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“You see how the light hits the bowl? How it brings up the pattern, makes it look like mountains at dawn? That’s what I look for. Little moments. Sometimes they look like fantasy landscapes if you look at them long enough. Sometimes they’re just the moment itself. I look for beauty in the mundane, and there’s infinite beauty around here.”

Emmett goes quiet and still, more than usual. Hunter gets excited.

“What else would you take pictures of in here?” Hunter asks.

I look around the kitchen and find an interesting little corner by the stove, where the carved salt and pepper shakers are sitting. I point the camera and snap, but I’m not fast enough. Beau managed to jump into the frame at the last second, making a stupid face.

I laugh. “Well, that would have been one. Look at the curtains, though. The way the light is filtering through them and making designs on the wall.” I point my camera and Beau does it again, sticking his tongue out as he jumps into frame. Laughing, I play along, describing what I’m going to shoot before I shoot it.

“That chair…” Beau.

“The reflection on the fridge…” Beau.

“The shadow of the doorframe…” Beau, who had to run to make it in time.

I’m laughing harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. Tears are squeezing at the corners of my eyes and my ribs ache, but I’m loving it. I’ve never seen Beau get silly like this. I would have expected this behavior from Hunter, but Beau has a way of making it even funnier. I take a dozen pictures and he photobombs each of them. By the end of it, I’m gasping for air and everyone is chuckling. Even Emmett.

Lunch is starting to get cold so I put my camera aside and wipe my eyes, sitting back down to finish.

“Think any of those are usable?” Hunter asks me, then glares ironically at Beau.

“I think those are the best pictures I’ve taken since I’ve been here,” I admit with a laugh. “We’ll see how they turn out after editing.”

The tips of Beau’s ears turn red. “You’re going to edit those?”

“Of course! I like editing just as much as I like taking pictures. I’ll figure out the best way to showcase your photobombs.” I grin at him, then take another bite of my food.

He looks pleased, if a little embarrassed. We all finish our food, Hunter exclaiming over it even though it’s room temperature now, the other two giving him shit for it. At least the attention is off Beau now.

“So, you’re editing this afternoon,” Hunter says. “We got that fence as fixed as it’s gonna be until there’s less snow out there. I think I’ll spend the afternoon inside, it’s about time to scrub the bathroom.”

Beau nods. “Have fun with that, I guess. The porch needs arranging, something tried to burrow in the woodpile and knocked it over.”

I wait for Emmett to contribute, but he doesn’t. He grunts acknowledgment of the other plans, but doesn’t share his own. He’s not much of a sharer, I knew that already, but it just seems odd for him to be the only one left out of the conversation. Hunter and Beau don’t seem to notice. Must be normal for them, I suppose.

After lunch, Emmett washes the dishes again. I get set up with my laptop on the comfy chair in the living room, the one by the window where the light is the best. I watch them go about their days, the quiet rhythm of three men who know exactly who they are and exactly what they’re doing.

At some point, Emmett comes into the living room. He does that thing where he stops moving and looks at me for a moment before continuing on to do whatever it is he’s going to do. It’s a weird little quirk of his, but I’ve gotten used to it over the last days or week or however long I’ve been here. It’s not a threatening thing. It’s more like a recalibration, like I exist somewhere and it surprises him every time.

After his pause, he crosses the living room and goes into his workshop. The scent of wood shavings wafts through the room, and I assume that that’s the last I’m going to see of him for a while. To my surprise, he comes back out almost immediately, carrying an empty honeycomb. He does his little pause, then keeps going to the kitchen.

Beeswax. Must be for his projects in the workshop. I never really thought about how he finishes them, but the bowls are all glossy and richly colored. I would have assumed some kind of oil, but beeswax makes sense too.

I settle into my chair and click away on my photos, smiling as I come to Beau’s photobombs. The first one makes him look just as surprised as the camera at being caught. I wonder if he intended on that one or if he just did something kind of dumb and decided to turn it into a joke. I adjust the lighting slightly, sharpen his surprise, blur the background a tiny bit. Now it’s a candid portrait.

The next one, he’s full silly. He looks more like a little boy than a big scary man, with his tongue out and his eyes wide and his eyebrows high up on his forehead. He looks like he’s having fun, complete and uncomplicated fun. It makes me smile.

I like this more than I thought I would. Sitting here, letting the rhythm of the guys flow around me. Listening to the little domestic noises of Emmett moving around in the kitchen and Hunter scrubbing the bathroom. Getting a burst of mountain winter air and chopped wood scents every time Beau comes in from outside or goes back out again. It’s calm. It’s peaceful. It’s everything I didn’t know I needed, and it’s healing some part of me just to sit in their tides and eddies.

The day goes on that way. Emmett working on something, Hunter cleaning things inside the house. Beau working on things outside the house. It’s calm and soothing. Hunter makes dinner and we all sit down to eat together with the particular calm tiredness of a day well spent. Beau does the dishes. Emmett disappears. Hunter looks at the bottle of whiskey, debates internally, and shakes his head. It’s not a whiskey night.

Relaxed and ready to wind down and go to sleep, I head upstairs with my camera and my laptop. In my room, I go to set them on the dresser, only to find a tiny wooden pot sitting on the middle of the dresser, a few inches away from the engagement ring that I left there when I first arrived. Brow furrowing, I set my technology down and pick up the pot.

Hand balm, it says. Someone burned that directly into the wood, and I have a good idea who. I open the lid and smell it. It smells good, like lavender and honey, and the balm is smooth and rich.

Emmett. My heart warms. He heard me talking about my hands and spent the day making me a balm with beeswax, carving a little container for it, and burning the label into the wood. This must have taken him all day. He barely seems to like me, tolerate me at best, and he went so far as to do this for me.

Smiling, feeling safe and cared for and almost loved, I work the balm into my hands. It goes on smooth and warm and immediately soothes the cracks in my hands. It’s the perfect gift, from the most surprising source.