
It's almost nine o'clock by the time I get Nash home, bathed, brushed, and read to.
Charlotte's Web.
Two chapters tonight.
He fell asleep with Stitch under his chin halfway through the second one, and I sat on the edge of his bed and looked at him for a long minute before I turned off the lamp.
I wish Garrett was here. He’s the spitting image of his papa.
Same dark hair. Same long lashes. Same way his mouth opens when he sleeps.
I don't cry.
I haven't cried in eleven days, which is the longest stretch since the funeral.
I go to my bedroom and stand at my dresser.
Garrett's ring is still on a chain around my neck.
It has been since I moved here. I don’t know if I’ll ever take it off permanently. It’s the last memory I have of him.
* * *
I take the glass of sweet tea I never finished out to the porch.
The yard is dark. The bunkhouse windows are gold. Somebody's playing a guitar—quiet, slow, a song I don't quite recognize.
