I sit across from her.
We look at each other.
"The ranch is okay?" she asks. First thing. Like she's been carrying it and wants to put it down.
"The ranch is okay," I confirm.
She nods. Exhales. The soft exhale of a child releasing something they've been holding without knowing they were holding it.
"I was scared," she says. Matter-of-fact. No drama around it. "During the storm. Not for me. For Dad. And for you."
"We were okay," I say. "We knew what to do."
"I know." She picks at the edge of her book cover. "June kept telling me. But I wanted to see for myself." She looks up. "That's why I kept asking."
"Every twenty minutes," I say gently.
She has the grace to look slightly sheepish. "Was it annoying?"
"Not even a little."
She accepts this, goes back to the book cover. The cabin is quiet around us, the evening sounds coming through the window, the ranch settling into its nighttime self. Rowdy is outside somewhere. I can hear him moving around the porch.
"Laney?" she asks.
"Mm."
She is quiet for a moment. Choosing words with the particular care she brings to things that matter.
"When I grow up," she says slowly, "and I have a house. I want it to feel like this one does now." She looks around the cabin briefly. "Like Silver Mesa does now." She looks back at me. "Before it felt like a really nice place. Now it feels like a home." She pauses. "You know the difference?"
"I know the difference," I say quietly.
She nods like that's settled. "You did that," she says simply. "You and Dad together. But you were here first so," she tilts her head, "you did it first."
I look at this eight year old sitting at my table in her pajamas and turquoise boots explaining to me with complete clarity what four years of my life built and what the last three months added to it.
I don't have words for a moment.
She waits, patient, comfortable in the silence the way her father is comfortable in it.
"Thank you," I say finally. Quietly. Meaning it in every direction it can be meant.
She shrugs with the easy generosity of someone who considers saying true things a basic courtesy rather than a gift. "It's just true," she says.
She picks up her book.
Looks at me one more time.
"Are you going to marry my dad?"
The question lands in the cabin with that direct Maisie quality of arriving without warning from a completely logical place that nobody else would have thought to go.
I stare at her.
She stares back with genuine curious patience. Not pushing. Not hoping out loud. Just asking, the way she asks everything, because she wants to know and sees no reason not to.
"Maisie," I say carefully.
