The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.

—Barbara DeAngelis
(Left by Grandma Bette, changing lives through Scouting for forty-three years)

Chapter 11

With Jack still gone to his offices in Houston, life took on a more relaxed pace. Daniel drove Nick and me around the ranch in the old pickup truck that was for his work use. The sheer size of the place awed me. We could literally travel for miles, bumping along rutted truck trails, white dust billowing behind us, rising and falling and always landing on property that belonged to Jack West. All part of his strange empire. All under his control.

I’d seen wealth and excess in DC, but never anything like this. It was still hard to comprehend. Everything his, as far as the eye could see—pastures filled with horses and cattle, plots of wheat growing in thick, silty black soil left behind by floods along the river before the lake was built, test fields of corn and various grain crops planted in all sorts of locations, from rocky hillsides to marshy valleys.

I marveled at starts of corn seeming to take hold on a hillside that looked like a gravel parking lot. “It’s not perfect yet,” Daniel remarked. “According to Jack it’ll grow, but it won’t yield. He’s hoping I can solve the problem, and then we’ll apply for the patents. Of course, that would require him to actually let me into the lab rooms, show me the data files, and leave me alone there long enough to work.”

“He still hasn’t even shown you the research?” Unease inchwormed over me. I rubbed goose bumps away, felt a string of caulking on my skin, and began scratching it off. When Daniel had stopped by the house to pick us up, I was crouched in a closet, up to my elbows in home improvement goop. I’d felt someone touch me on the shoulder, and I’d screamed like a banshee, shooting out caulking like silly string.

Daniel shrugged. “A little. Sort of. He left me with a key to the lab, so that’s progress at least, but there are several doors that the key doesn’t open. I can’t really do anything except water the control group samples in the contained environments and dust the furniture.”

I scratched off caulking, watched Nick play in the dirt nearby, and tried to decide what to say. We were having such a nice afternoon, I didn’t want to spoil it. I wanted to pretend that Jack didn’t exist, that Daniel and I were on a vacation getaway. Just a young family, happily passing time in a beautiful place where ancient trees shaded pastures and little bouquets of Mountain Pinks grew on hillsides near cedar-shaded shores and high limestone bluffs. The water was rife with boats today—skiers and fishermen, families enjoying pedal boats, kayakers spending a beautiful summer afternoon under a wide cloudless sky.

Playing beneath a tree not far away, Nick pointed at a skier who caught an edge and tumbled end over end before slapping the water in a belly flop. “Whoa! Woo-eee!” he cheered. Daniel had promised Nick that they would take the new fishing worms down to the lake and do some fishing this evening. We’d tucked swimsuits, towels, and newly purchased fishing poles into the back of Daniel’s ranch vehicle. We both knew that he’d better make good on the fishing promise before Jack showed up and turned our lives upside-down again.

On the way back to the house, we crossed through a three-hundred acre high-fenced area where Jack kept exotic animals of all sorts—everything from Thomson’s gazelles to antelope, beautiful fallow deer with massive antlers to mountain sheep with giant, curled horns. All just waiting for Jack West to find himself in the mood to shoot something. The containment area was an exotic animal business on paper, but according to what little Daniel had learned, few animals raised here were ever sold.

Nick pointed at the animals and called out, “Wook at dat one! Wook at dat one! He’s a big one!” as we drove along through Jack’s private safari. At the far end of the containment area, Daniel stopped to make sure the laboratory complex was locked up for the day. Comprised of several long, low stone buildings that had been poultry barns decades before, the complex looked innocuous from a distance, but up close, I could hear the hum of equipment. Our reflections shimmered in a massive metallic sign that hung on the front of one of the buildings. West Research it proclaimed, the chrome letters looking like they belonged on a steel-and-glass office building somewhere. Don’t let it fool you, Daniel had said the first time he’d driven me by the lab buildings. This place is state of the art. He’d gone on to tell me about the greenhouse-style growth environments, where temperature, moisture, hours of sunlight, and soil conditions were controlled to perfectly duplicate various climates. A wind and solar power generation system provided electricity, and water was supplied partially by windmills and partially by a device Jack was developing to collect moisture from vapor in the air.

Jack West was as brilliant as he was strange, and as mysterious as ever.

Nick, Pecos, and I waited outside with the vehicle while Daniel checked everything. Daniel had taken us into the lab the day after Jack left town, but the surveillance cameras inside gave me an uneasy feeling. I felt like we were being watched, and if we were, I didn’t want Jack West thinking that Nick and I had been snooping around. The man still gave me the willies.

