Page 5 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Mountain Man

I was engaged. Broke it off. My family thinks I ruined my life. Most days I think they might be right.

The reply takes longer than usual.

They're wrong.

No explanation. No follow up questions. No attempt to therapize me or offer five steps to healing or suggest I try journaling. Just: they're wrong. Two words. A closed door against every voice telling me I made the biggest mistake of my life.

At week four, I catch myself checking my phone before I check my email. Before I check my orders. Before I do anything.

At week five, Chioma finds me smiling at my screen during brunch and nearly chokes on her mimosa.

"Who is that? That's not a candle supplier face. That is a man face."

"He's nobody. He's a vet."

"In Toronto?"

"In British Columbia."

The look she gives me could strip paint. "Mara Adekunle. You are texting a man 5 thousand kilometers away that you've never seen?"

"He saved Mango."

"Mango is my dog. And that doesn't explain the face."

At six weeks, my mother calls.

"Tunde's sister's wedding is in August. She invited you. Because she still considers you family, even if you don't consider yourself part of anything."

The words land exactly where they're aimed. Center mass. Twenty years of surgical precision applied to her youngest daughter's most tender spots.

After we hang up, I sit on the garage floor. Cooling racks around me. Bergamot in my lungs. Phone in my hand.

My mother just called me a disappointment for the fourth time this month. I think she keeps a calendar.

Midnight. A Tuesday. Holden will be asleep. Holden gets up at 5am to check on livestock and doesn't own a coffee maker that works properly. He's told me this. We've talked about coffee. About mornings. About the sound the mountains make when the wind shifts. About nothing and everything and all the spaces in between.

The reply comes in ninety seconds.

She's wrong about you.

You don't know me.

I know what you type at midnight. That's the truest version of anyone.

My eyes burn. The candles around me blur into warm gold shapes. The garage feels too small. Toronto feels too small. Everything I've built in this careful, contained, mother approved life feels like a shell I've been crouching inside, waiting for permission to stand up.

Holden?

Yeah.

Thank you for always texting back.

Go to sleep, Mara.

This time, I do.

CHAPTER THREE