Page 81 of Thunder

And Earlene for old Earl, whose oak still stands in the east pasture where Rogue married Hadley, whose name this ranch has carried longer than most of us have been alive.

Rose Earlene.

A dead woman and a dead man living on in seven pounds of surprise redhead, and if she isn't the cutest thing in this damn place, I don’t know what is right now.

The clubhouse is loud tonight in the good way, the way it hasn't been in a long time.

Somebody's got music going low.

The ol' ladies have claimed the big table, and there's wine open.

Dakota pouring for Grace and Hadley and a couple of the others, everybody loose and laughing in a way that's been in short supply around here since the bunkhouse.

Bex isn't drinking, on account of the baby needing her, but she's got her feet up and a plate somebody made her and the bone-deep glow of a woman who's tired all the way through and happier than she's ever been.

I stand back by the bar and take it in, and I'll be honest, there's a lump in my throat I'd deny to any man who asked.

Because a season ago this room was a morgue.

Everybody tiptoeing, everybody grieving something, the whole family cracked down the middle over a buried woman and the lies that kept her buried.

And here it is loud again.

Here it is full of babies and wine and women laughing.

Presley's in the middle of it.

That's what gets me.

My rattlesnake, who spent months on the outside of this family with her nose pressed to the glass, is sitting at that table with a glass of wine and Waylon on her shoulders.

Dakota's leaned into her saying something that's making them both laugh, and nobody's looking at her like a stranger anymore.

And then there's the sight I never thought I'd get.

Marlena's at the far end of the table.

She's quiet about it, keeping small, the way she's learned to since it all came out.

But Grace passed her baby Braxton a while ago and let her hold him, and just now Dakota asked her something about the wine, some ordinary nothing question.

Marlena answered, and the two of them had a whole short exchange like regular people.

It's not forgiveness.

Not all the way.

You don't get all the way back from what happened in that salon, not ever.

But Grace and Dakota are talking to the woman who killed their mother, on purpose, in the same room, choosing it, and a month ago I'd have bet my patch it would never happen in any of our lifetimes.

Turns out this family breaks, and then it finds its way back.

Every time.

I told Presley that in the dark a month ago and I didn't half believe it myself.

Now I'm watching it happen.