Page 57
Come on. It hasn’t been that long
Demi:
I just miss you, is all
Me:
You’re in luck. I’ll be back this weekend. You free?
Demi:
Not anymore. I’m taking you to the Hammer Museum thing. It’s opening night
Me:
Perfect
Demi:
I’ll send deets
By the time Luke and Scout return, I have a weekend full of plans, and I feel better about the balance I’ve restored in my life. I can look at Luke in his dark jacket and his perfectly tousled hair and feel the same attraction I always feel, but my emotions are back in check. Being here is a stop on the road for me, not the destination.
Scout flies through the open front door and scrambles into the back seat of Luke’s truck, while we walk more slowly. Luke comes around, opens the passenger door, and I tell myself he was raised with manners. He’d open the door for anyone. It has nothing to do with any new attachment to me. As promised, we’re keeping the sex and our adult responsibilities separate.
I hop up onto the passenger seat, and Luke gives my hand a squeeze before he goes around to his side and gets into the truck. We drive in relative silence, which means that he and I don’t talk, but Scout keeps up a steady stream of chatter, asking questions and making decisions about how the day will go.
“We’re singing three songs. ‘The Apple and the Frog,’ ‘Hands Across the World,’ and ‘Small Kid Big Dreams.’” Scout starts humming to himself, practicing one of the songs in his mind. I’m more distracted than usual, not focused on which song it is, even though I’ve heard them all countless times.
“We rehearsed them a lot.”
“That’s great, kiddo,” Luke says.
“And we get to bring home all our art. We made paper suitcases to carry everything.” Scout’s voice gets louder the closer we get to the school, his excitement uncontainable.
“I’ve never heard of a paper suitcase. What does that look like?” Luke asks.
I look out the window as we pass by landmarks in Willow Springs. It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, this town was completely foreign to me. Before my sisters and I inherited Loveland Ranch, I hadn’t been up here since I was little. And until a few months ago, I certainly never thought of this place as home.
But now, as we pass the grocery store, I have memories of careening down the aisles with Scout riding the shopping cart, hoping we wouldn’t run into anyone who’d report our antics back to stern Luke. Memories of a less-stern Luke wandering the aisles with me, picking out snack supplies for me to drop off at the preschool. Times when I ran into locals and knew them by name. Times when I felt more at home shopping there than I do in my own neighborhood, which is filled with hipsters carrying around twenty-dollar smoothies and yoga mats.
As we pass the little park, I think about the times I’ve brought Scout here to play after school, hanging with the other kids’ moms like I was one of them. No one ever made me feel like I didn’t belong here.
We drive by the courthouse, and it feels like yesterday that I crashed into Luke, each of us wound up and worried about our separate court appearances. The memory of all the nice things the retired judge had to say about him, and how I couldn’t square those details with the grumpy, wound-up man standing next to me.
Sneaking a glance at Luke now, I see a very different man, one who so badly needed to let his guard down and share some of the load he carried. Now that he has, the load is lighter, but so is he. It makes me a little teary, and I look away.
When we pull into the preschool parking lot, Luke opens the door for Scout, who bounds into the front door, greeted by one of his teachers, who waves at us. By the time Luke comes around to my side, I’m out of the car. Another car pulls up next to Luke’s truck, and we watch the same drill—a kid running into the school, parents sauntering behind.
“Morning,” Luke says. “Big day.”
“Yes, it is,” the mom says. It’s a woman I haven’t seen before, and I have to remind myself that I don’t know everyone in town or even at the school. And that I’m just a temporary participant in everything.
Luke slows his pace so the other couple can go in ahead of us, and then he turns to me. “You okay?”
His face is lined with a different kind of concern than I usually see there. Normally, when he’s worked up about the finances at the ranch or worries about the custody hearing, he looks pained and exhausted. Now he looks hurt.
“Me? Yeah. Big day, like you said.”
