"Ranch."
"Yes, even before that, you'd already done more for me than I could ever repay—"
"Darlin'." His tone is patient, but at the same time I hear the uncompromising edge in it. "You're going to have to work on erasing that invisible balance sheet you carry around in your head. Relax. Let me have the pleasure of giving you something without having to talk it half to death afterward." He glances over his shoulder to make sure Carrington has her headphones on. "Next time I give you a present, all you need to do is say a simple 'thank you/ and have sex with me. That's all the repayment I need."
I bite back a smile. "Okay."
We drive through a pair of massive rock pillars supporting a twenty-foot iron arch and continue along a paved road that I come to realize is our driveway. We pass winter-wheat fields dappled with the wing-shadows of geese overhead. Dense growths of mesquite, cedar, and prickly pear crouch in the distance.
The drive leads to a big old rock-and-wood Victorian shaded by oak and pecan trees. My dumbfounded gaze takes in a stone barn...a paddock...an empty chicken yard, all of it surrounded by a fieldstone fence. The house is big and sturdy and charming. I know without being told that children have been born here and couples have married here, and families have argued and loved and laughed beneath the gabled roof. It's a place to feel safe in. A home.
The car stops beside a three-car garage. "It's been completely renovated." Gage says. "Modem kitchen, big showers, cable and Internet—"
"Are there horses?" Carrington interrupts in excitement, tearing her headphones off.
"There are." Gage turns to smile at her as she bounces in the back seat. "Not to mention a swimming pool and hot tub."
"I dreamed of a house like this once," Carrington says.
"Did you?" Even to my own ears. I sound a little dazed. Unbuckling my seat belt and climbing from the car, I continue to stare at the house. In all my longing for a family and a home, I'd never quite been able to decide what they should have looked like. But this house looks and feels so right, so perfect, it seems impossible any other place would suit me half so well. There is a wide wraparound porch, and a porch swing, and it's painted pale blue under the ceiling like they did in the old days, to keep mud daubers from building nests. There are enough fallen pecans beside the house to fill buckets.
We go inside the air-conditioned house, the interior painted shades of white and cream, the polished mesquite floors gleaming with light from tall windows. It's decorated in a style the magazines call "new country," which means there aren't many ruffles, but the sofas and chairs are cushiony, and there are lots of throw pillows. Carrington squeals in excitement and disappears, running from room to room, occasionally hurrying back to report on some new discovery'.
Gage and I tour the house more slowly. He watches my reactions, and he says I can change anything I like, I can have whatever I want. I am too overwhelmed to say much of anything. I have instantly connected with this house, the stubborn vegetation rooted so stubbornly in the dry red land, the scrubby woods harboring javelina and bobcats and coyotes, so much more than with the sterile modern condo poised high above the streets of Houston. And I wonder how Gage knew this is what my soul has craved.
He turns me to face him, his eyes searching. It occurs to me that no one in my life has ever concerned himself so thoroughly with my happiness. "What are you thinking?" he asks.
I know Gage hates it when I cry—he is completely undone by the sight of tears—so I blink hard against the sting. "I'm thinking how thankful I am for everything," I say, "even the bad stuff. Every sleepless night, every second of being lonely, every time the car broke
down, every wad of gum on my shoe, every late bill and losing lottery ticket and bruise and broken dish and piece of burnt toast."
His voice is soft. "Why, darlin'?"
"Because it all led me here to you."
Gage makes a low sound and kisses me, trying to be gentle, but soon he is gripping me closer and murmuring love words, sex words, making his way down the curve of my neck until I remind him breathlessly that Carrington is somewhere nearby.
We fix dinner together, the three of us, and after eating we sit outside and talk. At times we pause to listen to the plaintive song of mourning doves, the occasional whicker of a horse in the barn, the breezes that rustle the oaks and send pecans rattling to the ground. Eventually Carrington goes upstairs to take a bath in a refurbished clawfoot tub, and she goes to sleep in a room with pale blue walls. She asks drowsily if we can paint clouds on the ceiling, and I say yes, of course we can.