by Liz Isaacson
“This is why you’re my favorite,” Wren said.
Berlin snorted. “I’m your favorite, because I always side with you.”
Being the oldest daughter, but stuck between two groups of four siblings wasn’t easy. But Berlin did always side with Wren, and she had always appreciated that.
“Well, that,” she admitted. “But you’re also young, and hip, and I don’t want to mess this up.” She hated this river of desperation coursing through her, making her stomach queasy and her fingers shake. “I haven’t been out with anyone interesting in years.” She could’ve ended the sentence with I haven’t been out with anyone and been one hundred percent accurate.
“I heard the new guy is military,” Berlin said, completely ignoring Wren’s plea for help.
“He’s starting at the police department on Monday,” Wren said. “I don’t know about military.” But she did. She’d seen him pivot on his toe like a pro, and no one outside the armed forces had eyes as sharp as his. “Do you really think that’s true?”
“You like military men.”
“I did like military men,” Wren corrected. Until one had broken her heart. She’d been trying—unsuccessfully—to find someone new to spend time with. But in a town the size of Brush Creek, and with the last name Fuller, the pickings weren’t that broad. All of her sisters had experienced similar things as Wren. Men either thought she was unapproachable, or they disliked her on principle. What principle that was, she wasn’t sure. That her family had helped establish the town? That they had money? That they lived in the ritzy section of town, with a massive park-like backyard, complete with its own walking trail, pond, and mini forest?
Growing up, she’d enjoyed the big house and the large yard. But it seemed that the men she’d grown up with that were still available still saw her as a sixteen-year-old and not a mature woman a decade older than that.
“Are you even listening to me?” Berlin asked.
“Yeah, sure.” Wren blinked, trying to remember the last thing her sister had said. She couldn’t. Sighing, she said, “Tell me again.”
Berlin exhaled again, this time with frustration in the hiss. “I said, I think you should go with date attire. Something flirty and fun. Not a T-shirt.”
Wren worried her top teeth along her bottom lip. “What if it’s not a date?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Berlin said. “You want it to be a date, so you should treat it like one.”
Wren liked the sound of that, so she reached for the floral blouse and slipped it over her head while Berlin started talking about her date.
“So let’s say there’s a guy you’ve seen come into the market a couple of times. You’ve never talked to him, but you’ve made eye contact, and maybe smiled. Then you go on break and you find out he’s left a note for you with the manager, and the note is asking you out. It’s only signed with his first name. You know he didn’t grow up here, because hello, you’re only nineteen. But you’re not sure where he’s from, or who he is, and you can’t Google him because of the only-first-name thing.”
Wren had stilled somewhere in the middle of Berlin’s “hypothetical” date. “I don’t know, Berlin. Sounds sketchy to me. Is he working in town somewhere?” There had been some construction on the south side of town, on the high school which was undergoing a remodel this summer.
“I literally don’t know. He has dark hair and brown eyes. He’s tall. And his name is Dan.”
“Dan?” Wren sat on her bed. “Berlin, that could be anyone.”
“Jazzy went out with that guy she met online.”
“But they met somewhere, and Fabi was two tables away the whole time.” Wren had been nervous about Jazzy’s blind date too. “And remember how he turned out to be creepy?”
“He was a mortician,” Berlin said. “Not creepy. You just find that creepy.”
“Jazzy did too, and he never put that on his online profile.”
“Would you?”
Wren rolled her eyes, this new argument already old. “If you decide to go out with him, get Jazzy and Fabi to go with you. Or Patrick said he was trying to get Bri out of the house this weekend. Call him and see if he’ll double with you. Or go to the same restaurant or something.”
“Bri’s throwing up again.”
Their second oldest brother had told them at the Fuller Family Dinner that his wife was expecting. Wren’s mom was like a hawk and had badgered him for a full ten minutes about why Bri hadn’t come to dinner before he spilled the beans.
“I’ll see if Tate wants to go out. We can meet at Pieology.” Since she’d come home early from work, he shouldn’t have ordered the pizza yet.
“No, I think you’re right. I’m going to ignore the note. If he wants to go out with me, he’ll need to tell me who he is and what he’s doing in town.”
Relief spread through Wren like butter over toast. “All right, then. Hey, I’ve gotta go figure out how to make my hair look less like a mop doll.”
Berlin pealed out another round of laughter, and Wren hung up, glad one of them was amused by the state of Wren’s hair.
An hour later, she couldn’t stand to be within the confining walls of her cottage for another second. So while Tate probably wasn’t expecting her—they’d never set a time for her to come over—quite yet, she took the cake from the fridge and headed down the sidewalk to his house.
It looked so much different though only a week had passed. He’d painted the outside a soft blue, and with the new porch, steps, railing and roof, it looked like a homey place to live. Something else was new and different about the house, but she couldn’t pinpoint what.
The weeds and dead grass had all been removed from the front yard, and the on-site Dumpster he’d rented overflowed with trash and debris. Overall, he’d done more in a week than Wren thought humanly possible. The house testified of his hardworking spirit, and yes, those muscles he’d mentioned.
