I change my shirt too. I put on my good boots.
I stand in the cabin mirror and look at myself and think about a woman who spent thirty three years making sure she never needed rebuilding and is standing here anyway, whole, slightly unbroken, choosing this with every part of herself that knows how to choose something.
The fear is gone.
Not managed. Not filed somewhere quieter.
Gone.
What's in its place is so much better.
I check the time.
Five forty-five.
Maisie knocks on the cabin door fifteen minutes later. Three quick, a pause, one more.
I open it.
She's in her best outfit. Her good jeans, a shirt she irons herself badly but with complete determination, and her turquoise boots polished to the brightest shine an eight year old can manage.
She looks at me, I look at her.
Her eyes go bright immediately.
"You look beautiful," she says softly.
Something moves through me that I don't have words for.
"So do you," I say.
She holds out her hand.
"Ready to see the bird?" she says.
I look at this child standing on my porch in her best clothes holding my hand with her eyes bright and the full weight of what she's been carrying all day sitting right there on her face for just a second before she pulls it back together.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I'm ready."
We walk toward the creek in the evening light, hand in hand, and I think that whatever happens at that oak tree in fifteen minutes, this moment right here is already one of the best of my life.
The creek bend steals the breath right out of me.
The oak tree at the creek bend is strung with warm lights that catch the evening air and throw gold across the ground beneath it. Not elaborate, not over the top. Just enough light to make the space feel set apart from the rest of the world for a specific purpose.
Candles and flowers placed carefully around the tree. I can tell Maisie had something to do with that in the glow in her face.
The crew is there.
Remy with his hands in his pockets. The expression of a man who has been waiting for this since the irrigation disasterin week two. Silas beside him with his coffee thermos. Silas brings his thermos everywhere including apparently the most important moment Silver Mesa has ever hosted.
June with her hands clasped, eyes already doing what June's eyes do when something large is happening. Pearl in her good hat. Wyatt. Harvey and his brother.
All of them looking at me, then past me.
I turn.
Beckett is standing at the oak tree. Dark jeans, a shirt I haven't seen before, his good hat, his boots cleaned carefully. He looks like himself and somehow even better.
