Page 21 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Lumberjack

"I MEAN IT VERY MUCH, WALDEN."

Maple lifts her head from the foot of the bed. Her tail wags. It wags every morning now, full and real, because Hattie sings in the kitchen and drops scrambled egg pieces on the floor and calls Maple "my best girl" in a voice that makes the dog's entire body vibrate with joy.

My dog is not the only one vibrating.

Hattie got a teaching position at Whisper Vale Elementary in October. First grade, because they didn't have a kindergarten opening, but she said first graders are just tall kindergarteners with better handwriting. She walks to school every morning because the town is small enough for that. Comes home smelling like markers and hand sanitizer. Tells me about her students over dinner while sitting on my counter, bare feet swinging.

Our counter. Our dinner. She corrects me every time.

Walking into the kitchen, I find her standing at the coffee maker in one of my flannels, bare legs, hair wild from sleep. Theflannel hangs to mid thigh. She's pressing the button with one finger like she's poking a sleeping animal.

"You gotta commit." Reaching around her, I press the button with my palm. The machine growls to life. "It respects force."

"Your coffee maker has toxic masculinity."

"My coffee maker makes excellent coffee if you stop being polite to it."

She turns in the circle of my arms, chin tilted up, green eyes still soft from sleep. Freckles across her nose. Dimples already forming because she can't look at me without smiling, and I'm starting to suspect that's going to be true for the rest of our lives.

"Good morning." She rises on her toes, presses a kiss to my jaw.

"Morning." My hands settle on her hips. The flannel is warm from her body. "You sleep okay?"

"Mmhm. Except Maple took the entire left side of the bed."

"That's her side."

"It's MY side."

"It was her side first."

"Walden Kirby, are you choosing the dog over me?"

"I'm choosing diplomacy."

She laughs, and the sound fills the kitchen the same way it fills every room in this house. Every corner that used to be quiet. Every silence that used to feel permanent. Hattie Bloom walked into my life through a wrong number and turned the volume up on everything, and I can't believe I ever thought the quiet was something I wanted.

Cora's photo is on the mantel. The one I showed Hattie the day I drove to her school. It stays because Cora is part of the story, and Hattie has never once asked me to move it. Once, I caught her talking to the photo. Telling Cora about a student who ate glue. "You would've loved this kid," Hattie said to thepicture, and I stood in the hallway with my heart cracking open in the best possible way.

Holly Pearce still drops off pie every Tuesday. Now she drops off two slices. Hattie has joined some kind of Tuesday coffee thing with Holly and a woman named Piper who does vintage furniture. I don't ask questions.

"So." Hattie takes her coffee mug, wraps both hands around it. She's doing the thing where she looks at me sideways while pretending to look at the coffee. "I need to tell you something."

"Okay."

"And I need you to not freak out."

"I don't freak out."

"You freaked out when Marcus sent me a birthday card addressed to 'Miss Bloom and the Big Lumberjack.'"

"That wasn't freaking out. That was concern about a five year old knowing my dimensions."

"He's six now. He had a birthday."

"Hattie."

She sets the mug on the counter. Takes a breath. Both hands pressed flat on the surface behind her, which is her tell. She braces against things when she's about to say something she's been holding.