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Her mom waited a beat and said, “I can believe that, Laura. I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t come home.”
“It just felt…too hard,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, okay? Will you make the coconut cream pie for me?”
“Of course,” her mom said, her forgiveness one of the greatest blessings of Laura’s life. She’d had to focus on the tiniest of blessings in her life, and her mother had always been her biggest one.
“How are you holding up?” her mom asked next, and Laura let her eyes close again.
“Okay,” she said.
“Did you tell Todd about Hans?”
Laura sucked in a breath, which was all the answer her mother needed. Laura needed to talk about him though, and she hadn’t realized it until right this moment. “No,” she said. “I haven’t told him yet. It was our first date, Momma.”
“When are you seeing him again?”
“In a couple of hours,” she said. “I’m going to dinner over at his place, and we’re going to fly a kite.”
“How very country,” her mom said with a laugh tacked onto the end. “It really sounds nice, Laura.”
“I like it here,” Laura said. “When he said I should’ve told him about my birthday so he could have the chef at the lodge make a cake, I told him I didn’t want to be a bother. He said I was part of this ranch now…if I wanted to be.”
“Do you want to be?”
Laura opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling in her bedroom. She shared this cabin with another woman, and this single bedroom was the only purely private space she had. “Yes,” she whispered, not quite strong enough to vocalize the word louder than that.
“Good,” her mom said. “You deserve everything good after what you’ve been through.”
“Thank you, Momma.”
“Call me after tonight’s kite-flying date.”
Laura knew she was teasing her, but she didn’t care. “I will,” she said. “I love you.”
“Love you too, dear.”
She once again let her phone rest on her chest, and now her thoughts only brought forward memories of Hans and the amazing thirteen months she’d had with him. She didn’t know how to bring him up, how to explain who he was and why he’d been so important to her.
She and Todd weren’t to the stage in their relationship where they talked about previous boyfriends and girlfriends anyway. Hans hadn’t only been her boyfriend either.
She exhaled as she sat up and then stood. She liked to stay busy so some of the things she’d endured didn’t overtake her life and make her spend too much time in the past. She’d learned that was no way to live, and she’d rather focus on today than relive yesterday.
Besides, today with Todd had been pretty spectacular, and she couldn’t wait to see him again.
* * *
When the frontdoor of his cabin opened later that day, Kyle stood in front of her, not Todd. “Hey,” she said with a smile. She’d changed her clothes for a reason she couldn’t name, and she now held up the bag where she’d carefully folded her kite after getting it out and testing it an hour ago.
“Is Todd here?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Kyle said, backing up. “C’mon in. I’ll call him.”
“I can call him,” she said, stepping into the cabin. She looked around, seeing Todd clearly in the décor of the house. She didn’t know Kyle as well, but the parts she couldn’t attribute to Todd, she assumed came from him. The bright blue rug in the living room, for example, as well as the ornate mirror above the mantle.
This cabin was much more spacious than hers, and she smiled at the soft beige walls in the kitchen and the real wood ones in the living room and dining room.
“Hey,” Kyle said, and she turned to him. He spoke into his phone. “Laura’s here Where you at?” He nodded a couple of times and said, “I’ll tell her.”
Azure laid down on her feet, and Laura bent at the knee to pat him. “Howdy, heeler,” she said to him, giving him a good scratch. “How are you feeling today?”
