Page 94 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

I put the nightlight in the hallway outlet outside the second bedroom and neither of us says anything about it, and both of us walk past it slower than we need to.

The whiteboard goes up on the farmhouse kitchen wall that night. Owen writes at the top of it in permanent marker, big block letters, pressing hard:

ANGRY SUNSHINE LIVES HERE.

"That's not what I wrote," I say.

"I edited."

***

Sunday evening, golden hour, Owen tells me we're taking a walk, and he's a terrible liar because he's wearing a collared shirt to do it.

He drives us out past Starlight Hall and parks at the mouth of a back lane I've never seen, and when we walk in, I stop breathing.

Asters. A whole path of them, blue-purple and glowing in the last light, running crooked and lovely between the fences like somebody planted a river.

"Rue's recommendation," Owen says. "She had opinions. She had a list."

"Of course she did."

"This was number one. She underlined it twice."

Halfway down the path there is a hedge, and the hedge is whispering.

The hedge has binoculars. The binoculars have Millie Hawthorne attached to them, church hat and all, and crouched beside her is Debbie Sue Monroe holding a walkie talkie and a wad of tissues, and neither of them is even a little bit hidden.

The walkie crackles. Rue's voice comes through it, calm as Sunday. "Report."

"Eagle is in the flowers," Millie whisper-shouts into it. "Repeat. Eagle is IN. THE. FLOWERS."

"We can hear you, Millie," Owen says.

"NO YOU CAN'T."

"Ignore them," Owen says to me.

"Debbie's already crying."

"I AM NOT," Debbie sobs from the hedge.

He stops me in the thick of the blooms, takes both my hands, and goes down. Good knee this time. Slow and sure, no grimace, a man who healed up with somewhere to be.

The walkie crackles once more, soft. "The eagle has knelt. Everyone hush."

Everyone hushes.

The hush lasts four seconds. Then the hedge starts sniffling. A wet, heroic, losing-battle sniffle, followed by the unmistakable click-click-click of a phone camera with the shutter sound left on.

"Debbie," I say, not looking away from Owen.

"I'M NOT HERE."

Click. Click.

The ring in his hand is old gold with a small honest stone, and I will find out later he stood in Henrietta Cole's shop for two hours until she pulled a tray from the back and said this one.

"Nellie Greer." His voice is steady and his eyes are not. Behind him the hedge blows its nose. "You're the first thing I've ever been early for. So I'm asking again, on home dirt, like you told me. Marry m—"