I tried to put Jack out of my mind as Nick and Pecos wandered off to some nearby equipment to play. Pecos stood by faithfully while Nick crawled onto a green tractor and pretended to drive, as he’d seen the ranch hands do. When the men passed by our house occasionally, Nick always stopped what he was doing and waved wildly at them, hoping they would pause to let him ogle whatever machinery they were using, but so far, the ranch hands had continued to steer clear of us. I felt like a pariah most of the time.

“Looks like Nick found a redneck jungle gym there,” Daniel observed as he came out of the lab building. He paused to punch in the security code before crossing the distance between us. His hand slid warm and solid through the curtain of my hair and rested on my shoulder, his fingers rubbing softly there.

I leaned into him, enjoying the moment. Around us, the golden light of afternoon faded into softer hues, the hills casting veils of shadow and sun. Nick was talking up a storm, giving instructions to Pecos, pretending to be doing some very important job with the tractor, but I couldn’t quite hear the words. “Thank goodness for that dog.” In our weeks at the ranch, Pecos and Nick had become inseparable, and if anyone remembered that the dog was actually Jack’s, no one said so.

“As soon as we get a little time to breathe, we need to do something about that.” Daniel pointed at Nick, and his fingers paused against my skin.

I sighed, reluctant to discuss future plans, or what we should do once we had a little breathing room. I was breathing right now, and it seemed like enough for the moment. The longer we stayed at West Ranch, the more I was sure we needed to leave. That wasn’t what Daniel wanted to hear. But there was something just not right about this whole situation. It was becoming more and more clear that Jack West didn’t care what happened to our family, as long as he got whatever it was that he wanted from Daniel.

I couldn’t help wondering: What would happen the minute he didn’t?

“Okay . . . do something about what?” I asked hesitantly. Nick and Pecos had moved to the next piece of equipment, an odd-looking apparatus sitting in the weeds, gathering rust. It looked like a narrow gangway that might be used on a ship, but with a single set of wheels in the middle, so that it could be moved around like a trailer. Alone, Nick could walk along it without tipping it end to end, but he had just discovered that the presence of Pecos added enough weight to cause the entire structure to tilt back and forth, bouncing lightly on the ground when it hit. With their combined mass, Nick and Pecos had created a giant teeter-totter and they were enjoying it, the dog wagging his stubby tail and Nick laughing and talking.

“He’s over there talking to a dog,” Daniel observed. “He needs some real friends. Other kids.”

“He and Pecos have some good conversations.” I’d never had a dog, but Pecos was growing on me. Most of the time, he kept the wandering peafowl, chickens, and guinea hens out of the yard, and he was extremely protective of Nick. I felt certain that, were anything dangerous to sneak in, like the rattlesnakes I’d been warned about but had not seen so far, Pecos would chase them away. He didn’t allow anything near Nick, including Jack West. You had to wonder what kind of a man is considered a threat by his own dog.

“I’m serious.” Daniel stretched his neck side to side, the bones crackling. The tension in him was palpable, flowing into me even as I tried to resist it. I didn’t turn to look at him. I knew what I would see. Exhaustion, a new network of furrows and worry lines around his eyes. This job, and all the ways it wasn’t working out, nipped at him constantly, even with the boss far away. Jack West’s eventual return was the King Kong–sized monkey on our backs, even during quiet moments like this.

A question hovered unspoken. It teased the surface more and more now, when Daniel and I were alone. He wondered if I blamed him for this. If I was disappointed. If I was sorry I’d said yes the night he looked across the map and proposed. If I regretted this marriage. He hadn’t asked outright, and I didn’t want him to, for fear that no matter what I said, he would see how completely out of place and unhappy I was here. He would know that at least a half-dozen times a day I held my head in my hands and thought, I can’t do this. I can’t.

I wanted to be strong, and bold, and fearless. But instead, I was afraid and tired and lonely and worried.

Daniel’s observation about Nick brought up another issue that had been niggling me. I’d watched Nick’s eyes light up whenever we happened to see the summer enrichment kids in Moses Lake enjoying a picnic in the park behind the church, or sitting outside the convenience store eating ice cream, or helping to plant gardens in a courtyard between an antique mall and a little Books and Java store.

I knew Nick was lonely, that he was left to his own devices, forced to make a playmate out of a dog for hours on end while I worked on the house. I wondered what my mother would say about Nick and Pecos walking back and forth on the makeshift carnival ride, Nick chattering up a storm. Was it healthy for a kid to spend so much time talking to a dog?

