Page 94 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“A child ate a crayon. A different child put glue in another child’s hair. And Marcus proposed to me during snack time.”

“Marcus is six.”

“He was very sincere.”

“I will have a conversation with Marcus.”

She laughed. I drove.

We went to dinner. A small place in town, the kind of restaurant that had been in the same family for three generations and had a menu that had not changed since before I was born. Burgers and fries and milkshakes so thick you could stand a spoon in them, and a waitress named Patty who called everyone honey and remembered what you ordered without writing it down.

We sat in a booth by the window. Emma on one side with her milkshake and her dinosaur. Chloe and me on the other, her shoulder against mine, the kind of casual contact that still sent warmth spreading through my chest every time it happened.

Emma ate her burger with the focused intensity of a child who took food very seriously. She dipped every fry in ketchup three times, a ritual she had developed and that could not be interrupted without consequences. Between bites, she told us about her plans to build a dinosaur museum in the backyard, which she had been planning for weeks and which required, according to her calculations, approximately forty boxes and all of my tools.

“You are not using my tools,” I said.

“Papa.”

“Those are professional tools.”

“I am a professional dinosaur museum builder.”

“You are six.”

“Age is just a number.”

Chloe snorted into her milkshake. I looked at my daughter and wondered, not for the first time, how a child could be simultaneously the most stubborn and the most charming person I had ever met. She had inherited the worst of both of us. Or the best. I was still deciding.

After dinner we went to the park. It was the one in the center of town, the small one with the playground and the old oak tree and the benches where parents sat while their children burned off the kind of energy that seemed physically impossible to generate but that every child under the age of ten produced in unlimited quantities.

Emma hit the playground at full speed. She was on the swings within thirty seconds, pumping her legs with the determination of someone training for the Olympics, and within five minutes she had collected a group of other children who were following her instructions on a game she had invented on the spot that seemed to involve dinosaurs and some kind of treasure hunt.

Chloe and I sat on a bench and watched.

The evening light was golden. Soft and warm, the kind of light that made everything look like a painting, the trees and the children and the mountains in the distance all lit from the same angle, all glowing. Chloe leaned against me, her head on my shoulder, and we sat in the kind of silence that only comes from two people who are comfortable enough not to fill every moment with sound.

I felt her looking at me. Not at the park. Not at Emma. At me. Her head was still on my shoulder but her eyes were turned up, studying my face with an expression that I could feel even without seeing it.

“What is the matter?” I said.

She smiled. I felt it against my shoulder, the movement of her lips.

“I am just happy,” she said. “We have been peaceful for so long now. Months. No phone calls. No threats. No men in trucks. Emma is in school. I am teaching. You are working. We eat dinner together. We go to the park.” She paused. Her fingers found mine on the bench between us. “Sometimes I fear it will be ruined any time soon.”

I turned my head. Looked down at her. Her blue eyes were bright but there was a shadow behind them, the ghost of the woman who had spent years running, the woman who knew from experience that peace was temporary and that the world could change in the time it took to open a door.

I put my arm around her. Pulled her closer. Pressed my lips to the top of her head.

“It will not be ruined,” I said.

“You do not know that.”

“I know that I will not let it be ruined. There is a difference between certainty and commitment, Chloe. I cannot promise the world will be perfect. But I can promise that whatever comes, we will handle it. Together. The way we have handled everything else.”

She was quiet for a moment. Her hand tightened in mine.

“I used to think peace was the absence of bad things,” she said. “No fighting. No running. No fear. But that is not what this is. This is the presence of good things. You and Emma and the school and the cabin and even that stupid park bench. Peace is not the absence of the storm. It is what you build after it passes.”