"Best party I've been to in years."
The gathering loses it entirely.
Maisie exhales beside me.
I put my arm around her shoulders.
Laney appears on my other side, her hand finding mine, her shoulder shaking with laughter she's given up containing.
I look at the gathering around us. These people, this ranch, this Sunday afternoon chaos that has somehow become completely and entirely our life.
I think: I want to do this forever.
The thought arrives without drama or fanfare.
Just completely settled.
Forever.
The gathering winds down around six.
People drift toward their trucks with the easy, unhurried pace of a Sunday evening that has given everything it had and is satisfied about it.
Harvey and his brother leave first, Harvey's brother having said approximately eleven words total across the whole afternoon which is still more than his arrival suggested was possible.
Wyatt goes next, cooler retrieved, dignity largely intact, already turning the Rowdy situation into a story he'll tell at Whiskey River for months.
Pearl is last.
She always is.
She finds me near the porch steps while Laney is helping June carry things inside and Maisie is attempting to explain to Rowdy why what he did was wrong.
Which Rowdy is receiving with the attentive expression of an animal who fully intends to ignore every word but appreciates being spoken to directly.
Pearl stops in front of me.
Looks up at me with those sharp eyes that catch everything and have been catching it since the first day she walked up to me at the rodeo and told me I had a good face.
"You're going to ask her," she says.
Not a question.
"Yes," I say.
"Soon?"
"Soon," I confirm.
She looks at the ranch house. Looks at Laney visible through the kitchen window moving around with June, laughing at something, her hair loose, completely at home in a space that she has made home for everyone in it.
Pearl looks back at me.
"She's been waiting a long time for someone worth waiting for," she says. Quiet and direct, the Pearl Bishop delivery that strips away everything unnecessary and gets straight to the thing that matters. "Not consciously. But she has."
I look at Laney through the window.
"I know," I say.
