Page 45 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

He held my gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and closed his eyes.

I pulled my chair closer to Emma, fixed the blanket over her legs, and settled in for the night. The hospital was quiet around us. The monitor beeped. The fluorescent light hummed. Emma breathed in soft, steady rhythms, and Sawyer’s breathing gradually deepened to match.

Tomorrow, I would call Dollie. Tomorrow, we would go to the cabin.

Tomorrow, the questions would come. The ones I wasn’t ready to answer.

But tonight, I sat between my sleeping daughter and the man who had saved her life and let myself feel something I hadn’t felt in years. Not just relief. Not just safety.

Hope. Small and fragile and terrifying.

But there.

I closed my eyes and let the sound of them both breathing carry me to sleep.

16

SAWYER

Dollie’s car smelled like vanilla and bad decisions.

She was driving because I couldn’t, on account of the hole in my foot, and Chloe was in the passenger seat staring out the window like the passing trees held the answers to every question she’d ever asked. Emma was behind me, buckled into a booster seat that Dollie had produced from somewhere with the terrifying efficiency of a woman who kept child safety equipment on standby. The stuffed dinosaur, Sir Chomps-a-Lot, occupied the seat next to Emma like a plush bodyguard.

“You know,” Dollie said, adjusting the rearview mirror so she could see all of us at once, “it’s kind of poetic when you think about it. Fate just keeps throwing you two back together. Like the universe has a plan and you both keep trying to mess it up, and the universe keeps going, ‘Nope, try again.’”

“Shut it, Dollie,” Chloe said, still looking out the window.

“I’m just saying. Seven years. Seven whole years. And here we are, all in a car together, driving to your cabin.” She glanced at me in the mirror. “Fate is undefeated.”

I said nothing because engaging with Dollie on the subject of fate was a losing proposition, and also because I was using every available ounce of concentration to not look at the back of Chloe’s head and think about the conversation at the hospital. The things she’d told me. The things I hadn’t been able to unhear since.

Emma was studying us.

I could feel it. The particular weight of a child’s attention, direct and unfiltered and missing none of the things that adults think they’re hiding. Her eyes moved from the back of Chloe’s seat to Dollie to me and back again, processing the currents in the car with the quiet intelligence that seemed to define her.

“What does Auntie Dee mean, Mama?” Emma asked. “About fate bringing you back?”

Chloe turned slightly, her mouth opening with the beginnings of an explanation that I could tell was going to be carefully worded, age-appropriate, and completely devoid of useful information. Before she could get a syllable out, Dollie beat her to it.

“Your mama once liked Sawyer,” Dollie said, bright and cheerful and utterly merciless. “A long time ago. She used to bring him cookies at the sawmill and follow him around and call him grumpy. It was very cute.”

“Dollie!” Chloe’s voice hit a register that could have shattered the windshield.

Emma’s eyes swung to me. She looked at me for a long moment, her head tilted, her gaze traveling over my face with the frank assessment of someone who had not yet learned that staring was impolite. Those green eyes, sharp and serious, examined me with a thoroughness that made my chest do something uncomfortable.

“No doubt,” she said finally, nodding with the gravity of a six-year-old who had reached an important conclusion. “He is handsome. Mama has good eyes.”

Chloe made a sound like a deflating balloon. Her hand came up to cover Emma’s mouth, but Emma had already delivered the verdict, and her little face was satisfied behind her mother’s palm. Chloe’s cheeks had turned a shade of pink that I hadn’t seen in seven years, the same shade that used to appear when I caught her staring at me in the sawmill.

Something shifted inside me. Not the sharp, grinding shift of pain or loss, but something lighter. Something that felt, terrifyingly, like warmth. I looked at this kid, this small human with her braids and her dinosaur and her absolute certainty that her mother’s taste in men was sound, and I felt something I couldn’t name. A pull. A warmth. The strange, unexpected feeling of being tethered to someone you’ve just met, as if something deeper than logic was at work.

“Mama’s face is red,” Emma observed helpfully.

“Thank you, Emma,” Chloe said through gritted teeth. “I noticed.”

Dollie was grinning so hard I thought her face might split. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the corners of my mouth from doing something unprecedented.

“Uncle Sawyer,” Emma said, trying the name out with the experimental boldness of a child adopting a new character, “do you still like cookies?”