Page 18 of Working For Her Second Chance

"I'm still here," I say. The simplest thing I've said all day. The truest.

She stands. Keys in her hand. One last scratch behind Hitch's ears that makes him groan. Three steps off the porch.

"Macy."

She turns.

"I'm glad you came back."

Not for the maps. Not to the house. Back. Here. The place she left. The place that still has her shape in it, all this time later, in the hallway and the bedroom she didn't look at and the window that faces the county road.

She holds my eyes for a breath that stretches until it nearly breaks. Then she walks to her SUV. The engine starts. Headlights sweep the yard. The taillights shrink down the gravel drive and disappear.

The porch is quiet. Hitch presses his weight against my leg. The stars are out and the air holds the trace of her shampoo—something green, something clean—and I'll smell it on this porch for days.

I go inside. The maps are put away but the kitchen still holds her. The coffee mug she used sits in the sink. A strand of hair on the chair where she leaned over my father's handwriting. The warmth of the room, which has nothing to do with the woodstove and everything to do with the fact that for the first time in twelve years, this house felt like more than a place I inherited. It felt like a place someone might want to stay.

The hallway is dark. The bedroom door is still closed. On the other side of it is the bed where I held her that night, the window where the light crept in, the ceiling I stared at while she traced my scar and I thought this is what the rest of my life sounds like.

She walked past that door today and didn't look. But her jaw tightened. She mentioned the window. Neither of us said what the window means—saying it would mean admitting she remembers every detail of the morning she left. That I remember every detail of the morning I woke up to cold sheets. Both of those mornings are still happening, still playing, still running underneath every professional conversation, every careful distance, like a current that never got properly grounded.

Five months and change. She'll be professional. I'll be professional. In October she'll drive back to Denver and the house will go quiet again and Hitch will stop looking at the door every time a car crunches gravel.

But tonight the kitchen smells like her. And the mug is in the sink. And the dog is asleep in the spot where she sat and scratched his ears and laughed that real laugh, the unguarded one, the one that sounds exactly like the girl who said "Well, that was overdue" after the first time I kissed her in the alley behind Kincaid's.

The timer is running. It was running the day she arrived. Every day she's here is a day closer to the sound of her car on gravel at dawn, and I am standing in this kitchen like every Dawson man before me—steady, patient, rooted in a place I chose—waiting for a woman who hasn't decided if she's staying or leaving.

The difference is, this time I know what it costs. Both ways.

Leaving costs what it cost the first time. The bench. The three hours. The silence where her voice should have been.

But staying—watching her stay—that costs something too. Something I haven't let myself want since she left, because wanting it means trusting that "I will" means something different the second time.

The county road is quiet. Same stillness. Same frequency. My father's line. My line now.

I wash her mug. Put it back in the cabinet. Go to bed.

The door stays closed. But for the first time in a long time, I think about opening it.

Chapter 7

Macy

The Forge Creek Union Hall fundraiser is Marlene Kincaid's idea, Gus Holloway's execution, and apparently the social event of the season, which in a town of 3,100 people means everyone will be there, including the man I've been carefully not sleeping with for six weeks.

The dress is Marlene's fault. Dark green, fitted through the waist, hem at the knee. She ambushed me at the consignment shop in Ridgeline with the ruthless efficiency of a woman who has opinions about my wardrobe and has been saving them.

"You don't need to dress up," she said, holding the fabric against my shoulders. "But you should."

"Marlene, I'm here for six months. I don't need a dress."

"Honey, even your spreadsheets look exhausted. Try it on."

I tried it on. It fit. I bought it because arguing with Marlene Kincaid is like arguing with plate tectonics—theoretically possible, practically futile.

The hall is cinderblock and coffee smell, but someone has strung lights along the exposed beams and pushed the chairs back for a dance floor nobody's using yet. Josie tends a makeshift bar. Hank leans against the wall with his beer and his permanent expression of mild bafflement. Lila sits with thecouncil members, optimizing something. Eddie is near the bar, eating wings, observing everything, saying nothing—a one-man surveillance system with barbecue sauce on his fingers.

River is across the room.