My skin wasn't smooth or soft, the palms rough and calloused, but hers was. And the difference between her skin and mine felt like a secret that I wasn't supposed to know.
Her mouth opened, and that sunrise-pink color stole up the finely carved features of her face. She wanted to tug her hand out of mine, but she didn't. It pulled away slowly, where she laid it carefully in her lap, her forehead furrowed slightly as she did.
"I think I made a mistake moving here," she said quietly.
I clenched my jaw at what those words did to my insides. "What makes you say that?"
She glanced up at the tree above us, the sprawling limbs coated with thick, green leaves. For a long moment, she didn't say anything, just let those wheels turn in her head as she studied the sky.
"Don't you ever just … feel the truth of something? Even if it doesn't make sense when you try to say it out loud?"
A surprised laugh came out underneath my breath. What she said wasn't funny, but it rang true and clear, the gong of a perfectly shaped bell. "Every single day."
Her face lit with surprise. "Really?"
Slowly, I took a seat on the table next to her, on the other side though, where our shoulders almost touched. "Are we keeping this conversation protected by the sanctity of the festival planning committee bond?"
Grace rolled her lips over her teeth, instantly smothering a real, true smile. I couldn't mourn the fact that I didn't see it, because her eyes twinkled happily as she nodded. My fingers itched to take the camera from her lap, just to see if a box made of plastic and metal and glass would capture the way that happiness made them glow golden and bright.
"You laugh, but it's serious. This is stronger than attorney-client privilege, and that's a rule that is one of the driving forces of my entire life," I explained.
"I heard you tell Grady you were a lawyer," she said. “You know, above the crippling pain of a twisted ankle.”
I nodded, charmed beyond words when she set her chin in her hand and watched me. She looked younger and softer when she did it, another side of her that I hadn't seen yet. "Just like my father is, and his dad was before him."
"Family business."
This time, I nodded more slowly, the weight of those two words settling like another rock tossed onto my back. "Oldest law firm in Green Valley. Not a day goes by where I don’t understand the importance of carrying on that tradition."
Grace remained quiet as she processed what I’d just said.
"You hate it," she observed.
The certainty in her words knocked the breath from my lungs. I hung my hands between my legs and let my chin drop to my chest. "I do."
For a few seconds, she was quiet. When she spoke, it was clear that she was choosing her words before she said them out loud. "Am I not supposed to know that? You look …" her voice trailed off. "You look surprised."
I ran a hand over my face and sighed heavily, even though there was a huge part of me that wanted to laugh in relief. "Surprised. Yeah, a little bit."
"Why?"
One word that held so much behind it. Suddenly, I felt like if I could properly explain to her why I felt like I was sitting naked in front of her, why her perceptiveness was completely terrifying, somehow I'd be able to unload some of what was weighing me down.
"Surprised because …" I paused and let out a slow breath. "Because not a single person in my life has ever picked up on it. Not one." I glanced over at her, heart thrashing erratically. "I'm not sure how I should feel about that, Grace."
Something about what I said didn't sit well with her, because her face lost a little bit of its color and she turned forward again. On the ground in front of us, a chipmunk darted out from the base of the tree to inspect the hollowed-out shell of a black walnut. Grace picked up her camera, carefully turned the lens and snapped a picture with a decisive click. The chipmunk disappeared with the shell.
"What would you do instead? If you weren't a lawyer."
Part of me was glad she didn't acknowledge what I'd said, because I wasn't even sure what to do about it. There was a strange cloud, a fog hanging over the picnic table, separating Grace and I from everything that waited for us outside of this small space. And neither one of us moved to leave it.
"There's a hundred things I'd rather do." The honesty came off my lips so easily, it was hard to believe. I'd stuffed it down for so long, for fear of disappointing my parents, or upsetting the path that my life had been since the day I was born. And it wasn't hard to stuff down, because no one in my life seemed to care enough to ask, or even see how unhappy I was in the first place. "I hate being trapped at that desk, in that office." I looked around us, and only stopped when her face came into view again. "Sitting out here, feeling the sun on my face, smelling the mountains, I want something that gives me this right here. It's the kind of peace I don't feel anywhere else in my life."
"And you don't think your family would understand? If you wanted to do something else?"
Unfortunately, I didn't have to think or question the answer to that. "No, they wouldn't."
Grace hummed. It was thoughtful humming, and just a little sad.
"I know my mom thinks Grady and I are a little nuts for moving here. But she wants us to be happy, more than anything, even if she doesn't understand it."
"I think my parents rate duty, responsibility much higher than happiness." I took a sip of my coffee. "Who knows, maybe they're right and
