by Mary Leo
Still, Milo could’ve waited for a couple days so he could break the news to his boys on his own terms. Now he had no choice but to come clean.
“I’ll be going home now, and I won’t be coming back anytime soon,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “I’ve got me some important planning to do and it’s going to take all my time.”
“What kind of planning?” Buddy asked as he and his brothers once again jumped on Colt. This time they nearly knocked him down with their enthusiasm.
“You’ll have to talk to your grandpa Dodge about that one.”
She slipped on her tweed wool coat, wrapped a green scarf around her weathered neck and turned to the boys. “Now you boys listen up.” Her voice took on a commanding sound, as if she was about to tell the troops what the battle plan would be.
They stopped pulling on Colt and stood at attention in a shoulder to shoulder lineup—Buddy, then Gavin, then Joey. Colt loved the power this woman had over his sons. He didn’t know what she did to get them to behave, but whatever it was, he was all for it.
“You mind your daddy, ya hear? He don’t need you getting in no more trouble. Gavin, you stay out of them machines.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And, Joey, you stay off of that there roof on your grandpa’s property. You about gave everybody a heart attack.”
Joey straightened up before he answered, “Yes, ma’am.”
“And, Buddy, I expect you to start curbing your brothers’ bad behavior. You’re the oldest, and you got a responsibility to your dad to help out. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now y’all come on over here and give me some lovin’.”
All three boys followed her orders with hugs and kisses. It was truly a precious sight for Colt to witness. They were as gentle with her as pups to their mama. It made him reconsider his boys’ foolish ways. Maybe he stood a chance of raising fine, upstanding citizens after all. With Mrs. Abernathy’s help, of course.
Colt walked over to the door. “Let me see you out.”
“Thanks,” she told him as she slipped on her fur-lined leather gloves. Then she and Colt strolled out into the brisk night air. Mrs. Abernathy tightened her scarf around her neck.
“It sure is cold early this year,” she said.
“Means we have a good chance at an early spring,” Colt answered.
Once Mrs. Abernathy was in her fire-red SUV, with the engine started, she powered down her window and said, “You got yourself a good woman in Helen. She’s a little high-spirited like them boys of yours, but she’ll be a good mother to your baby. And don’t be scared. She’s going to be all right. When the time comes, I’ll be at her side. You can count on it.”
Mrs. Abernathy was still a practicing RN and had helped half the women in Briggs deliver their babies. She acted as a support person for both the mom and the dad. She knew exactly when it was time to go to the hospital, and once there, she’d stay with the parents to help in any way she could. She’d been there for all three of Colt’s boys, and he hoped she could be there for this baby, as well.
“That would mean a lot to me. Thanks.”
“And about you and Helen dating and not wanting to rush into anything, don’t you know anything about women yet? It ain’t what you say. It’s what you do.”
“It’s been a while since I went courting a woman.”
“Nothing’s changed. It might seem like it has with all them electronic gadgets, but in the end you two gotta know for certain what you feel in your heart. Nothing else matters.”
“I’ll try to work on that. You’re a smart woman, Edith, and we’re lucky to have you in our lives.”
She reached out and patted his hand. “You sure are, and so is Dodge. He’s the luckiest dude in the valley.”
She chuckled and drove off into the night as Colt’s boys anxiously waited on the front porch for him to tell them the big news.
* * *
“SHE CAN’T BE our mother. She’s nothing like our mother. Our mother’s dead!” Buddy insisted as Colt tried his best to make his boys understand the situation. So far he was failing miserably. The boys had jumped to the conclusion that if Helen was the mother to their new little brother or sister, then she would be their mother, as well. Colt had tried to explain that wasn’t the case, but they couldn’t seem to understand the difference.
Colt and his boys were sitting at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate, and dressed in their pajamas. They were up late for a school night but Colt felt this was important enough to settle before he put them to bed. He thought they’d be as pleased as all get out that they were going to have another sibling. Instead they were about as happy as finding a rattler in their beds.
“I’d have to marry Helen in order for her to be your new mom.”
“Are you going to marry her?” Buddy asked, looking sullen.
“I don’t know that yet.”
“Does that mean you might marry her?”
Buddy was always too smart for his years. “I’m not ruling it out.”
“Would we have to call her mom?” Gavin asked.
“You boys are getting way ahead of things here. All I’m trying to tell you is that Helen’s baby will be part of our family, regardless if we get married or not.”
“Don’t you want to marry Helen, Papa?” Joey asked with a hot cocoa mustache.
Colt let out a sigh. “We need to get to know each other first.”
“But you already know each other, Papa. That doesn’t make sense.”
“We need to know each other better.”
“I don’t want you to marry Helen. We already have a mom,” Buddy insisted, plunking his mug down on the table, causing some of the liquid to spill out. “Sorry,” he said and wiped up the mess with his napkin.
“And nobody will ever take your mom’s place in your heart.”
