Page 64 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“He was. He is a little shorter now.”

“Why?”

“People shrink when they get older.”

“Will I shrink?”

“Not for a very long time.”

“Good. I want to be tall like you.”

I looked at Sawyer. His jaw was tight. Not the angry kind of tight. The nervous kind. The kind that came from a man who kept his emotions under the surface like stones at the bottom of a river, invisible until you waded in deep enough to feel them under your feet. He had not seen his parents in months. He had told me this the night before, sitting on the edge of the bed with his boots in his hands, saying it like it was nothing, like distance from the people who raised you was just something that happened when you were busy building a life out of silence and wood.

“They are going to love her,” I said quietly.

He did not look at me. But his hand found mine on the seat between us and squeezed once. Hard. Then let go.

The house was at the end of a tree-lined road. A small craftsman-style home with a wide porch and a garden that had been put to bed for winter, the beds mulched and the stakes pulled, everything neat and orderly in a way that told me exactly where Sawyer had gotten his precision. There was a wooden rocking chair on the porch, handmade, and a wind chime made of carved wood pieces that clinked softly in the breeze.

The front door opened before we were out of the truck.

Sawyer’s mother was small. That was the first thing I noticed. Small and sharp-eyed with silver hair cut short and practical, and she stood on the porch with her hands clasped in front of her and watched us approach with an expression that was trying very hard to be composed and failing.

His father appeared behind her. Tall, like Sawyer, but thinner now, with broad shoulders that had narrowed with age and hands that were still large and rough even at rest. A carpenter’s hands. He had the same green eyes as his son, but softer. Warmer. The kind of green that had been worn smooth by years of smiling.

“Sawyer,” his mother said.

“Mom.”

He stepped onto the porch and she pulled him into a hug that was fierce for a woman her size. She held on. I watched her close her eyes and press her face into his chest the way I pressed mine into his, and I understood then that mothers never stop needing to hold their children no matter how tall or how old or how hardened by the world they become.

His father hugged him next. A quick, firm embrace, the kind that men give when they are feeling too much and do not want to show it. A clap on the back. A nod.

Then they saw Emma.

Sawyer’s mother’s hand went to her mouth. She looked at Emma standing beside me in her purple jacket with Sir Chomps-a-Lot under her arm, and then she looked at Sawyer, and then back at Emma, and the tears she had been holding back since the front door opened spilled down her cheeks.

“Mom, Dad,” Sawyer said. “This is Emma. My daughter.”

Emma looked up at me. I nodded. She stepped forward with the confidence of a child who had never met a stranger she could not charm and extended her hand.

“Hi. I am Emma Matthews. I am six. This is Sir Chomps-a-Lot. He is a dinosaur.”

Sawyer’s mother laughed. A wet, broken, beautiful laugh that came from a place so deep it shook her whole body. She did not shake Emma’s hand. She knelt down and opened her arms and Emma walked right into them like she had been hugging this woman her entire life.

“Oh,” his mother whispered, holding Emma against her. “Oh, you look just like him. You look exactly like him.”

Sawyer’s father was quieter. He stood behind his wife with his hand on her shoulder and his eyes wet and his jaw working the way Sawyer’s did when he was trying to hold something together that wanted to come apart. He looked at his son. Sawyer looked back. And something passed between them, a communication that did not require words, that lived in the shared understanding of men who had both known loss and were now standing in the presence of something recovered.

“And this is Chloe,” Sawyer said, and his hand was on my back again, warm and steady.

His mother stood. Wiped her eyes. Looked at me with the kind of assessment that only mothers can deliver, thorough and searching and layered with every hope and fear she had ever had for her son. Then she smiled. Small at first, then wider, and she pulled me into a hug that smelled like lavender and fresh bread and the kind of warmth that came from a home where love was the primary building material.

“Welcome,” she said. “Welcome home.”

They ushered us inside. The house was warm, filled with the smell of something baking and the soft ticking of a clock on the mantel. The living room was full of photographs. Sawyer as a boy. Sawyer in his uniform. And another boy, a younger one with the same green eyes and a wider smile and a lightness in his face that Sawyer’s had never carried. Jimmy.

I saw the photographs and understood. Jimmy was everywhere in this house. On the walls, on the shelves, in a framed flag on the mantel that I did not need to ask about because I already knew what it meant.