BY CALLIE J. SMITH
Excerpted from Kohelette: A Novel (publishing from Clay Patin Press on April 1, 2026). Copyright is held by the author.
JENN GREETED me as I opened the front door for her, which was more than she sometimes did. It was as much as a mother could expect from her 13-year-old, I supposed.
“Have a good evening?” her father asked me as she bounded up the stairs to her room. Still standing on the porch, Ian had leaned into the doorframe.
I shrugged. I hadn’t recovered from my last conversation with him and had no real desire for another.
Ian, however, remained leaning on the doorframe as if he had nowhere else to go. “Jenn tells me a bakery-café chain is interested in renting part of your house.”
My eyes went to his, which they hadn’t done until now. I wondered what Jenn had told him and if he was feeling the need to care about this, too.
“You have a walkable neighbourhood with the right zoning,” Ian said when I didn’t respond. “Makes sense. And you know,” he added casually, “if their needs would take away from your living space, Jenn could always come live with me. I closed on a good-sized house a few minutes away.”
I scrutinized him. “You mean you bought a house in Miller’s Creek?”
“Yes.” His expression didn’t change.
I licked my dry lips. He’d shown up after years of silence and still not expressed plans of staying here long-term. Jenn and I had both been wondering how much longer he’d be using his visitation time with her. “As in,” I prodded, “a house that’s part of your company’s development project?”
“No,” Ian said, “a house for me to live in. And maybe Jenn, if she wants to.”
I opened my mouth. No words came out. He lived down the road now. I hadn’t seen that one coming. And a glint in Ian’s eyes confirmed my growing suspicion that there was nothing casual about this conversation. “You sent them,” I said.
Ian raised his eyebrows.
I huffed. “You gave my contact information to the bakery-café chain.” The man had no shame. “You’re the reason they even thought to look here. You got the biggest business you could find that would want to rent the whole damn house.”
Ian’s face registered nothing like surprise at my accusation. “I passed along your information to some potential renters. You insist on keeping the property, so I assumed you’d want to make it profitable. And as for Jenn, I’m offering her more space. That’s all.”
Every part of me tensed. For an instant, I questioned whether my anger was warranted. My neighbour hadbrought up the idea of renting out part of our space to a coffee shop, too — I reminded myself of that — and her interest hadn’t bothered me. But my neighbour had been listening to my dreams. Ian hadn’t. And he was trying to manipulate his daughter’s living arrangements.
“This is our family’s home.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “It’s the house my parents built. I want to give Jenn the chance to live in it. I know I care about things that you don’t, things that aren’t big or impressive and don’t make me rich. But why can’t you respect me enough to let me value what I value and make the decisions I can live with?”
Ian smiled and furrowed his brows at the same time, as if my speech amused him. As if he found my need to rebel against his value system cute. “I am letting you make your own decisions. I’m only offering possibilities.”
“You’retrying to take Jenn away from me.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I’m offering her space.” Then his expression became something mischievous. “We could make space for you, too, if you want.”
I stared at him, my jaw clenching.
“But maybe you’d rather just send Jenn,” he added, nose wrinkling into one of his sneers, “and get more time alone with your flannel-wearing hippie boyfriend.”
My body flooded with adrenaline. And at his smirk, my Gran’s words came back to me. Ian wanted my attention. And he’d gotten it. Again. But Gran was wrong about Ian still having feelings for me. This man didn’t know what love even was.
“Anyone would rather be with John than with you,” I hissed. Knowing I was about to get louder and hoping to shield Jenn, I stepped out onto the porch and forced Ian to back out of my way. Then I closed the door behind me. “I don’t care what John wears. He’s kind, and he cares about people. When he found out that Jenn and I were hurting for money, he sent a check to buy Jenn clothes and pay some bills.”
Ian’s face remained set, but something shifted behind his eyes. He may have been wondering what had happened to all the money he’d given us over the years.
Well, I wasn’t going to pause and explain it to him now. “Never once has he belittled me for our situation, or for having dreams, or for liking someone he doesn’t. He helps and cares when no one asks him to. That’s what love looks like.”
I must have stepped closer as I’d spoken, because I stood close enough now to notice the lines at the side of Ian’s mouth deepening. I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t care. “That’s the problem about spending time with you. You don’t respect people. You only try to manipulate them. That’s not love. Manipulating Jenn’s life isn’t love. Shaming me into becoming some figment of your imagination about what a supportive spouse should have been was never love.”
I turned away. Ian grabbed my shoulders.
