Chapter 20: Day One

Emmett's POV

Joanna had answered him in the church kitchen with her hand still in his.

"I'm your Jo," she said. "I always will be. And if you want the other word, I'd be proud to have it."

Milo said he would think about it and asked if there was any pie.

That was the whole ceremony.

I drove them both home to the shop that night, because Bryce said "tonight, yes" and could not finish the sentence.

The next morning he called to say Milo could miss one day of school.

At six I was standing in my own kitchen in my socks, frying eggs for a ten-year-old.

I did not know where the pan went after I used it.

"You put it in the sink," Milo said from the table. "Jo does."

"Right."

"You're not very good at this."

"I've had no practice."

"That's okay." He swung his legs. "You can practice on me."

I put four eggs on his plate.

He ate them all and looked at the drawing on the wall between bites.

I thought: this is what a morning is, and I have missed ten years of them.

I had to turn to the stove.

Bryce came at nine with a manila envelope and a coffee he did not drink.

He stood in the shop door with snow on his shoulders.

He had slept in his clothes.

"Mom hasn't come out of the back wing since the swap," he said. "She won't eat what I leave outside the door. She says I've betrayed her."

"Have you?"

"I think so." He gave a short laugh. "I think it's the first thing I've done in my life that I'm sure of."

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