Keren Zimmer had invited Nick and me to the summer program twice now, but I hadn’t taken him. The truth, if I let myself give it a voice, was that I needed Nick. I dreaded the idea of him moving onward into friendships, activities, playdates, and preschool. I was scared to death of being left all alone here.

“One thing at a time, okay?” I rubbed Daniel’s arm, intertwined my fingers with his where they curved gently around my rib cage, cupping the two of us together. “I just . . . feel like we’re so . . . unsettled right now.”

“Okay.” Daniel’s chin scratched against my hair. “Thanks for looking after Nick. I know I haven’t been much help.”

My emotions did a strange loop-de-loop, and words came before I even knew what was happening. “Of course I’m looking after him. What else would I be doing?” There was a sharp edge, a tinge of resentment I didn’t want to feel. Daniel had a new job, odd though it was. Research lay in his future, hopefully. Discoveries. Achievements. Meanwhile, I was stuffing steel wool in gaps and talking about Veggie Tales and Thomas the Tank Engine. I was looking around town and realizing that my career in politics was done.

Daniel angled away, dark brows painting concern over brooding eyes. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Just that I feel like I’ve been AWOL a lot, that’s all.”

“Sorry.” To my horror, tears crowded my vision. Looking down at my hands, I pretended to be busy picking off little flecks of caulking. “I know what you meant. I’m all over the place lately. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It’ll get better.” Would it? What if it didn’t?

Daniel took one of my hands and brought it to his lips, caulking and all. His kiss touched just beside the modest diamond ring that symbolized the commitment made on a rainy evening in a little white church. “You’re amazing, Mallory. I get wrapped up in everything, and I don’t say it enough.” He inspected my white-speckled fingers, kissed them again. “Who knew you had all these hidden talents?”

“Pppfff!” He was buttering me up now. And it was working, of course. I was putty in his hands when he looked at me like that. After weeks of filling cracks in closets, I knew all about putty. I was on intimate terms with it.

“All that steel wool packing and closet fixing . . . the way you stuck that wallpaper back in place, the catch-and-release mouse program . . .” Daniel trailed off as if to indicate that the list could go on and on.

“Don’t stop.” I tipped my chin up and fluffed my hair with exaggerated grandiosity, imagining myself posing like Angelina Jolie, only shorter and blonder and more . . . clueless. The urge for tears vanished as quickly as it had come. When Daniel and I were close like this, everything vanished. Wasn’t that the definition of love—a devotion that could eclipse everything? “I want it all.”

“And then there’s the caulking . . . the way you lay it on there so smooth and even. I love a woman who can handle a gun.”

I felt a blush travel through my entire body, just the way it had the day Daniel and I met. The rush was as heady and as fresh as ever. Just as thrilling. If there hadn’t been a three-year-old and a dog nearby . . . “Excuse me? How much time have you spent with gun-toting women, Daniel Webster Everson? And with whom, exactly, might I ask?”

“None . . . until this woman,” he answered smoothly. “But I like it.”

Skyrockets and butterflies. I was melting. Just melting. I wanted to call Jack West and say, Listen, you can have him from eight to five, but at five-o-one, he’s M-I-N-E, mine.

The noise of a truck rattling up the cow path disturbed the normal hum of boats in the distance, birds chirping, and trees swaying overhead. As always, the approach pulled the strings of tension tight, playing an unpleasant tune. Please don’t let it be Jack West. Please don’t let it be Jack West.

Once Jack returned, these long evenings together would be gone. Daniel was never willing to point out to Jack that we needed family time. He was afraid to. He’d already observed that the slightest thing—a gate chained too loosely by one of the ranch hands, a windmill that hadn’t been properly greased, ranch equipment poorly parked or left in less than optimal working condition—could set Jack off on a red-faced tirade of phone calls and threats.

Daniel stiffened and took a few steps away to get a better view of the vehicle approaching. “Oh, that’s just one of the ranch hands.” The tension in his shoulders eased. “Tag, I think. Jack’s horse trainer. I gathered that while watching Jack ream him out one day, not because anyone officially introduced us. I don’t think he has a clue what I’m here for. None of them do. When we run across one of the guys, they still look at me like I just landed from another planet.”

Peeking around the corner, I observed the tan ranch truck, its paint job pitted and marred by dents, dings, and rows of short scratches along the hood. “You’d think Jack would explain it to them.” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice. Daniel deserved so much better.

