“Excuse me?” Daryl says in an offended tone, though his eyes are crinkling with mirth.
“That was different?—”
“Uncle Slade.” Jonah looks at me with great solemnity. “If you forget you’re married to Auntie Lila again, I’ll remind you.”
“I appreciate that,” I say.
As the group starts chattering amongst themselves, Dad comes straight to me and give me a bear hug.
“I’m proud of you,” he says low in my ear, just for me to hear. “And I know your mama is too. She used to worry about you most, you know.”
I frown. “She did?”
“Not because you were the most troubled. Because you felt everything the deepest and worked the hardest to make sure nobody knew it.” He squeezes my good shoulder. “She’d be so glad you stopped doing that.”
“I should have stopped sooner.”
“You stopped when you were ready,” he says. “That’s how it works.”
He lets go.
“Now go be with your wife,” he says. “That’s what she always wanted for you. Someone you loved bigger than your fear of losing them. She told me so herself, at the very end.”
I think about my mother in that hospital room. About the fact that she’d been worrying, not about herself, not about what was coming for her, but about her child. She was always putting the people she loved first.
I look at my wife. The person I’ll always put first.
She’s laughing right now, her pink hair wild in the cold air, one of the puppies tucked against her chest.
Mom wanted this for me. I almost didn’t let myself have it.
Never again.
Dad gives Lila a hug next. He tells her, “My wife Marianne would have known, from the very first minute, that you were exactly what this family needed.” His voice is steady but his eyes are bright. “And I want you to know, you’re not just Slade’s wife. You’re a Rhodes. One of ours. You have been since the moment you walked through the gate. Wild Rose is your home now, same as it’s always been ours. Same as it always will be.”
He pulls her in for a hug and I watch the tears run down my wife’s beautiful face as she smiles.
I look at my family gathered on the bank of the frozen lake in the last of the light. Walker has his arm around Sadie, thetwins bundled between them. Jonah is letting Lucky nibble at a piece of beef jerky he’s produced from his pocket, while two of the puppies have escaped the truck bed and are skittering toward the ice with no concept of danger.
Tanner and Rafe are already crouching down to scoop them up before they reach the bank, their big hands completely gentle around their furry little bodies. Josie takes the puppy from Rafe and laughs as the puppy starts enthusiastically licking her face.
Lucky watches them all serenely, a mother who has accepted that her children are a collective menace and she can’t do everything herself.
It takes a village.
And I have one.
Lucky ambles over and leans against my leg. I give her an absent-minded pet, my eyes on Lila as she walks over to me. She’s got the littlest puppy, the runt, in her arms.
I pull my wife into my arms and kiss her cheek. “It’s about time we name him,” I say. “I know you’ve got ideas.”
“Yeah, I do,” she smiles. She looks down at the puppy, then up at me. “How about Chance?”
“It’s perfect,” I tell her.
She gives me a hopeful look. “I’m pretty sure Jonah’s convinced Sadie and Walker to take one of the puppies. And Rafe wants one too. So does your Dad. Which means this little guy still needs a home.”
“Lila, sweetheart, how many animals do you intend to bring into our household?”
