Slate nodded, but he didn’t say anything. I could tell he was having a hard time with her words. He swallowed hard.

“Call me if you need anything. I’ll bring some dinner over later.”

“Thanks, Momma.”

She hugged me, then left us there. Watching his uncle hold on, but barely.

“He’s bleeding internally from the fall. Nothing they can do, though,” he said when the door closed behind my mother. “They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.”

“I’ll stay with you.” There was no way I could leave him.

“You have classes in the morning,” he argued, but it was weak. He wanted me here. He was afraid.

“I’ll get what I miss from someone else in my classes.”

He didn’t try to talk me out of it. Which was good because I wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’ll have a farm to think about. Not sure how I’m going to handle that. Uncle D owned all of it. Worked his whole life to own it in full. He told me this summer when he got sick that he’d left everything to me. It was my decision what I did with it. I can’t run a farm right now, but I can’t just sell it. It was his life.”

There were going to be a lot of decisions like this for him to make. Things that wouldn’t be easy. I knew they were all starting to run through his mind.

“Does the farm support itself financially?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“Well, why don’t you find someone to run it—live there, take care of things, and pay them? When and if the time comes that you want to live there, it will be waiting.”

Again, he nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I think in town there’ll be some folks who would want to do that.”

“Don’t stress and worry over things like this just yet. It will work out.”

He didn’t respond and I figured he needed a moment. I walked over and sat in the seat my mother had deserted. I could smell her homemade doughnuts in the box beside me.

“I’ve never had someone in my life who would do this,” he said, looking over at me. “Stay when things were tough. No one I could trust other than Uncle D.”

That made my heart hurt. I had a big family. I had been blessed with so much in life and I’d taken that for granted, while Slate had no one else.

“You have my family now. Me and Knox. We’re your friends. With us comes our family.”

A sad smile touched Slate’s lips and his gaze shifted to the doughnuts. “Yeah, you’ve got a great family. Not sure what I did to get their support.”

I knew what he had done.

“I think it all started with the coffee and muffins you brought to them when they were watching me sleep, wondering if I’d ever wake up. And the reading to me when they needed a break. Kindness like that isn’t forgotten.”

He shrugged. “Knox was my friend and…” He paused and his eyes locked on mine. “And I wanted to see your eyes. I wanted to hear your voice. I wanted to know you. Sleeping Beauty.”

Oh.

Oh.

I blinked several times and my face heated.

He chuckled and the sound was nice in the quiet sadness of the room. “You were exactly like I imagined, too. Maybe even better.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I reached for the doughnuts and took one out, then held the box toward him.

“Doughnut?” I asked.

Then he really laughed. And my heart did a silly flutter in my chest.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

SLATE

AT TWO FIFTY-FIVE that morning, my uncle took his last breath. I was watching his chest rise and fall … and then it didn’t anymore. I stood up, numb, and although I knew it was coming, I still couldn’t believe that he was gone. The only thing I felt was Vale’s arms as they came around me and she held me. She was so small, but her little body was comfort. She stayed like that when the nurses came in and pronounced his death and the time. She didn’t let go when they covered him and rolled him from the room.

When we had to get his belongings and leave the room, she stayed close to my side. Her parents and her older brother Dylan were in the hall when we walked out. It was like I had a family. People there that I never expected.

Uncle D must have known I’d have this. This was why he liked Vale so much. He could go and know I’d be okay.

Vale slipped her hand in mine as we went out to her car and followed her parents to their house. Her brother Dylan drove my Jeep to the house and then I was offered food I couldn’t eat before being shown Knox’s bedroom.

When Vale left me there alone, I finally let the tears I’d been battling fall.

The man I had loved since I was a kid was gone. I wouldn’t hear him curse anymore, I wouldn’t eat burned biscuits and gravy when I came home from school, and he wouldn’t beat me at Texas Hold ’Em and brag about it for days. I would miss every one of those things. I’d give anything just to have him back.

Sleep finally came and I was thankful for the darkness.

* * *

THE FUNERAL WAS two days later in Huntsville at the small Baptist church my uncle had gone to since he was a boy. His parents had been buried in the graveyard in the back, and so had his wife and child over thirty years ago. She’d died in childbirth, as did their baby girl. He had never remarried or even dated.

He told me once that when you find the woman you can love forever, you don’t get over her. I didn’t believe him then, but I wondered as I grew older if maybe that was true.

Vale, Knox, their two brothers who lived in Franklin, and their parents were there beside me. The people from town who had known Uncle D and the church folk all stood around his grave as he was lowered into the ground. Vale’s hand stayed in mine through it all. It was like she knew I could fall apart if she wasn’t there to help me.

Knox stood on the other side of me, and it was like I had a family. I couldn’t help but feel like Uncle D had orchestrated this all before he left. I wasn’t alone. If he could watch things from up there in the beer-drinking, cursing, poker-playing heaven he was in, he was smiling. This would make him happy.

Especially the roses on his grave with the deck of cards fanned out in a circle as the centerpiece. That had been Vale’s idea. He’d think that was a riot.

Knox’s hand was on my shoulder as the first shovel of dirt covered the grave. Uncle D was really gone. But I would live a life that would make him proud of me.

Lifting my head toward the sky, I said a silent thank-you for the life he’d given me. The little boy who needed a home was given not only that, but also the love of an old man who needed someone himself. We had been there for each other and it had worked for both of us. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

VALE

AFTER THE FUNERAL, Slate decided to stay at the farm a few days and help the older couple he had hired to take care of things get settled in. They’d get to live rent-free and they would earn twenty percent of the profit from Uncle D’s beef cattle, pigs, chickens, and vegetable garden.

The town had gotten the word out that Slate was looking for help, and he had takers within days. That had been one worry off his mind. My dad had helped him some, too, until he was able to head back to school.

It was a week later when Slate walked into the coffee shop at eight on a Saturday morning. He smiled at me when our eyes met, and although we had been texting daily, it was good to see him. I’d missed him.