The driver rolled down his window, and I could see that there was a teenager and a little girl in the truck with him. After the introductions, I realized that the teenager, Chrissy, was actually the little girl’s mother, and probably a little older than I’d guessed. Maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. Tag couldn’t have been past his early twenties, himself. I tried to imagine being their age, working here, raising a child.

Tossing a mop of curly red hair over her shoulder, Chrissy stretched across her daughter, McKenna, who was belted in a booster seat between them. “Hey, I’m sorry we haven’t been by to meet y’all.” She gave her husband a sideways smirk. “Dingbat here told me y’all were Mr. West’s relatives.”

Tag jerked a hand in the air, then let it fall to the steering wheel. “That’s what Floyd said he thought, and he’s the ranch manager. How am I supposed to know if Floyd don’t know?”

Chrissy responded with a petulant eye roll, then pointed at Daniel but directed her comment to me. “Anyhow, your husband does look a lot like Mr. West’s son, so it’s not hard to figure how Floyd made that mistake, considerin’ that your husband and Jack West are cooped up together all the time. I’ve never actually met Mason West, and far as I’ve ever heard, Mr. West and his son do not talk, period. But there’s plenty of pictures in Mr. West’s house up at the big ranch headquarters. Tag and me take care of the place anytime Mr. West’s out of town. But anyway, just so you know, Tag and me and McKenna aren’t normally this snotty. We just figured anybody who could stand to spend that much time near Jack West had to be related to him. We thought maybe him and his son were getting back together. Everyone’s been all stirred up about what that might mean, by the way.”

Tag gave her a warning glance and tried to hide it by tugging on his hat brim. There was a whole paragraph in that look, and I didn’t like what it said.

Chrissy would not be shushed, though. “Pfff! Don’t try to hush me up, Tag Reese. I’ll say what I want to about that man. He isn’t here to hear it. Thank-the-Lord-and-phone-the-saints for that.”

Daniel and I traded sideways glances the way customers might when the first person in line is harassing the checker at Walmart.

Chrissy turned back with a quick flash of eyelashes, like we were talking girl-to-girl now. “So, anyway, is he drivin’ you crazy yet? Mr. West, I mean? It’s hard when you’re new around here. Tag and I’ve been here nearly a year, but the first six months was about as nice as havin’ a picnic in a cow pie.” She paused for a breath, her gaze shifting between Daniel and me expectantly, like she was ready to get down to some good gossip.

“We’re still learning our way around,” Daniel’s reply was cautious. He squeezed my hand in a way that said, Does this girl seem crazy to you?

“I’ve been busy with the house, mostly,” I hedged.

Red curls bounced pertly over Chrissy’s cheek. “Whoa, you from New York or someplace?”

“DC.”

“It sounds like it.” Tucking the loose hair behind her ear, she leaned closer to the window. Compacted in the booster seat, her daughter squirmed and whined, “Mama!” She was a miniature of her mother—creamy skin that was a patchwork of freckles, big brown eyes, wisps of curly red hair, a pert little nose, and cupid’s bow lips. Right now they were turned downward into a frown.

Chrissy responded with a quick, “Hush up!” Then she turned back to us. “So, we’re headin’ down to mess around at the beach across from Firefly Island for a while, since Jack’s not here to have a hissy about it. Y’all wanna come? McKenna would love to play with your little boy. She’s got kids at the day care during the day—I work in Gnadenfeld at the City Drug. If you ever have a prescription, just call me and I can bring it by for you on my way home—but McKenna doesn’t have anybody on the ranch to play with. One of the other guys is single. Floyd, the manager, has kids that’re grown and off on their own, and the other three have kids that’re in high school. We’d love to have your little boy over sometime.”

“Oh, well, I . . .” The flood of information clogged the synapses in my brain, waiting for processing. Chrissy’s train of thought seemed to jump back and forth across several tracks.

“Sure, that sounds like fun.” Daniel gave me a pleased look, as if to say, Hey, we wanted a friend for Nick, and here one is. “Nick would like that. And I’ve been wondering how to get down to that beach across from the island, too. So far, I’ve only seen it from a distance.”

Chrissy pursed her lips in an expression that made her look more like Congressman Faber’s persnickety old secretary than a girl just a few years out of high school. “Tag won’t take me down there unless Jack West’s out of town. He’s afraid I’ll swim over to Firefly Island and get us fired. I guess y’all probably already heard that nobody’s allowed on Firefly Island. I figure that’s where the b-o-d-i-e-s are buried.” She glanced at McKenna when she spelled out the word.

