by Jane Porter
Harley straightened. “I don’t know.”
“They haven’t brought them down yet?”
“I haven’t seen them, no.”
“They’re testing you, Miss Diekerhoff. They know the rules.”
“I don’t know the rules, Mr. Sheenan.”
“Then maybe you need to ask.”
Harley lifted her chin, refusing to be cowed. “What are the house rules, Mr. Sheenan?”
“I’ll send the twins down. They’ll fill you in.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Harley went to bed Monday night, exhausted and frazzled.
She’d gone from relishing each day at Copper Mountain Ranch to counting down the days until she could leave. The twins didn’t like her much. And Brock Sheenan seemed to like her even less.
It was one thing to feed and clothe people. It was another thing to feed and clothe unhappy people. And the twins were certainly unhappy.
Fortunately, Tuesday passed without incident. Brock gave the twins chores, and the kids did their chores, and stayed out of her way.
Tuesday night Brock and his hands didn’t come in for dinner as limbs on a massive tree, weighted by snow and ice, snapped, taking down a long section of fence, allowing cattle to wander.
While Brock and the hands repaired the fence and tracked down the missing cattle, Harley fed the twins dinner, serving them at the kitchen counter.
“We’re not supposed to eat here,” Mack reminded her. “Dad’s rules.”
Harley filled their glasses with milk. “I asked your dad about that. He said it was Maxine’s rule, not his, and since Maxine isn’t here, I’m feeding you where I want to feed you.”
The twins looked at each other.
“Dad might get mad,” Mack added.
Harley placed the milks in front of the kids. “I’m not afraid of your dad, or Maxine. And besides, its nicer eating in here. It’s warm and cheerful. The dining room depresses me.”
The kids looked at each other again.
“Why does it depress you?” Molly asked, intrigued.
“It’s not very cozy.”
“Dad doesn’t do cozy,” Molly said. “Or holidays, or anything festive.” She sighed, and stabbed her fork in her chicken. “He used to like Christmas. But not anymore.”
Harley turned down the oven to make sure she didn’t dry the chicken out. “What do you do for Christmas? How do you celebrate? I noticed you don’t have any Advent Calendars out.”
“What are Advent Calendars?” Mack asked.
Harley drew a stool out and sat down. “They’re a calendar to help you count down to Christmas. Some of them have chocolates, others have little toys. They’re just fun.”
“Oh, then we definitely wouldn’t have them,” Molly said. She took a bite and chewed for a long time. After she swallowed, she shrugged. “We don’t even decorate anymore.”
Harley couldn’t believe this. “Nothing?”
“Nope.”
“What about a tree?”
“Nope.”
“Not even a wreath or garland or candles?”
Molly shook her head. “Dad stopped a couple of years ago with all that stuff. He said it was a waste of time, and expensive.”
Harley struggled to hide her horror. “What about presents? Stockings?”
“We get a few presents, mostly practical stuff. But we didn’t have stockings last year. Dad said we’re too old. Santa doesn’t exist.” Mack made a face. “And I know Santa isn’t real. We figured that out a long time ago, but he didn’t have to say it like that. It kind of made us feel bad.”
Harley could believe it. Just listening to the twins talk made her feel bad. “Well, maybe we could do something fun while I’m here.”
The twins looked skeptical. “Like what?” Molly asked.
“Bake cookies or make a gingerbread house.”
Mack frowned. “I’ve never made a gingerbread house.”
“I don’t know that I’d want to make a gingerbread house,” Molly retorted.
Harley shrugged and rose from the stool. “You’re right. Why frost cookies or decorate a gingerbread house and drink hot spiced apple cider, when you can shovel manure and stack hay bales?”
Wednesday morning after starting the laundry and tidying all the bathrooms and giving the hardwood floor a good sweep, Harley put on her snow boots and heavy jacket and gloves and headed outside to cut some fragrant pine boughs.
JB, who was on the smaller snowplow, clearing the path between the house and barn, and barn and bunk house, turned off the engine to ask Harley if she needed help.
“I think I’ve got it,” Harley said, shaking the armful of branches to remove excess snow. “But thank you.”
“What are you doing, Miss Harley?”
“Just adding a few festive touches to the house. Give it a little holiday spirit.”
JB adjusted his leather work glove. “Have you asked the boss? He’s not real big on holidays.”
“The kids told me he used to have more holiday spirit.”
“It’s been a few years.”
“What happened?”
“He’s just been a bachelor a long time. Hard to do everything and be happy about it.”
Harley glanced down at the green fragrant branches in her arms. “You really think Mr. Sheenan will be upset that I’ve spruced things up for Christmas? I’m just making some garland, adding some candles on the mantels.”
He thought for a moment. “If that’s all, Mr. Sheenan might be okay. But I wouldn’t push him. He’s not a man that likes to be bossed around.”
Brock entered the house through the kitchen door, which was how he always entered in his work clothes, but he was stopped short this afternoon by the sight of the twins hunched over the island counter carefully frosting sugar cookies that had been cut into stars and stockings, ornaments, candy canes and Christmas trees.
The kids looked up at him and smiled. Mack had flour on his cheek and Molly was licking icing from her thumb.