Hyped up on adrenaline, I didn’t pause to wonder whether he knew that our daughter had made me practice over and over what to do when someone grabs you. Practice, Jenn kept saying, parroting her Taekwondo instructor. Habits take practice. But I didn’t think about it. That was the point. I only grabbed Ian back and pulled him toward me. My knee went straight into his groin.
Ian dropped to his knees, groaning.
I gasped. Anger gone, I dropped to my own knees beside him. “You grabbed me! Why did you grab me?”
Ian had leaned forward to rest his hands on the wooden floorboards. He didn’t look up. He only groaned some more.
“I’m sorry,” I said, heart thumping, “but you shouldn’t have grabbed me.” Was he going to sue me now?
He said nothing.
Ian was definitely going to sue me. He’d slap me with a lawsuit in the morning. “Are you OK? Do you need . . . anything?”
“A minute,” he managed.
I sat back, wondering what to do.
Ian remained hunched over. He was probably willing himself to stop making pained sounds. He didn’t have much patience for weakness in anyone, let alone himself. “Go inside,” he rumbled finally, still not looking up. When I didn’t move, he repeated, “Go.”
Not knowing what else to do, I stood and turned toward the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said from behind me.
I stopped and turned. “What?”
Ian straightened. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, meeting my gaze. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you.”
I stared, not believing I’d heard an honest-to-goodness apology from him. When was the last time Ian had apologized to me for something?
From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a firefly just off the porch. We hadn’t seen many in recent years. On any other evening, I’d have gone out to explore. Tonight, though, I remained on the porch, puzzled by the man kneeling before me.
“Would you believe me if I said I’ve missed the way you always told me I was full of shit?” he asked, expression deadpan.
“I never said you were full of shit. I called what you said ‘bullshit.’”
“Same difference.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“People tell each other they’re full of shit all the time, Lettie. It’s OK. The world’s a harsh place.”
It struck me that Ian’s voice sounded like a five-year-old boy trying to be strong. He’d never spoken much about his childhood. I’d never thought to wonder why.
“It is a harsh place,” I agreed, “But it can be a kind place, too. I want Jenn to spend as much time as she can with the kindness.”
Silence. Then he said, “I’ll do better.”
He’d never said that to me, either. I sighed. I saw no reason to stop being jaded about Ian Ruisart. Jadedness had its own kind of wisdom. But I did want to stop wasting energy on fighting with him.
“I wasn’t trying to take Jenn away from you,” he said again, voice uncharacteristically quiet. “I truly hadn’t thought through my offer that much. I . . . I was only thinking of how our family,” Ian never stumbled over his words, but he was stumbling now, “we didn’t really get a chance to be together.”
I studied his face. Our “family” hadn’t worked out for good reasons. I couldn’t not rebel at some of the stuff he did.
“I’ll do better,” he said again into my silence.
I watched him, wondering why he’d come back. He still wasn’t the man I wanted him to be, not for me and certainly not for Jenn. And yet, he was the man who was here now, kneeling in pain on our front porch.
“I will do better,” Ian repeated, pronouncing each word deliberately.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I said.
“Fine.”
Still, I studied him, knowing I couldn’t believe him. “If I’ve been wrong about you, you could always stay and prove it,” I said. Then I paused, wondering if he really would. That was when I remembered. He’d already bought a house in Miller’s Creek. I took a deep breath. “I’ll keep calling you on your bullshit, and we’ll go from there.” I tried to put a smile into my voice.
I must have succeeded. Ian clearly heard it. A corner of his mouth quirked up into an almost-smile.
“We’ll go from there,” he said.
I sighed again. Then I glanced back at the front door. “Want some cocoa? I have some of your licorice and lavender mix left.” For some unfathomable reason, I hadn’t thrown out his cocoa mix. I’d flung it to the back of the kitchen cabinet, but I hadn’t thrown it out. And now I was offering him my hand to help him up.
He took it and stood. Then he followed me into the house.
***
Callie J. Smith is an author based in the midwestern United States. She writes about everyday things like hope, creativity, and grief. Her newest novel, Kohelette, blends domestic fiction with magical realism in a story of piecing together life after loss. Her short stories and short form essays have appeared in Abbey of the Arts, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Bearings Online, Branches, Forever Yours: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology, Gals Guide Anthology: Female Friendship, Helix Literary Magazine, A Kintsugi Life, and Literally Stories and received both the Award of Merit (Best in Book) prize and a First Place in Prose from The Polk Street Review. She’s online at www.calliejsmith.net.