Colt never expected his boys would react so negatively to the prospect of his getting remarried. He always assumed they would welcome another woman into their lives.
“If she was our mother, would we have to mind her?” Joey asked.
“Yes, you’d have to mind her just like you have to mind me.”
“That’s no fun,” Joey declared. Colt handed him a napkin and motioned for him to wipe his mouth. He did, then he placed it on his lap the way Colt had taught him.
“She’s fun now because she lets us do whatever we want to do,” Gavin explained. “If she’s our mother she won’t let us do anything. Everything will change. We don’t need another mother and we don’t want another brother or sister....”
“Don’t you love our mom anymore?” Buddy asked, his expression bordering on tears.
“Of course I do, and I always will. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love another woman, as well.”
“Are you gonna have two wives, Papa?” Joey wanted to know.
“What? No. I won’t have two wives and you won’t have two moms.”
“Oh, yes, we will,” Gavin said. “You ruined everything!”
And he stormed off to his room.
“We’re only dating,” Colt yelled after him. “It’s not like we’re even considering getting married.”
But Gavin had already slammed his door shut. Colt had never seen him so angry.
He turned to Buddy, who had gotten very quiet. “I thought you would be the happiest, son. Helen’s an expert rider. Once the baby’s born she’ll be able to pick up where I left off. You said you wanted to learn how to jump. Helen can teach you how to do that.”
“She’s not a jumper. She’s a shooter. She doesn’t know anything about equestrian stuff. That’s a different sport. And besides, once that little baby gets here she won’t want to do anything with us.”
“That’s not true, son. She’ll want
to do lots of things with you and your brothers.”
“We get into too much trouble,” Joey said. “Nobody wants to do anything with us.”
Colt countered, “You boys are spirited, is all.”
“Joey’s right,” Buddy said, sliding off his chair. “You don’t even want to do stuff with us anymore, why should Helen?”
A twinge of guilt gripped Colt’s stomach. He’d been working so hard on the ranch, fixing tractors, mending fences, checking on the livestock with Travis every day, vaccinating, caring for their ailments, hauling feed and dealing with all aspects of the harvest that he’d been putting things off with his boys. “I’m sorry if you feel that way, son, I...”
But Buddy had already stomped off, slamming the same bedroom door. He shared the room with Gavin. Normally, Colt would never tolerate such behavior, but he figured he’d give them a pass when it came to their emotions about their mother. Losing her had been, in some ways, harder on them than it had been on Colt. Especially on Buddy, who had followed her around like a puppy dog.
Colt turned to Joey in a last-ditch effort to make him understand that his marriage, if it ever happened, and that was a big whopper of an “if,” would be a good thing.
“What do you think, son?”
Joey swung his feet back and forth under the table. “Will she have to move in here with us?”
“I reckon so, yes.”
“Where will she sleep?”
“With me.”
“Does that mean we won’t be able to sleep with you when we’re scared?”
“Not every time, but we can make exceptions.”
Joey thought about that for a moment then took a couple good long gulps of his hot chocolate. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth on his napkin, folded it and placed it next to his cup. He stared over at Colt. “Where will her baby sleep?”
“Probably with us for a while, then in its own room. You’ll have to bunk in with your brothers.”
“How come the baby gets to sleep with you and Helen and we don’t?”
“Because you boys have your own rooms.”
“But you just said the baby will have its own room. Why can’t you put it in there right away?”
“Because newborn babies need to be close to their mothers.”
“Did I sleep with my mother?”
“You slept with me, son.”
“Where was my mother, Papa?”
“In heaven with God.”
“Didn’t she like me, Papa?” Big tears tumbled out of his eyes and slid down his chubby little cheeks. For the first time in a long time, Colt realized how small and vulnerable Joey was.
The question broke Colt’s heart. Joey hadn’t ever really questioned him about his mother. Colt had always known the subject would come up one day and he’d prepared countless speeches for it, but never had he prepared for this.
“Come on over here, son,” Colt urged, patting his lap for his boy to come and sit. Joey climbed up and laid his head on his father’s chest. Colt stroked his blond hair thinking how it felt like silk and how his late wife, Karen, would have pampered and loved this boy. He looked just like her and sometimes, when he was sleeping, he knew she was lying right there with him, singing him a lullaby.
“Your mama couldn’t wait for you to be born. You made her happy each and every day. I remember one day in particular when she was watching me hang the cowboy wallpaper you still have in your room, when she finally decided on your name, Joseph Dodge Granger. After that, she always referred to you as her little Joey.”
“It was her papa’s name, right?”
“Yep, plus my papa’s name.”
“Is my other grandpa up in heaven with Mama?”
“I suspect they’re both in heaven watching over you and your brothers.”
“Do you think Mama likes Helen?”
“I think she does because Helen is good to her little Joey, and Buddy and Gavin and me. And your mama knows that Helen is a very special lady who will need all the respect and kindness we can give her.”