“Hey Dad, look what we made,” Molly said. “Roll-out sugar cookies.”
Brock approached the island to examine the platter filled with fanciful colors and shapes. “Nice,” he said.
“Want one?” Mack asked, offering him a candy cane.
Brock shook his head. “Maybe after dinner,” he answered, before looking at Harley who was drying the last of the cookie sheets. “Where did you get the cookie cutters from?” he asked her.
“Just made a paper pattern,” she said.
Mack nodded. “Miss Harley made the patterns out of cardboard and we cut them all out. It took a while but it was really cool.”
“You have to be careful not to roll the dough too thin,” Molly explained, “and you also have to watch how much flour you use. You can’t use too much or too little.”
Brock’s eyebrows lifted. “You got them baking today.”
She blushed, her cheeks turning pink. She looked nervous as she reached for the next cookie tray. “I thought it’d be a good activity for a cold afternoon.”
“Must have been a lot of work.”
“It was fun.”
Brock glanced back to the counter with the platter of cookies. The shapes weren’t perfect and there was more frosting than cookie in some cases, but Mack and Molly looked happy. Happier than he’d seen them since returning from New York. “Maxine wouldn’t let you two mess up her kitchen like this, would she?”
“But it shouldn’t be Maxine’s kitchen,” Harley said. “It’s yours, and the kids’. This is your house.”
Brock frowned. “Well, let’s not get too comfortable in here. She’ll be back in a month and she’ll want her kitchen back.” He tapped each of the kids on the head. “Mack, Molly, make sure you help Miss Diekerhoff clean up. You’re not to leave her with all the work.”
He started for the hall, but stopped at the fireplace. A generous swag of pine covered the mantel, the green branches held in place by fat white candles.
They hadn
’t just been baking. They’d been decorating, too.
He slowly turned and looked back to the island counter. Mack and Molly were staring at him, waiting for his reaction.
“It smells good, doesn’t it, Dad?” Mack said hopefully.
Mack glanced past the kids to Harley who appeared utterly engrossed in the glass mixing bowl she was drying so very vigorously.
He knew right away who’d been behind the green garland and candles.
“It’s fine,” Brock said flatly. “But let’s not get carried away.”
After lunch Thursday, Harley prepped for dinner, creating a mustard beer bath for the two big roasts that would be tonight’s dinner, and then peeled the mound of apples for tonight’s apple pie.
The kids had been dashing in and out most of the day, doing chores for their dad and then entertaining themselves with various outdoor adventures.
She liked how well Mack and Molly played together. They were extremely close. Not just brother and sister, but best friends.
As Harley rolled out the pie crust and then filled each of the pie shells with the spicy apple cinnamon and sugar mixture, she thought about her daughters. They’d loved baking with her, and despite the two-and-a-half-year age difference between them, Emma and Ana had always been each other’s best friend.
After carefully sliding both pies into the oven, Harley moved laundry forward, carrying folded towels upstairs and stacking the clean clothes for the ranch hands in the plastic basket that they’d come and retrieve after work tonight.
Thirty minutes later, she opened the oven door and checked on the apple pies, making sure the crusts on the pies weren’t burning. The pies were browning beautifully, the flaky edges turning light gold with juice bubbling through the slits in the sugar-dusted crust.
The kitchen door flung open. “I need a Band-Aid,” Mack said breathlessly. “Maybe a bunch.”
Harley straightened and turned. “Everything okay?” she asked, seeing how the shoulder of his coat was powdered with snow, and something... else.... something... red
“I think so,” he said, not sounding convincing at all.
“Is that something… red on your coat?” she asked.
He looked down at his sleeve and tried to rub the red splatter off, streaking it instead.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked.
“Not me. Molly.”
“Badly?”
“I don’t know. She won’t let me see.”
Harley quickly went into the little bathroom off the kitchen, grabbed a washcloth, and then rifled through the medicine cabinet for rubbing alcohol, gauze pads, and Band-Aids. “Where is she?”
“Behind the house.”
“Show me,” Harley said, ignoring her coat to rush out the door.
Mack ran through the snow, with Harley close on his heels, snow crunching beneath their shoes, leading her around the side of the corral, to the back gate, where Molly was leaning against a post, her hand shielding her face as blood stained the snow around her feet.
“Dad’s going to ground me for life,” Mack whispered.
Harley ignored this, and bent over the girl. “Honey, it’s Harley. Where are you hurt?”
“My face.”
“Where on your face?”
“By my eye.”
Harley’s heart jumped, fell. “Let me see.”
“Can’t,” came the muffled reply.
“Why?”
“It’s bleeding too much and I don’t want to get stitches.”
“You might not need stitches. Faces and heads bleed a lot when they’re cut. You might just need some ice. Let me see. Okay?”
Eventually, with a lot of coaxing, Harley was able to get Molly to look up and uncover her face. Blood crusted Molly’s hairline and coated her temple, but as Harley gently dabbed at the gash between the girl’s eyebrow and hairline, she could see that the bleeding was slowing, and the wound, maybe an inch, inch and a half, was deep but at least not to the bone.
