Darby looked at her mother, trying to guess at her motives. It seemed everyone as of late was trying to push her into John’s arms. Not that it took all that much effort anymore. On a physical level, she was more than willing to admit there was something special between them and had stopped fighting. The rest was what remained blurry.
“Is that the real reason for the early-morning visit?” she asked her mother quietly.
“No,” Adelia looked affronted. “But as long as I’m here, I thought I should say something.”
Darby grimaced and glanced at the clock. “I thought you only had five minutes.”
“I can squeeze out a few more.” Adelia leaned against the counter, sipping the coffee she’d made while Darby had dressed.
“I bet you can.”
Her mother glanced to where the girls were pouting into their cereal bowls. She kept her voice low. “You know, they’re not very happy about John being around.”
Just then, Darby really didn’t care what the girls were or were not happy about. She’d just about exhausted her patience with the girls and their animosity toward John. A good, long talk was overdue. And just as soon as John left for the office, and her mother for work, she and the twins were going one-on-two.
That moment came quickly. Her mother gave up trying to engage Darby in any conversation concerning her new living arrangements, and John practically shot through the kitchen in his crisp sheriff’s uniform, pausing for a quick kiss to Darby’s cheek and a wave to the girls, who reacted with fierce scowls.
Finally Darby was alone with the twins, who returned to pouting into their cereal bowls.
Darby crossed her arms, waiting for one or the other to look up at her. Not surprisingly, Erin was the first.
Darby raised a brow, trying not to tap her foot. “So what do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Us?” Erin said incredulously. “You were the one being bad.”
Darby picked up the bowls and placed them in the sink, then sat down in the chair across from them. “How, exactly, was I being bad?”
“You were sleeping with…with…”
“The man I love,” she said.
Darby caught her breath. But the instant the words came out of her mouth, she felt the rightness of them. Warmth and a thrill of excitement raced over her skin, making her feel whole, somehow. And making her feel better equipped to deal with two very nosy, meddling little girls.
“You love Daddy,” Erin said.
Darby cleared her throat. She hadn’t intended to have the conversation concerning their father right now, but seeing as it likely tied into everything else that was going on around the house recently, she figured she had better face it head-on.
“Yes, Erin, I did love your daddy. Very much. And he loved all of us.”
She had both twins’ attention now.
She recrossed her legs and straightened her robe. “Do you remember the talk we had after Daddy’s accident?”
They nodded in unison.
“How I said that Daddy had gone to heaven, and that while he’ll always be with us here—” she covered her heart with her hand “—physically he’s gone forever?”
Clearly they remembered.
Darby attempted to rein in her own emotions, not wanting to come down too hard on them where their father was concerned. Reminding herself that the girls had lost a parent. “It’s very difficult to let Daddy go. I know that.” Her voice was quiet, steady. “But you have to understand that no matter what you think has happened…he’s not coming back.”
Tears shone in Lindy’s eyes, and all the starch drained out of Darby.
“Told you so,” Erin said, glaring at her sister.
Okay, so that meant only Lindy held tightly to the belief that her father would return.
Darby focused her gaze on Erin. “You and I need to talk about your attitude toward John. But for now I want you to go upstairs.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” Darby cringed. She’d sworn she’d never use those words on her own children. Lord knows she’d heard them often enough from her own mother while growing up. That now should serve as the time she would understand why made her grimace. “And I want you to stay up there until I call you back down.”
“But—”
“No buts. Go.”
Erin wriggled, but didn’t get up.
“Now.”
Finally Erin budged from her chair and stomped from the room as if Darby was the worst parent in the world. And that was okay, Darby realized. For the past year, in her efforts to help the girls through their grief, she feared she had tried to be their best friend, instead of their mother. It was long past time she stretched her parenting muscles.
Lindy sat with her chin tucked into her tiny chest, the tears that had been sparkling in her eyes now gliding down her cheeks. As soon as Darby heard Erin slam her bedroom door upstairs, she reached for Lindy. “Come here,” she said, and pulled her onto her lap. With the sleeve of her robe she wiped the moisture from her daughter’s cheeks only to watch as even more tears fell.
She ducked her head to try to catch Lindy’s gaze. “Lindy, look at me.”
The girl blinked her brown eyes and did as Darby asked.
“I know you thought Daddy spoke to you on your radio—”
“He did.”
Lindy’s quivering chin nearly did Darby in. She took a deep breath and held her daughter closer. “Okay. Let’s say for the sake of argument that he did speak to you.” She smoothed her hair back from her face and fought to keep her gaze from straying. “Do you think it could have been to say goodbye?”
Lindy didn’t respond.
“Your daddy loved you—you know that, don’t you? He loved both you and Erin more than anything in the whole wide world.”
“And…you.” Lindy’s voice broke.
Darby smiled and leaned her chin against her daughter’s sweet-smelling head. “Yes. Me, too.” She rocked the six-year-old slightly. “I think it’s important for you to know that it wasn’t anything you did. Daddy didn’t leave because he was mad at you. Or me. Or Erin. It’s just that God needed your daddy more than we did.” She pressed a kiss to her hair. “And he’s not coming back, sweetie.”