Her knock on the front door sounded loud in the silence of the country out here. Though they weren’t that far from town, they had to cross the river and go down the road a bit, and there were only three houses out here. It was a dead-end road, and no one drove on it except her and old Mrs. Hector who lived down the lane and only went into town on Mondays to get her hair set and pick up milk.
Inside the house, footsteps approached and a moment later, Tate opened the door, his face one bright ray of grinning hope.
Wren’s heart flop-flopped around inside her chest like a fish trying to get itself back into the water.
“Hey there.” He put his hand on top of the door and leaned into it, scanning her from head to toe. “A blouse. Fancy.”
He’d changed too, and now he wore a button-up shirt the color of pine trees. It had tiny white pinstripes and tucked into his jeans along his narrow waist.
Wren wasn’t one to beat around the bush—perhaps another reason she hadn’t been successful in dating anyone she’d grown up with—and stepped into his personal space, handing off the cake to him. “I didn’t think a Batman T-shirt was proper date attire.” She’d almost pressed past him when she caught sight of the giant dog loitering right at his heels, a tongue the size of her whole head hanging from his mouth.
“Oh, um.” She stalled, her hip almost touching his. “Is he going to be joining us for pizza?”
“I can put him in the bedroom.” He twisted to look at the German shepherd. “Go on, now, Sully. Back up.”
The dog sat there, and Wren grinned up at Tate, a little giggle sounding in the few inches between them. She wondered what it would be like to be kissed by a strong mouth like the one he had.
“He didn’t listen to you,” she said.
“Back up,” he said again, this time without looking away from Wren.
The dog backed up.
“Impressive,” Wren said.
“We work together a lot,” Tate said, finally letting his arm drop from the top of the door to slide along her waist. His eyes drifted closed as if in bliss and he drew in a
deep breath, his head dipping closer to hers as he did. “You smell nice.”
Wren liked the intimate touch on her back, liked the way he breathed her in, liked they spicy, woodsy smell of him too.
He came to his senses before she did, stepped back so abruptly that she almost took a nosedive into the door, and said, “The pizza should be here soon. You want the grand tour?”
Wren regained her balance, glad she’d worn the blouse and not a T-shirt. “Yes, absolutely.” She looked around. “It looks so different.” But he hadn’t changed the carpet, the paint color, or any of the cosmetic things.
“I had new windows put in today,” he said. “That makes a big different.”
“New windows,” she said, the realization of what was different that she couldn’t determine.
“And curtains in here,” he said. “And new furniture is coming tomorrow.” He moved into the kitchen. “This is my mother’s dining set.” He ran his fingers along the tabletop reverently, but Wren didn’t see any pictures of his mother.
The shelf he’d claimed she hadn’t dusted held several photo frames, but they were filled with men. Tate and other men dressed in Marine uniforms. So he was military.
She swallowed and moved to the next picture. Just because he was military didn’t mean she couldn’t be friends with him. This photo showed Tate with an older version of himself, his father wearing an Army uniform.
He joined her and gazed at the pictures. “My mother died when I was six,” he said softly. “That’s why you don’t see her anywhere. That’s my dad.” He pointed to the photo Wren had just been looking at.
“Siblings?”
“Just me,” he said. “Dad never remarried. We moved all the time, all over the world.”
“He was Army.”
“And I’m a Marine.”
Wren nodded, slipping her hand into his as they stood side-by-side in his house. Okay, so friends held hands sometimes, especially when one sensed that the other needed an anchor as he thought about his time in the Marines, as well as reflected on his family.
He squeezed her hand, and she asked, “Where’s your dad now?”
“He finally retired, and he lives in Denver.”
“Oh, that’s not too far. You can see him for holidays and stuff.”
“Yes. Yeah. You have a big family.”
He wasn’t really asking, and if he knew she was an expert on Brush Creek, she’d probably heard about the Fuller clan. “I’m the middle child,” she said. “Literally. Four older brothers, and four younger sisters.”
“Holidays at your house must be exciting.”
“We get together for dinner every Wednesday,” she said. “And yes, it’s always…interesting.” Exciting wasn’t the word Wren would use, but she supposed for an only child, who’d been raised by a single father, eating with fifteen other people probably would be exciting.
He tugged her into the kitchen, and she went, listening to him talk about the new countertops, and that while he wasn’t much of a cook, he’d put in new appliances too. Wren liked all the changes, and he showed her the three bedrooms, all empty save for his, where he had slathered new paint on the walls.
“So how did you come to buy this house?” she asked.
“I didn’t buy the house,” he said.
She turned away from the medium gray he’d painted his bedroom, noting the crisp, square corners on his made bed, and looked up at him. “You didn’t buy the house?”
The doorbell rang, and his face split into a grin. “I just installed that doorbell yesterday. First time it’s been used. Come on. Pizza’s here.” He moved with long strides toward the living room and front door, but her curiosity about the house wouldn’t settle.
She hung back as he paid the Pieology driver and accepted the boxes—way more than the two of them could possibly eat—and the gallon of blood orange lemonade. When he turned back to her with glee on his face, she couldn’t help returning the smile.
