Chapter 164 Stable Ground

Chapter 164 Stable Ground
Harriet's ranch in summer looked different from the wedding version Sofia had carried in her memory for the past year, less staged, more lived-in, horses grazing in the same paddock but without the arch, without the chairs, without the particular hush of a hundred people watching two lives change shape in front of them.

The dust smelled different too, drier now under full summer heat than it had during the cool spring evening of the wedding, and Sofia found she liked this version better in some ways, less precious, more real, a working ranch rather than a backdrop borrowed for one perfect night.

Emma had been coming out twice a week since school ended, officially for riding lessons, unofficially because Harriet had started letting her help with the actual barn work, mucking stalls and refilling water troughs with the seriousness of a ranch hand twice her age.

"She's a natural," Harriet said, watching Emma lead a gelding named Otis back to his stall with practiced calm. "Better hands than kids twice her age. Doesn't rush the horse. Lets him come to his own decision about trusting her."

"She's had good teachers in patience lately." Sofia leaned against the fence, watching her daughter work with the particular pride that still occasionally caught her off guard, the sense of having built something worth this much steady, ordinary joy. "Rebecca always used to say patience was the whole trick of healing. I think Emma absorbed it by osmosis, just from being around all of us learning it the hard way."

"How is Rebecca? Haven't seen her since the wedding."

"Good. We talk less now than we used to, which she says is actually the goal. Therapy's supposed to work itself out of a job eventually." Sofia smiled at the thought, a little wistful despite the good news underneath it. "I still see her sometimes, just to check in. Feels less like treatment now and more like visiting an old friend who happens to know exactly which questions to ask."

"That's the sign it worked, isn't it? When you don't need it as urgently anymore."

"That's what she says too." Sofia watched Emma emerge from the barn, dusty and thrilled with herself, jogging over to report some detail about Otis's feeding schedule with the same gravity she brought to parliamentary business. It struck Sofia, while watching Emma, that she had never once needed to be taught patience the hard way, through loss or fear, the way the adults around her had. She'd absorbed it whole from a household that practiced it daily, the easiest inheritance a child could receive. "I used to think needing help forever was the honest admission. Turns out needing less of it, over time, built carefully, is actually the bigger victory."

Harriet nodded, something knowing in her expression. "Took me a decade to believe that about my own grief, if it's any comfort. You don't owe anyone a permanent wound to prove you took the loss seriously."

They watched Emma disappear back into the barn on some fresh errand. Harriet turned the conversation gentle and unhurried. "How's the baby situation? Tyler mentioned you'd started trying."

"First month didn't happen. We're okay with it." Sofia found the sentence came easier each time she said it out loud, the disappointment wearing down into something manageable with repetition. "I keep reminding myself this is supposed to take time for most people. I have to actually believe that instead of just reciting it."

"Believing takes longer than reciting. Give yourself the runway." Harriet squeezed her shoulder, brief and warm. "For what it's worth, I think you two are going to make excellent parents to whoever eventually shows up. Watching you with Emma these past two years has told me everything I need to know about that."

"Thank you. That means more than you probably realize."

They spent the rest of the afternoon at the ranch, Emma insisting on a full tour of every improvement made since the wedding, the new fence line, the young foal born in spring, the exact spot where the reception tent had stood now returned to open pasture. Sofia found herself walking the property slowly, matching memory against the present shape of things, and discovered she didn't need the wedding version preserved exactly as it had been. The ranch had kept living in the year since, the way everything worth loving eventually did, and she liked it better for the change rather than despite it.

Emma named the young foal Ambassador Junior before anyone could stop her, because the ranch needed proper representation, and Harriet laughed so hard she had to sit down on the fence rail, wiping her eyes, promising to have the name officially recorded in the barn's breeding log.

On the drive home, Emma fell asleep in the back seat within minutes, exhausted from a full day of barn work, and Sofia drove in comfortable quiet, windows cracked, summer air moving warm through the car.

She thought about Rebecca's careful, patient years of work, about Harriet's decade-long journey toward believing grief didn't require permanence, about her own slow accumulation of steadiness built one honest sentence at a time. None of it had arrived quickly. All of it arrived eventually, exactly when it was ready to.

By the time she pulled into the driveway, the sun had started its long summer descent toward evening, gold light spilling across the front lawn, and Sofia sat a moment before waking Emma, simply grateful, uncomplicated, for the particular shape her life had settled into. Whatever came next, however many more months of trying it took, she found she trusted the shape enough now to let the timeline belong to itself.

Tyler's car was already in the driveway when she pulled in, home earlier than expected from whatever errand had taken him out that afternoon. He came out to help carry Emma's dusty boots and riding gloves inside, careful not to wake her, the two of them moving through the small choreography of an ordinary evening homecoming that had become, over the past two years, the steadiest thing Sofia had ever known.