He was quiet for a moment. That's a high bar, he said. I'm aware. I've been thinking about it, too. He turned his mug in his hands, the same gesture she'd seen in the kitchen the night with the fire, when he told her he was watching the road, about what I want, about what Sophie needs, about what's right.
He looked at her directly, no deflection. You. The word was quiet and complete and unqualified. Me? She said.
Outside, a light snow had begun, the thin, polite kind, the kind Aspen locals dismiss. It fell on the porch and the mountains and the flat section near the porch where Sophie had already planned the fort, and it was very quiet, and the mountains were very still. Riley Hargrove set her mug on the counter, and Daniel Carter set his beside it, and neither of them needed to say anything after that for quite a long time. The ceremony was small, 23 people in the front room of the house on Mountain View Lane with the wood stove burning and the mountains visible through the wide window, and Sophie in a blue dress she had selected herself and refused all advice about. She stood beside her father with Gerald under one arm and the new bear whose name had been settled as Theodore under the other.
And she watched Riley walk across the room with an expression of complete, uncomplicated satisfaction, the look of someone who had predicted this correctly and is quietly pleased with themselves. The justice of the peace was a woman named Carol who had been performing ceremonies in Aspen for 30 years and who told them afterward, over the dinner that Sophie had personally curated the menu for, that she'd known within 30 seconds that this one was going to last. Sophie ate three pieces of the chocolate cake and fell asleep on the couch before 9:00. Gerald and Theodore arranged on either side of her like sentinels. Daniel found Riley on the porch later after the last guests had gone.
The March sky was clear and full of stars, the cold, the particular clean cold of late winter, the kind that promises spring is coming. She's asleep, he said, coming to stand beside her. I know. I checked. He looked at the mountains.
I've been thinking about what Lauren would think. Riley waited. She'd be obnoxious about it, he said. She'd say she saw it coming. She'd make a whole thing about being right.
A pause. She'd be glad. Riley took his hand. I think she'd be glad, he said again, quietly.
They stood on the porch of the house on Mountain View Lane, and the stars were very bright above the mountains, and inside the house his daughter slept with her two guards, and the fire was low but still burning, and neither of them said anything more because there wasn't anything more to say. Everything had already been said in fuel lines and hot chocolate and snow forts and $60 invoices and plastic hospital chairs and mugs left side by side on a kitchen counter. Everything had been said.