A Fine Line

  Evie reached for my hand. “Say it straight, please.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Will you, Evie Banyon, come live with me, Brady Coyne, in this house?”

  “This is a commitment, you know,” she said.

  “I’ve thought deeply about it,” I said. “I am not being frivolous.”

  “A giant commitment.”

  “Yes. I agree.”

  “Scary.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned toward me. I kissed her on the mouth.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Is that like ‘I do’?”

  She smiled. “Almost exactly.”

  “We’ll have to keep the feeders filled and the bushes and flowers tended,” I said. “This will have to be a bird garden forever and ever.”

  “I love birds,” she said. “And I love gardens. You know that.”

  “You shouldn’t be too precipitous,” I said. I gave her my most serious expression. “There’s, um, something you should know.”

  “Oh-oh,” she said. “What?”

  “Somebody else will be living with us.”

  “Oh?” She frowned. “And who might that be?”

  I glanced at Ethan. He nodded. I patted my knee, and Henry scrambled to his feet, plopped his chin on my thigh, and looked up at me with big adoring eyes. I scratched his ears and arched my eyebrows at Evie.

  She smiled. “Henry?”

  I nodded.

  “Awesome,” she said.