Tag sighed and rolled a look our way, as if to say, Now you see what I deal with every day of my life.

In the center seat, McKenna pushed her mother out of the way and peered over the dashboard as Nick and Pecos started toward us. From the bed of the truck, a short-haired gray dog barked, wagging its stubby tail.

Tag wheeled a hand, an amiable grin forming beneath the blond mop of an old-fashioned handlebar moustache that was pretty respectable for someone so young. “Why don’t y’all just hop in back? Your truck’s not four-wheel drive. Prob’ly won’t make it where we’re goin’.”

I glanced at Tag’s vehicle, wondering what he meant by in the back. While some of the ranch trucks were of the four-door variety, this one was not. Surely, he didn’t mean for us to ride in the open bed, with the dog . . .

But he did, of course, and I was quickly introduced to the concept of the cowboy convertible. After grabbing the swim stuff from our vehicle and doing a quick change behind the lab building, we rattled off, Nick up front because McKenna insisted on it, Daniel and me in the bed, balanced on the spare tire, and the dogs leaning against the tailgate, tails wagging with enthusiasm.

As we jounced across the hills, rolling over rocks, chuckholes, and small trees, the dogs nipped the air joyously, Nick giggled in the front seat with his new friend, and Daniel and I clung to a tire in the bed, laughing at the dogs. Suddenly I realized that in this lonely, desperate first month here, I’d been so focused on the life I’d left behind that for the most part, I’d been missing the fun of where I was.

No more, I promised myself. From here on out, I was going to stay focused on the here and now. The present. The gift of limestone hills, live oak trees, and rides in a cowboy convertible with the lake breezes ruffling my hair. If I couldn’t control the circumstances, at least I could control my attitude toward them.

After a white-knuckle ride across the pasture on what looked more like a mountain goat trail than a road, I finally saw the lake below. It appeared and disappeared as we bobbed over several small hills. The breeze was cool and sweet, the scent implying open water and endless sky. The tires churned madly on the way up the final boulder-strewn slope. Grabbing the side rail, I stared straight down into a canyon and briefly reevaluated the wisdom of riding in the back of the truck. And then all of a sudden the vehicle lurched over the hill, the kids squealed, and Chrissy tapped the back window, pointing toward the view splashed before us like an artist’s rendering.

My heart quickened with a primal sense of discovery, of having found something I wouldn’t have believed could really exist. I’d never seen a place like this—the meeting of water, land, and sky intertwined in such an untouched and perfect way. I breathed it in as we rolled down the incline and drifted to a stop on a rocky slope by the lakeshore.

Daniel hopped out of the truck and made an agile landing on the gravel, then stopped and reached for me. “Here,” he said, smiling. “Careful.” He held my hand as I exited less than gracefully. Tag and McKenna opened the tailgate of the truck, and the dogs jumped out, then cavorted around the vehicle, sniffing patches of milkweed and rooting in nests of last year’s leaves.

“Come on, Mallory,” Chrissy beckoned, turning and walking backward. “You can get a good look at Firefly Island from downshore by the causeway.”

I hesitated, feeling a little guilty. Daniel, Nick, and I had so little time together as it was. I wanted to watch as Nick explored the new stretch of territory and tried out the fishing worms he’d been keeping in his pocket.

“Go ahead,” Daniel urged. “We’ll be here.”

Chrissy gave Tag a petulant look. “See how nice he is?”

Tag scowled, and I tried to politely pretend I didn’t notice.

“He’s such a poo,” Chrissy complained as we walked toward the island, where a man-made causeway and a private road connected Firefly to the rest of the world. Up close, the earthen-and-stone causeway was impressive.

“Wow, that thing is massive,” I commented. At some time in the past, a great deal of effort had gone into making sure the island was accessible. Now an iron fence, a locked gate, and a plethora of No Trespassing signs prevented any public entry.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Chrissy agreed. “I’d so love to see what he’s hiding out there. Floyd’s been working on the ranch forever, and he says that Jack’s second wife, the one who disappeared”—she punctuated the word with finger quotes—“along with Jack’s little stepson used to spend a lot of time on Firefly. It was, like, her favorite place on the ranch. There’s a cabin on the island, and she’d go there a few days at a time. Probably whenever she wanted to get away from Jack West, I bet. Anyhow, after she and her son vanished”—finger quotes again—“off the face of the earth, Jack put up the gate across the causeway and all the No Trespassing signs. Tag doesn’t like me to say it, but I think he hid somethin’ there—somethin’ really bad.”

