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"Mum, do you think we could live here?" Flora asked me as I laced her boots a few days after Thanksgiving.
She was going horseback riding with the girls under Clay's supervision. Rowan was busy at the other end of the ranch for the day. Something to do with a frozen water pipe.
"You want to live here?" I asked cautiously.
"Yeah. I love Amy and Carla. I love Spirit. And Clay. And Ace."
When Rowan had told her the horse was hers, she'd been giddy, though she understood it just meant she could ride the horse. I knew it wasn't just a figure of speech. He'd given my daughter a bloody horse.
"You won't miss New York?" I asked Flora.
"I'll miss Uncle Mick and Art, and Grandpa and Nana," she said gravely. "But we can visit them. At least that's what Uncle Mick said when I talked to him last night. And they can come here, see the mountains."
Alone in Rowan's house after Flora left, I called Mick.
"Once you said you'd be going, I knew you wouldn't come back," he said a little sadly. "But, hey, now Art and I can come hang out with the cowboys with all those muscles and tight asses. I think all that hotness might be good for our sex life."
I laughed. "I think your sex life is fine."
"Speaking of sex lives? How are things with yours?"
"The sex is amazing. It's the love life that is still…I don't know, Mick, something is holding me back," I confessed.
"What do you think that is?"
"Search me." I was frustrated with myself. "I want to go all into this relationship…but I keep thinking, what if he changes his mind?"
"Then you come back here to us and get on with life."
"Just like that?"
He chuckled. "There are no guarantees. Tomorrow, Art could tell me he's been banging a hot nurse, and it's over. Who knows? Or I get hit by a bus. Shit happens. Can't live worrying about tomorrow. You got to live today."
"All that sounds good in theory, and in my head, it makes sense. But in my gut, it's a whole different story. Flora is involved now."
"Flora is already in deep, Isha. You know that. You let him have that. Stop running away. You know what's holding you back?"
"What?"
"Good old, garden variety fear. It's not more complicated than that."
I went for a walk in the snow, letting the mountains, which had stood for millennia soothe me. I had a job starting the second week of January. Flora was signed up for kindergarten. I had a house and friends in New York.
I walked down the path to the hot spring and saw Ace as he stepped out of the sauna. He waved.
"You going for a dip?" he asked.
He was in a pair of sweats, boots, and a jacket, no shirt.
"Just walking."
"You want company?"
"You'll get cold." I pointed to his bare torso, peeking out from under his open jacket.
He grinned. "Give me a minute."
He went back into the sauna, and came back minutes later. He wore a hat, scarf, and gloves this time.