“How did a snowball do this?” Harley asked, using her thumb to wipe away some of the blood to get a better look at the cut.
Mack didn’t immediately answer.
Harley saw Molly’s gaze dart to her brother.
“Um, it was a snowball fight,” Mack said. “She was standing on top of the corral when I threw the snowball.”
Harley glanced at the boy over her shoulder. “So she got cut when she fell?”
The kids looked at each other again. Both were making a strange face. Something was up. Harley shrugged. “You don’t need to tell me. But I’m sure your dad will want to know.”
“He’ll kill me,” Mack muttered.
“But it’s my fault, too,” Molly said, wincing as she touched the cut and checked her fingers for blood. “I... wanted... to play.” She dabbed her head again. “And see? It’s not that bad. I’m not bleeding that much now. Dad might not even notice.”
“Well, let’s go into the house and get you cleaned up properly,” Harley said, not wanting to think about Brock’s reaction, or Brock himself.
They tramped back through the snow and stomped their feet on the porch, knocking off excess snow. The back door suddenly opened and Brock was there. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “Your pies were burning.”
It was only then that he noticed Molly’s blood-streaked face. “Hell and damnation,” he swore. “What happened?”
Brock walked Molly into the kitchen and lifted her onto one of the kitchen stools to get a look a proper look at her face. “What happened?” he repeated.
“Snowball fight,” Mack said in a small voice as Miss Diekerhoff went to the sink to wash the blood off her hands and then wet a clean cloth with warm water so he could clean Molly’ face.
Brock took the warm wet cloth from the housekeeper with a gruff thanks and gently began to wipe away the blood streaks. “This cut isn’t from a snowball fight,” he said, shooting Mack a sharp look. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me how it happened.”
The kids didn’t answer and Miss Diekerhoff went to the stove to study the pies he’d pulled from the oven when he smelled the crust burning.
Her lips pursed as she prodded the blackened crust with a fork, her thick honey ponytail sliding over her shoulder, her cheeks still pink from the cold but she didn’t look terribly upset. He was grateful for that. He knew the only reason the pies had burned was because she’d gone to Molly’s aid.
He was grateful she had.
But he was also in need of answers. How had Molly gotten a big gash so close to her eye?
He glanced down at his daughter’s face, which was still so pale the freckles popped across the bridge of her small straight nose. “So are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked, glancing from Molly to Mack, and fighting to hang on to his patience. “And how Molly got cut in a snowball fight?”
The kids just hung their heads, definitely a sign that something else had taken place. But they also weren’t talking. Of course not. These two were masters of collusion. Usually Molly had the big, bright ideas and then applied pressure to her brother until he caved in, agreeing to her bold schemes. Interesting that Molly was the one hurt now. “Molly’s usually the better shot,” Brock added.
Mack flushed and Molly wiggled uncomfortably on the stool. “I’m out of practice,” she muttered.
“Mmmm,” Brock answered, pressing against the cut. It was deeper than he’d like but the edges were clean and something that could be fixed with a good butterfly bandage. No need to drive her into Marietta to the hospital. “But something tells me this wasn’t an ordinary snowball fight. So what did happen?”
Neither Mack nor Molly spoke.
The housekeeper discreetly disappeared into the laundry room.
Brock waited a good minute, determined that the twins would explain what had happened.
They didn’t. They kept their silence and Brock battled his temper. He’d had enough of the twins colluding. This was why they’d been sent away to boarding school.
They didn’t try last year in sixth grade at their Marietta middle school. They sat in the back of the class, daydreaming and inattentive, rarely participating, and even more rarely turning in completed work. At the end of the year, the principal met with him, and recommended that Mack and Molly attend summer school to catch up on what they’d missed this year, and recommended that the twins have more structure come Fall. The twins, the principal added, were extremely bright, but highly unmotivated, more interested in their own private world than learning and applying themselves.
The twins went to summer school, kicking and screaming every day for the two intensive sessions, and then in late August, he took them by train to New York, again kicking and screaming, where he’d enrolled them at the prestigious Academy for the new school year.
The twins were upset that he left them there, but it was for their own good. They needed to be challenged, they needed to learn discipline, and they needed the study skills and good grades required for college.
But now here they were, home early, and getting into trouble. What was he going to do with them?
He surveyed their blank faces and realized they weren’t going to come clean, and it just made him even angrier. Why wouldn’t they listen? Why couldn’t they cooperate? What was wrong with them? “So no one knows anything,” he said curtly. “Fine. Don’t know anything, and don’t tell me. In fact, I don’t think I even want to know now. I just want you two to go to bed.”
“Bed?” Mack said.
“But it’s not even four, Dad!” Molly cried, staring up at him in horror.
“—without dinner,” Brock concluded, unmoved. “Mack, head on up. Put on your pajamas and get into bed. Molly will be up as soon as I get her bandaged up. Goodbye, and goodnight.”
Mack walked out, looking beaten, and Molly was silent as Brock cleaned the wound and then used a butterfly bandage from the medicine cabinet to tightly close the cut. It should heal without a scar, but even if it did scar a bit, it wouldn’t be Molly’s first. Molly was definitely his wild one, while Mack was gentler and quiet, like his mom.