Hope bobbed through her, igniting a dream she’d had since she was a little girl. One she’d thought she might have to put away for a while, maybe move to a new town to find.
And that was a dream about a life with a husband, a family, and a home with a white picket fence. As she turned and almost tripped over the German shepherd, she thought she could certainly do without the dog.
Chapter 6
Tate couldn’t seem to settle down. His foot kept trying to tap, even though the conversation with Wren was easy, light, fun. He’d gotten the hard thing about his mom out of the way pretty darn quick, and Wren didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t know how to cook.
They ate at his mom’s dining room table, his laughter reaching all the way up to the ceiling as she detailed all the trouble she used to get into with her older brothers.
Dinner ended quickly, and Tate was anxious to have his hand in hers again, so he stood and said, “That was some mighty fine pizza,” and took their plates to the sink.
“Did you like it?”
“I love thin crust pizza.”
“Me too.”
“You know, I think that might be the first thing we have in common.” He nodded toward the back door, wishing he could hide beneath the cowboy hat he’d gotten used to wearing. Around Brush Creek, he’d been hard-pressed to find a man not wearing one, and he’d grown quite fond of having a way to shade his eyes from the sun as he worked.
“You want to go for a walk?”
“Sure. Have you been down the riverwalk?”
“Just past your place a bit the first morning I was here.” He stepped outside, glad for the tall trees bordering the river that also bathed his backyard in evening shade.
“If you go that way, toward my house, and keep going, you can circle all the way up by the strawberry fields.”
“Strawberry fields, huh? I didn’t know there were strawberry fields here.” He waited for her at the edge of the back deck and offered her his hand.
Her gaze flicked down before she slipped her fingers into his. A sigh moved through his whole body, but he managed to keep it silent in his chest.
“I do love this town,” she said, gazing up into the sky without a care in the world. “There are some things about it that are hard, but it’s beautiful here, and so quiet, and a person can really just be, you know?”
“It is beautiful.” They crossed the dirt that should be lawn and went down the few steps to the asphalt of the riverwalk. “Where does that go?”
“Back toward town. There’re some duck ponds between the road and this path. It goes all the way into Oxbow Park.”
Tate didn’t want to go back toward town. “Let’s go this way then.” He tried not to military-measure his steps, but he did anyway. “It is very quiet and peaceful here too. I like that.”
“Do you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Just that…with just you and your dad, you probably had a lot of peace and quiet.”
Tate nodded. “That we did. Sometimes it’s not physical quiet one needs.”
“Ah, so you’re a scholar.”
He chuckled. “I’ve been called a lot of things, Wren. But never that.”
She giggled and adjusted her hand in his as she sobered. “So this is a date, right?”
Tate almost tripped over his own feet. His throat tightened, and he wasn’t sure why he cared what label they put on the evening. Only that he did.
“Okay,” she said though he hadn’t answered yet. “Not a date. Got it.” She tried to wiggle her fingers out of his, but he held them more firmly.
“It can be a date.” His voice sounded like he’d swallowed glass and had to talk real carefully around the slices in his throat.
“Can it?” she asked.
Tate had so much to say, and none of it would come out very easily. They passed her house, and then the one down the lane that he’d learned belonged to a nice widow named Bertha Hector. She’d brought him a loaf of bread on Wednesday, and he told Wren about that so he didn’t h
ave to tell her why this being a date freaked him the heck out.
But the words wouldn’t stop echoing in his mind. They turned north, and the path went up a little hill.
“So if this is a date,” he said, testing his voice and finding it strong. “It’ll be my first one in twelve years.”
Wren stopped walking. “Twelve years?”
Tate swallowed, faced her and caught a glimpse of the most glorious sunset he’d ever seen. “I—yeah. I went on my first date with my wife twelve years ago.”
Everything itched. His arms, his neck, his throat, his feet. He hated this feeling of being covered in ants and not being able to get them off.
A nervous laugh came from his throat. “We got married a year after that, and I went to Djibouti six months after that.”
“Djibouti?” She butchered the pronunciation, but Tate remembered the same feeling he heard in her voice. Disbelief. Skepticism.
“Yeah, it’s on the coast of Africa,” he said. “It’s a city and a republic. It’s by Ethiopia and Somalia.” And there was so much sand there. Everything was brown and gray. Tate took another moment to enjoy the greenery around him, the rustling leaves, the golds and reds in the sky.
“I was in the Marines for a decade,” he said.
Wren started walking again, and Tate went with her, hoping he hadn’t told her too much about himself too soon. He’d only met her a few days ago, and since he’d been out of the dating scene for so long, he wasn’t sure what was okay to say on the first date, and what he should’ve held until the second.
Just the fact that there might be a second date had him clearing his throat again. “What about you?” he asked. “Ever been married?”
Her laugh was instantaneous and not entirely on the happy side. “That would be a no.”
“All right.” He wasn’t sure why that was such a funny question, but he told himself he had plenty of time to find out. After all, he wasn’t stationed here for a few months. This was his life now.
“How old are you?” she asked a few minutes later.
“Thirty-three.”
“So you got married when you were twenty-two?”
