Page 26 of Never Enough

“Thank you,” I manage. My voice only wobbles a little. I call that a win.

“Now, I am still upset with my son for robbing me of a wedding.” She cuts a pointed look at Henry, who is wisely studying the label on his beer bottle with intense focus. “And we will be discussing that at length. Possibly for the rest of his natural life.”

“That's fair,” Henry says without looking up.

“But.” Rebecca turns back to me, and her expression softens into something so genuine it makes my ribs ache. She takes both of my hands in hers and squeezes. Her fingers are warm and her grip is sure. “I always hoped it would be you two. Always.”

The words land like a stone dropped into still water. I feel the ripple of them move through me—through my chest, my stomach, the backs of my eyes.

“I used to watch you kids,” she continues, shaking her head like she's watching a memory play out behind her eyes. “Running around the yard, climbing the pecan trees, getting into everything. And I'd watch the way Henry looked at you. Even when y'all were young. Even before he had any idea what it meant, I knew. I could see it in the way he’d run around catching you a whole jar full of fireflies.” She laughs softly, her thumbs rubbing circles on the backs of my hands. “I'd say to James, that boy is going to marry that girl one day, you mark my words. And he'd tell me I was getting ahead of myself.”

She glances over at her husband, who's standing a few feet away with a plate of brisket, looking suspiciously like he's pretending not to eavesdrop.

“I wasn't getting ahead of myself,” she says with quiet satisfaction. “A mother always knows.”

I can't speak. If I speak, I'll cry. If I cry, everything unravels—the composure, the story, the delicate architecture of pretending this is something I chose rather than something the universe dropped on me like a piano in a cartoon.

So I just squeeze her hands back. Hard. And nod. And hope that's enough.

She pulls me into one more hug, shorter this time, and a little tighter, and then presses a kiss to my cheek. “Welcome to the family, Gracie, officially. Even though you've been part of it for years.”

When she lets go, she turns to Henry and points one manicured finger at his chest. “You. Take care of this girl.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I mean it, Henry William.”

“I know you do.”

She gives him a look that contains entire volumes, then smooths the front of her dress, sniffs once, and walks back toward Pops and Mimz with the composed dignity of a woman who absolutely did not just get emotional in front of the barbecue.

I sit down. My knees are grateful.

Henry's hand finds my leg under the table. Not high. Not inappropriate. Just his palm resting against my knee, warm through the fabric of my dress, steady as a heartbeat.

“You okay?” he asks again, quieter this time. “I know she can be a bit much at times.”

I nod. Then, because honesty slips out when my defenses are down: “Your mom is going to make me cry.”

“She makes everyone cry. It's a skill. And I’m pretty sure her goal. Always.”

“She said she always hoped it would be us.”

Something shifts in his expression. It's subtle. A tightening around his jaw, a flicker in those blue eyes that's there and gone before I can name it. “Yeah,” he says. “She's said that before.”

I don't know what to do with that information, so I file it away in the ever-expanding drawer in my brain labeled Things About Henry That I Cannot Process Right Now and reach for a piece of brisket.

The fiddle player shifts into something slower. Sweeter. A waltz, maybe, or something close to it. Couples begin drifting toward the makeshift dance floor, a square of concrete, covered in cornmeal. It sits between the pavilion and the smokers, now lit gold and amber under the canopy of string lights.

Pops leads Mimz out first. The crowd parts for them like water around a stone, and someone whoops. Mimz laughs, her bright, full-throated laugh that sounds like it belongs to a woman half her age. She tucks herself into her husband's arms with the ease of fifty-some years of practice.

Pops leads, pushing her backwards in steps so fluid, it looks as if they’re gliding on air. Clearly, two people who have danced a million times together.

My throat tightens.

Other couples follow. Henry's parents. Kelsie and Ethan. A few of the older couples from town who probably learned to dance at events exactly like this one, decades ago.

Then Henry pushes back from the table.