A chill danced over me as we stopped walking and stood looking across a short expanse of water at the shores of Firefly Island.

Chrissy pointed. “You can see the roof of the cabin through the trees a little bit, if you look . . . right there, see?” She glanced over her shoulder toward the men, as if to make sure they were still nearby. “Lights move around on the island at night, too. Tag says I’m making it up, but I’m not. One night, Tag and me were out lookin’ for a lost colt in that pasture just across from your house. I was right there on the hill where the old homestead is, and I looked across toward the lake, and I saw a light moving around on the island. I don’t believe in ghosts, strictly speakin’. My mama raised me in church, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like hen scruff, I’ll tell you.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, too. I stared into the tree shadows of Firefly Island and wondered what might be concealed in the thick growth of elms and pin oaks. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It was surreal, being here looking at that place I’d had so many strange dreams about. In the dreams, I was standing right where I was now—on the shore near the causeway.

A shiver went through me, and I almost felt as if I could see the blond woman from my dream, watching me. “We should probably go back,” I suggested, and Chrissy was already turning around, as if this place made her uncomfortable, too.

On the return trip down the shore, she filled me in on ranch history and invited us to Sunday services at the little church in Moses Lake. I’d been thinking about issues like church. One thing this upside-down life in Moses Lake had done was begin to cure me of the notion that I could get by on my own, that I didn’t need anyone’s help. I’d sent up more prayers in the last month than in the past five years combined. Even that seemed wrong—the hallmark of an overbooked, self-centered life. There had been people around me who’d needed prayer over the years. I just hadn’t thought to give them any.

Now I didn’t have much choice, other than to pray. I had control of almost nothing in my life. Prayer seemed the only option left.

Nick and McKenna were playing in the shallows with a minnow net and a bucket when we reached them. Nick’s face lit up as we came closer. “Wook!” he breathed in sheer amazement, then headed toward me. He was carrying a green bucket in a bow-legged run, the water inside rocking and sloshing.

“What’ve you got?” My heart filled with Nick’s smile, with the look of sheer adoration he gave me as he lugged the bucket. In the space of an instant, I felt it again—the crumbling of an old part of me, the growth of something new. The changing of my heart into a mother’s heart. It happened at the strangest times, in the most unexpected ways. Nick looked at me, and the love I felt for him was almost painful in its intensity. I’d never known I had it in me, the capacity to love this way. I adored my nieces, of course. I always had. But when Nick looked at me, my mind tumbled through nights and mornings, seasons and years in the future. I saw birthday parties and first days of school and first girlfriends, Christmas mornings filled with surprises, Easter egg hunts, bedtime stories to read, bad dreams to kiss away, goals to nurture, hurts to soothe, joys to cheer, and nights side-by-side trying to figure out algebra homework . . .

I saw a future like none I’d ever imagined. I wanted it, every minute of it. Even whatever time we would spend here in Moses Lake.

Leaning over as Nick drew close with the bucket, I felt the soft, golden glow of the moment. I made a promise to myself and God. I won’t wish away another minute. Not a single one. I will build a life here, in this . . .

Nick stumbled over a rock, the bucket sloshed sideways, and a wave of water headed my way. The moment drifted by in slow motion—the water catching the sunlight, tiny, silver fish glittering as they sailed through the air, the bucket tumbling end over end, Nick’s hands splaying out, and then . . .

The wave hit. I tasted dirt and algae. Something wet, scaly, and squiggly slid down my shirt. I stumbled backward, sputtering, spitting, and squealing.

Nick screamed, “Don’t squish the fishie, Tante M!”

Chrissy grabbed the front of my shirt and tried to shake the fish loose. McKenna scrambled to shore and started rescuing the stranded captives, and near the pickup, Tag slapped his leg and laughed. My husband, my soul mate, the gypsy-king love of my life who had, just over a month ago, sworn to honor, cherish, and protect me . . . the man I’d just promised God I would appreciate every moment of my life from here on out . . . doubled over and laughed right along with him.

Some prayers are tested before you even get them out of your fishy-tasting mouth. Either that, or God was telling me to lighten up on the philosophical rhetoric and just enjoy this singular, unexpected instant in my perfectly imperfect life.

The tiny fish fell into my hand, and I tossed him into the bucket, then Nick and I dashed to the shore to add water, laughing as we ran.