Page 276 of What We Brave
Not a big production — just a fire pit behind the community center, a few families gathering with plates of food, kids chasing each other in the half-dark. Carlos brought his guitar and he's playing something slow and pretty while his nephew or cousin, I've lost track, adds a drum beat with an overturned bucket.
God, it's beautiful out here. Fire popping, somebody's guitar drifting over from the main group, and the mountains going full silhouette against that last stubborn strip of orange the sky won't let go of.
We're set up a little ways off from everyone else. David hauled chairs. Mary showed up with plates of something that looks amazing, so I'm guessing she didn't cook. Five of us in a loose circle: David, Mary, Laine, Blake, me. Close enough to the fire that my shinsare warm, but far enough out that we can actually hear each other talk.
Blake's quiet. Eating. He put in ten hours on that building today, barely came up for air, and I can see it sitting in his shoulders. The way he's holding himself. But it's the right kind of tired — the kind where your body's spent because you did something that mattered. Not the kind that grinds you down from the inside.
I want to reach over and put my hand on the back of his neck. Just hold him there. Let him know I'm here.
I don't. Not yet. Not until Laine says the words. The words her parents need, yeah. But more importantly, Blake needs.
She has to claim him.
My knee's bouncing under my plate. I press my heel into the dirt to stop it. Doesn't work. The energy's got to go somewhere, and it's not going into my mouth because if I start talking I'm going to say something stupid and blow this whole thing before Laine's ready.
Two days. She said two days. We're here. This is it.
David's been talking about the new schoolhouse foundation. How they need to pour before the rains come. How the concrete supplier in Tecpán is unreliable. Blake's been listening, nodding, asking the occasional question that makes David's eyebrows go up because it's exactly the right question.
"You've done foundation work?" David asks.
"Some. Mostly repair. Old buildings, shifted foundations. But the principles are the same."
"Blake runs his own wood restoration business," I say. "Back home. Historical buildings. The guy can look at a hundred-year-old mantelpiece and tell you every?—"
"Reid." Blake. Quiet. Not harsh. Justenough.
I shut up. Right. He doesn't need me selling him. But also, he doesn't even try to sell himself. Someone has to do it.
The whole time they've been talking, Mary's been watching. She does that — watches. Holds her plate in her lap and listens and files things away. She's been warm to Blake today. Warmer than yesterday anyway. But there's still that careful distance, that watchful assessment that I recognize because Laine does the exact same thing.
"Blake," Mary says. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You came a long way for this trip. All the way to Guatemala." She tilts her head. The firelight catches her face. "You and Reid must be very close for you to tag along on a family visit."
Tag along.
Blake doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. But I see it — the stillness that settles over him. The way his fork stops halfway to his mouth and then continues, steady, like nothing happened.
I see the hurt.
"We're close," he says. "Yeah."
"Do you have family of your own? A girlfriend waiting at home?"
And there it is.
The question that shouldn't be a grenade but is. Simple. Innocent. The kind of thing any mother would ask a young man sitting at her fire.Do you have someone?
Blake sets his fork down. Looks at his plate.
The muscles in his jaw are jumping. He's not going to lie. I know that. Blake Moore will walk through a week of being nobody, will sleep on a floor, will bite through his own tongue before he complains — but he won't lie. Not directly. Not when someone looks him in the eye and asks.
His gaze lifts. Finds Laine.
And the look on his face —
