Page 170 of Jensen

We pause at the crest of the hill. Down below rolls the bluegrass, and in the distance are the pinnacles, a hazy slate gray. Everything is still clinging to that last bit of green from the summer. His eyes are narrowed as they skim over the horizon, and the lines around them are a little deeper than I remember.

“Thanks for the forgiveness,” he says finally.

“Thanks for the family.”

He laughs once. “Yeah, how’s that going?”

I nod. “Good. We’re getting her little boy settled in.”

My throat tightens, and I have to clear it before I can tell him something I’ve never spoken out loud, save for behind the closed doors of my room back home. Nobody knows, not Jack, not Deacon.

“Della’s pregnant,” I say.

His brows rise. “Really? That was fast.”

“I think she got pregnant while we were here,” I say. “We just found out a few days ago.”

He’s smiling, and I see a little bit of the old Brothers come through.

“You know…I got that truck you used to drive in my barn,” he says. “I’ll ship it out to you. Maybe you can fix it with Landis…and whatever the next one turns out to be.”

We look at each other, and everything is behind us, finally laid to rest. It’s over this time. Nothing can fix what happened to me. Nobody can make Brothers anything other than the man he is. I’ve made peace with it, and in my own way, I do forgive him. He hurt me, but I don’t think he set out to cause harm. For my own sake, I have to move on. I’m over being angry, and I wish him well from a distance.

“Thanks,” I say finally.

He waves a hand. “You go on home, Jen. I might just stay here for a while, see if I can’t get one of those ducks after all.”

Neither of us speak for a minute or two. Then, I hold out my hand. He shakes it, winking the way he used to. A million times lighter, I walk down the hill and get into my car. He got everything he wanted and lost everything that mattered, but there’s nothing I can do now. I tried to tell him. It’s time for me to walk away.

The last thing I see in my rearview mirror is Brothers Boyd standing with his head bowed, looking out over the gently shimmering bluegrass.

A lonely figure on a lonely hill.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

DELLA

A YEAR LATER

The rocking chair creaks gently. Through the window comes a faint breeze that smells like the fields will need to be hayed soon. A little scuffle comes from the windowsill, then through the open window, a wren pokes its head. I stop rocking with my bare foot and watch. Carefully, it looks around. Then, it’s gone, darting away in the sunlight.

There’s a quiet cry from the bundle in my arms. I shift her with my elbow, tucking the front of my dress closed. My daughter is just a few months old, already the perfect addition to our family. I lift her, supporting her head, and lay her against my shoulder.

“Delia Rose,” I whisper. “You are beautiful.”

She blinks, looking up at me with her daddy’s eyes. We named her after my father’s two grandmothers. I looked at those graves so many times, all the names are burned into my brain. Jensen, knowing I never got a hand in naming Landis, told me to pick out what I liked. It’s enough she’s a Childress, he said.

I love that she looks like him, that she’s got his eyes, his surname. They both get the same crease in their forehead when they’re angry. It fills me with overwhelming happiness every time I see it.

We rock until she falls asleep, snoring just like her father. Working carefully, I transfer her to the crib. I close the window, tiptoe over to turn on the fan, and slip out of the room to head for the kitchen.

The kitchen is different than it was when we met. Now, it’s pale sage green with sanded pine baseboards. When I moved in, Jensen let me do whatever I wanted. We sketched out plans to renovate on the back of junk mail because he didn’t have anything else, late one night, spread out on the bedroom floor. I was on my back, feeling the first kicks from Delia, letting him talk about construction late into the night. I felt like the richest woman in the world.

Crash.

I jump, freezing. The side door to the left of the kitchen leads out to the attached garage. It’s halfway open, and through it comes a frustrated grunt. I know what that is—that’s what my husband sounds like when he’s trying not to swear in front of Landis.

Biting back a smile, I make a cup of black coffee and carry it to the door. Through it, I can see into the garage. Chicken is sleeping on his back on the doormat, twitching and snoring. Parked in the middle is an ancient truck that Brothers Boyd sent to Jensen a few months after he visited Kentucky for the last time. It’s a rust bucket, more parts broken than fixed. They couldn’t work on it during the winter, but now that it’s warm out, they’ve been messing with it a few nights a week. Landis loves it, especially when it means he can stay up late.