Joey yawned and rubbed his eyes with his fists just like he did when he was a baby. Colt picked him up, carried him to his room, tucked him in bed and gave him his favorite stuffed animal. Joey still slept with his now tattered brown bunny. The bunny his mother bought him a week before he was born.
“Papa, I hope Helen moves in with us.”
Colt kissed his son’s forehead, happy that at least one of his boys had finally accepted her. He knelt down on one knee next to the bed, and brushed Joey’s curls out of his eyes.
“Why’s that, son?”
“She makes better hot cocoa than you do.”
* * *
HELEN SPENT THE next week in Jackson with her parents. Milo’s house was fine, but Helen had too many things she needed to do to justify hanging around his place. She knew Tater was in good hands with Milo, so she drove home the next afternoon.
Even though she and Colt couldn’t see each other like they had hoped to, they spent every night on the phone in long conversations about each other’s day. Helen found herself looking forward to hearing his reassuring voice after a busy day of shopping and appointments as she waded through her new life. Lately, each and every day was consumed by baby preparations. Between learning how to create healthy organic food, courtesy of her eager female cousins, going to doctor’s appointments, remembering to take an assortment of vitamins at different times of the day, which her stepmom had sorted out for her in little plastic containers, to getting the right amount of exercise, to deciding on the type of birthing classes she wanted to take, her main focus had gone from winning a championship to everything maternal.
“I can’t seem to relax,” she told Kendra as she parked her monster SUV in front of the baby supplies store that Kendra had insisted on driving her to even though it was about an hour away from both Jackson and Briggs. It was the mega baby store that Kendra had shopped at for all her babies, and according to Kendra, no other store could touch it.
Helen’s stepmom wanted to join them, but at the last minute she decided to stay in bed and nurse a cold she’d been fighting for the past couple of days. Helen considered driving to the store on her own, but she didn’t know the first thing about what she needed for this baby let alone what she should register for. Kendra and Helen’s stepmom, Janet, were throwing her a baby shower in the next couple of weeks, so Helen needed to start picking out what she wanted...as if making those decisions was even remotely possible.
“Just go with the flow, sweetie, and you’ll be fine,” Kendra told Helen as they walked through the open automatic doors.
“Wow!” Helen couldn’t believe her eyes. The store was massive. Baby stuff for as far as the eye could see, and then some. “Shouldn’t Colt be here? After all, he’s done all this three times before. Surely he’d know exactly what the baby needs.”
Whereas this was totally foreign to Helen. It felt as if she was walking into an alien world and someone said, Now go and thrive.
“Did somebody say my name?” Colt said as he came out from behind a counter filled with baby bottles and sterilizers.
At once Helen felt relieved and walked right up to him and gave him a tight hug, grateful that he’d taken the time to be there for her. He felt safe and strong, and all she wanted to do was stand there and kiss him.
“Thanks for this, Colt,” she whispered in his ear. “I can’t do this on my own.”
“I wouldn’t want you to, darlin’.”
And he kissed her, a brush of a kiss, but enough for the memory of their lovemaking to spark through her body, causing her to slightly flush.
Somehow he’d gotten more good-looking since the other night, if that was even possible, or she was falling hard for this cowboy and seeing him through emotion rather than reality. Either wa
y, the view was spectacular.
“That’s why we’re here,” Kendra said with a lilt to her voice. “They carry organic cotton baby clothes, and untreated wooden cribs. You wouldn’t want to put your baby in anything synthetic. I didn’t know any better with my first baby and made some terrible mistakes. Poor thing was allergic to almost everything. It wasn’t until I read about organics and I made the switch when my second baby was born that my son got over his allergies. Anything that’s not earth friendly shouldn’t be in the same room as a newborn. I think they even carry organic cotton crib sheets and receiving blankets. You can never have too many receiving blankets.”
Helen could see the sparkle in Kendra’s eyes as she looked around at pink make-your-own-baby-food blenders, and something she kept calling a receiving blanket—obviously a big deal to her—and extremely scary-looking breast pumps.
“Relax,” Colt told Helen, privately while Kendra was out of earshot. “Kendra’s just excited about helping you. After three boys, I can tell you for a fact, organic or synthetic, that little baby won’t care a hoot as long as you’re holding it in your arms.”
Helen leaned into him and he kissed her again. She could get used to his kisses, his soothing voice and his cowboy ways. Too bad he represented everything she’d worked so hard to avoid.
A friendly young woman with long blond hair and dazzling white teeth sat behind a desk and filled in a form on a computer screen with the answers Helen gave her. She wanted Helen’s due date, her full name, address, phone number and the sex of the baby. Helen told her she thought it was a boy, but the woman typed in TBD because technically Helen wasn’t sure yet. When the girl completed the form she handed Helen an electronic pad, and told her to just scan everything and anything she wanted. “The pad is all set up for you. It will pick up the scans, sort them out and create a registry for you. It’s simple. You can always add or delete things online once you get home.”