Page 58 of More Than This Land

Losing her wasn’t something she could mitigate with spreadsheets and math.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.” The rawness in her throat suggested tears, but they didn’t fall.

Granny Mama set down her water glass and leaned forward to put both hands on Claire’s face, her skin cool and her touch firm. “Nothing is happening to me tonight.” Her thumbs pressed into Claire’s cheeks. “And when something does happen, it will happen whether you are here or not. You, as brave and wonderful as you are, cannot add a single day to my life. God is the Author of our beginning and knows the date of our end. It’ll happen in God’s time, which is not something either of us controls.” She released Claire’s face. “So, stop building your life around protecting me from what I can’t be protected from.”

Claire’s eyes burned. She pressed her palms together between her knees and looked at the floor.

A knock at the front door made them both turn.

Luke stood on the porch, his outline visible through the door’s window. A tool bag hung from one hand, and he raised the other in a tiny wave.

Claire stood and opened the door, moving back to let him enter.

“I saw your light.” He looked past her at Granny Mama on the couch. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” Granny Mama waved from the couch. “Small dizzy spell, fully recovered. Come in, Luke.”

“I came to fix the porch step.” He lifted the tool bag. “I’ve been meaning to for a couple weeks. I know it’s late.”

“It is late.” She almost tried to nudge him outside to keep her fool heart from falling for him right then and there. He’d taken time to come all the way out here to fix Gran’s porch. Again.

“I can come back.” He held her gaze.

She hesitated. “No, go ahead. I need to help Gran get ready for bed.” It took two tries to get her hand to let go of the doorknob and another ten seconds to convince her feet to move away from him.

Luke made it slightly easier when he retreated to the porch and began taking tools from the bag.

She left him to it and helped Granny Mama through her evening routine. By the time Gran was settled, the sounds from the porch had gone quiet and she slipped outside to investigate.

Luke sat on the top porch step, tool bag closed beside him, forearms resting on his knees.

Claire sat beside him and tipped her head up, letting the cool night air breeze over her face. A dog barked twice and stopped, followed by the low groan of a door opening and closing. She recognized the sound as the Manon family letting in their dog for the night.

“Thank you.”

He looked out at the dark yard. “Meant to come back sooner.”

They sat for a while without filling the silence. Claire had been around Luke long enough to know the difference between his silences. This one just needed to be accepted and not pushed to fill.

“I wasn’t honest with you in the parking lot Wednesday.” He took off his hat and dropped it over the post beside him. His hair fell forward in waves that curled around his ears, and he shoved them back while staring straight ahead.

She examined his profile for clues and found nothing. “What weren’t you honest about?”

He turned the hammer in his hands, swinging one end, then the other, before tapping it so lightly on the porch it didn’t even make a sound. “More what I didn’t say than what I did.”

Oookay. Whatever that meant.

“I don’t know how to want something this much without turning it into something I need to control. The one thing I can’t organize is whether you choose to stay, and not knowing the answer feels—” He stopped. “I’ve been using the uncertainty as a reason not to ask.”

Claire’s hands tightened together in her lap. Her chest burned from holding her breath, and she let it out in a gush that left her lightheaded. “I’m terrified of wanting something this much because I know what it costs to lose things you love. My parents. The shop. The version of my life I thought I was building.” She turned to look at him. “If I choose this, this place, these people, you, and it falls apart, I don’t think I have another rebuild left in me.”

“Claire.” His voice roughened.

She pressed on. “It’s not noble. It’s not faith. It’s fear, and I’ve been dressing it up as practicality and professional distance and a job opportunity in Billings that I haven’t been able to make myself excited about no matter how many times I pull up the listing.”

Luke stilled. “You don’t want to go?”

“I’ve been criticizing you for building walls.” Her eyes stung but she held his gaze. “I built the same ones; I just used different materials.”