Page 28 of At First Catch

I slow as I pass the main farmhouse where Mom and Dad still live. The porch lights are on, warm against the deepening blue of the evening. Dad’s truck is parked near the barn. Mom’s flower beds spill color along the front path. Through the kitchen window, I can see movement, probably Mom setting the table for whoever wanders in hungry.

Someone always does.

Farther down, my brother, Rowan, and his wife, Ivy’s, place glows near the fields. I catch a glimpse of Ivy on the porch, barefoot, holding a mug with both hands while Rowan stands behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, chin resting near her temple. They look quiet. Settled. Like two people who fought hard for this peace and refuse to take a second of it for granted.

My chest aches with fondness.

And something else.

Longing, maybe.

I turn onto the gravel lane leading toward my small cottage, tucked between a stand of trees and a wild patch of honeysuckle that refuses to be tamed no matter how many times Dad threatens it with clippers. The cottage is mine in the way anything on Wright land belongs to all of us and none of us. A soft yellow door. White siding. A porch just big enough for two chairs and a table. Window boxes I keep forgetting to water until my sister, Lila, threatens intervention.

It’s home.

It should feel like enough.

Most nights, it does.

Tonight, I sit in the driveway after cutting the engine, listening to the crickets start in the grass and the distant sound of amusement drifting from somewhere across the farm.

My phone rests in my lap like a dare.

I don’t text him.

I won’t.

I am a grown woman with self-control, a career, and a perfectly respectable number of throw pillows.

Then the screen lights.

Nolan

For the record, I wasn’t warning you away from the marina.

I stare.

The air in my lungs goes thin.

Me

No?

Nolan

No.

A beat.

Then another message.

Nolan

I’m warning myself.

My throat tightens.

There he is.