"Maisie's mom and I split when Maisie was three," I say. "Sarah is a good person. We just wanted completely different lives and waited too long to admit it. She took a position with an international aid organization after we separated. Based out of Geneva now.
She loves what she does, she's good at it, it matters." I pause. "But it meant being overseas most of the year. Long stretches without being home. We both agreed Maisie needed stability more than anything else, one home base, one constant."
I look at my coffee. "So she's with me. Sarah calls every week, visits when she can, Maisie knows she's loved. But the day to day, the school runs, the homework, the bad dreams at two in the morning, that's all been me."
I stop.
Look up at Laney.
"She's the best thing I've ever done," I say. "By a significant distance."
Laney's expression does something quiet and unguarded at that. She looks at her mug for a moment before looking back up.
"So you bought a ranch," she says softly.
"So I bought a ranch." I look at her across the island. "I thought I was buying peace and quiet. Turns out I was buying something considerably more complicated."
The corner of her mouth moves. "Silver Mesa has that effect."
"It's not the ranch," I say it quietly, plainly, without making a production of it.
Laney looks at her coffee mug. Her jaw does that thing where she's deciding something, working through it in real time, and I wait because pushing Laney Jenkins toward anything she's not ready for is the fastest way to lose ground.
She looks up.
Her eyes are steady, open in a way they're not always open. The careful guardedness she carries like a second skin has loosened under the late hour, the long night, two mugs of coffee in a quiet kitchen.
"I don't let people in easy," she says. "I want you to know that before anything else. It's not you. It's just how I'm built."
"I know," I say. "I've noticed."
"And I'm telling you anyway." She holds my gaze. "That's not nothing."
"No," I say quietly. "It's not."
The kitchen is very still.
The clock above the stove reads two-seventeen.
Upstairs, Maisie sleeps.
Outside, Silver Mesa breathes in the dark.
It starts with Laney setting down her coffee mug.
It's such a small thing. She just sets it down on the counter, deliberate, final, like she's putting something aside she doesn'tneed anymore. Then she looks at me across the kitchen island, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes clear and steady. All the careful distance she's been maintaining for weeks is gone from her expression, like she simply decided to stop holding it there.
"Beckett," she says.
That's all.
Just my name.
I come around the island.
Slowly.
She doesn't move back. She tilts her chin up and looks at me when I stop in front of her and the space between us is nothing, barely a breath, and I bring my hand up slowly and tuck a strand of hair back from her face and feel her exhale against my wrist.
