“What?” Dane comes up behind me, making me jump.
“I was just thinking how happy she is.” I turn to face him. “It’s really a testament to your parenting.”
“Better be careful or you’ll give me a big head.”
I pause. “What? No pun? No punch line?”
His grin splits his cheeks in two. “If your brain goes there when I say ‘big head,’ I win. No punch line needed.”
“Not what I meant.”
“It is what you meant. You said so yourself.”
Rolling my eyes, I turn away and change the subject. “If I ever lived here again, I’d want something like this. Smell that?” Inhaling a lungful of fresh air, I close my eyes and blow it out. “It’s so clean.”
“It smells like manure. I think Dad’s neighbor just fertilized his fields.”
I laugh. “It smells better than New York City.”
“Can I ask you something?” He steps around me so we’re shoulder to shoulder. “I never had you pegged as a city girl. What changed?”
We walk across the grass toward the field behind the house. Trees loom overhead, their leaves rustling in the breeze as I ponder his question.
As we come to a stop, Dane leans against the trunk of an old oak tree. “Even after the whole Katie thing, I still didn’t think you’d stay away this long.”
“I probably wouldn’t have. At first, I just didn’t want to see the two of you. I didn’t let Mom talk about you at all—or about anything here, for that matter. I just didn’t want to know.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “I didn’t want to miss you all, I guess. And I had a bunch of anger, and that sort of filled a spot inside me for a while. Then I filled it with work and deadlines, and . . . it was easier pretending this place didn’t exist.”
Gazing across the meadow, I think back to the years I spent inside my apartment or an office building. Most of them were spent alone or with Grace. It felt fine at the time, but now I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back to that place again mentally.
I glance at Dane.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to forget him again.
“But you’re back now,” he says, a grit to his tone. “Maybe you’ll stay?”
My laugh is weak. “If I came home now, it would feel like I failed. And like I wasted the last decade of my life.”
“Even if it were your choice?”
“Yeah. Think about it,” I say, picking at a piece of bark on the tree. “How many people actually leave here? And out of that small number, how many come back? Almost all of them.” I swat at a bug swarming my head. “Remember when Colin Jenkins left to play football in Wisconsin and then came home as soon as he graduated? Everyone said he couldn’t hack it in the real world. He couldn’t be a little fish in a big pond.”
“So? Who cares what people say?”
“So I don’t want that said about me, and I want to make it in a place where there are a million people after my job. It’s incredibly gratifying.” I shrug. “Besides, what would I do here? My degree would be useless.”
“I guess.” He roughs a hand over his jaw.
“What about you? Would you ever leave here and move to the city?”
“Hell no. Not for all the money in the world.”
“Why not?”
“And send Mia to a school full of kids I don’t know? No, thank you. I’m just fine with her having most of the same teachers I did and being in class with kids of people I know.”
“Think of all the opportunities for her.”
He flinches. “Of getting mugged? Shot? Hit by a subway train?”
“No one gets hit by a subway train.”
“Not when they’re safe in Dogwood Lane, they don’t.” He shoves off the tree and stands in front of me. He peers down, his eyes full of an emotion that wrecks into me like a cannonball. “Aren’t you ever scared something will happen to you?”
“Not really.” My throat burns as I do my best to manage the chaos inside me. “I’ve had a few little skirmishes, but nothing that really scared me that much.”
His eyes narrow. “Like what?”
“Nothing. It’s no big deal.” I look over my shoulder at Mia coming out of the shed and decide to change the subject. “Is she okay around the water?”
Dane doesn’t even look that way. “My dad is standing on the back porch. She’s fine.”
My gaze flicks around until I spy Nick leaning against a post. He gives me a little wave before heading toward Mia and helping her open another cereal box.
“How much of that can she feed those fish?” I ask, turning back to Dane.
“How much is she supposed to, or how much does Dad let her?”
I grin. “So he’s easier on her than he was you and Matt?”