“But he is,” Lindy whispered. “He is.”
Darby pulled back and looked her in the face.
“He’s coming back because Jesus came back,” the little girl said. “And if he can come back, why can’t Daddy?”
Oh, dear. “Sweetheart, Jesus rose from the dead. That much is right. But then he went up to heaven to join his father, God. Just like your daddy did.”
“But…”
Darby noticed that this but was a little hesitant, Lindy a little less sure of herself.
“He’s not coming back, sweet pea. He’s just not.”
Her daughter started crying again, softly.
Darby merely sat there holding Lindy and slightly rocking her as the child’s words and the meaning behind them sank in.
“Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways, Lindy,” she said at last. “Sometimes what happens isn’t fair. Other times wonderful things happen, too.”
The girl’s quiet sobs began to subside.
Darby smiled as she again used the sleeve of her robe to dry the tears, then reached for a paper napkin on the table to get Lindy to blow her nose. “You know, sometimes things have to happen, things that we don’t understand, to nudge us down the paths that are mapped out for us.”
“Like destiny?” Lindy asked, her curiosity returning, which was a good sign. A good sign indeed.
“Yes. Very much like destiny.”
Her daughter nodded and her thoughts seemed to turn inward, though she gave no indication that she was ready to get down off Darby’s lap. So Darby remained where she was.
Then Lindy’s eyes met Darby’s. “Do you think Daddy sent Uncle Sparky to you and us?”
Darby caught her breath. Just when she thought she had the wending worki
ngs of her daughter’s mind figured out, she’d fling a zinger like that at her, catching her completely off guard.
Only this zinger felt somehow…right.
She smiled at Lindy, then pressed her lips to her forehead. “You know, he just might have.”
John stood staring at his office wall. A map of the tri-state area stretched across it, bearing pins of the main routes, secondary routes, the Maumee River and the outlying areas where the two escapees could lie low until the search ground down. He ran his hand through his hair, then scratched his head. Only a handful of calls had come in on possible sightings. All of them had been explained away. A paperboy delivering his papers much later than he should have, raising the suspicions of an elderly neighbor who didn’t subscribe. A farmer searching for his wayward cow. And, of course, there were the calls from Elva Mollenkopf reporting odd incidents—and to her basically everything that happened in the town was odd. “Old Jake is acting preoccupied. You think maybe the fugitives are hiding in the basement of his store?” Or John’s personal favorite, “That Penelope Moon has always been strange. It would be just like her to take in the fugitives in the name of human rights. A kind of New Age underground railroad.”
John snatched up the phone and began dialing Darby’s number. It was midafternoon and he hadn’t talked to her since leaving this morning. This morning…
He misdialed, then pressed the disconnect button and held it.
Having been raised in such a large family, very few things were capable of embarrassing him. But waking up with disapproving six-year-olds staring at him as he lay in bed with their mother still made him cringe.
Over the past week he’d tried everything to get the girls to come around. And he’d succeeded to a degree. Away from Darby, the three of them seemed to have resumed their preproposal relationship. He rough-housed with them, drank tea out of teensy china cups and answered myriad questions on his job as sheriff.
But put him and Darby in the same room—much less the same bed, and the twins clammed up and glared at them as if they were doing something unforgivable.
And perhaps in their young eyes, he and Darby were doing something unforgivable. He couldn’t begin to imagine losing one of his parents when he was their age. What pain they must have gone through, having their safe little world with two doting parents torn asunder.
Then, on the heels of that, to have their mother become intimately involved with a man they had known their entire lives as Uncle Sparky…
Poor Darby. While he could escape to work, she was left alone to deal with the two headstrong girls. He released the disconnect button and began dialing again. He was on the last number when something on the map caught his gaze. Receiver still in hand, he leaned back and looked at Ed, who, bandage firmly in place, was at the front desk, eating something.
“Ed? Has anyone checked out the Jenkins place?”
Mouth full, Ed turned his head toward him, his brow creased in thought. He swallowed. “Can’t say as I know,” he admitted. “Why?”
John slowly replaced the receiver.
Why indeed? It didn’t make much sense for the fugitives to return to a house that had been nothing but a random stop on the way to their destination. Then again, no one had ever quite determined what the fugitives’ ultimate destination had been. Why stop in Old Orchard at all? Why not continue on? Or why not bypass the town altogether?
He walked to the map and traced a line from the sheriff’s office to Old Violet Jenkins’s place. Once outside town, there would have been no one at home in any of the neighboring farms to see them, because the owners would have been away at work.
His gaze stopped at one farm in particular. Darby’s farm. He smiled. He could always head over there for a quick…hello while checking out the Jenkins place.
He picked up his hat, checked his revolver and headed for the door.
“Ed, I’m going out there.”
The older man wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “You want me to call for backup?”
John hesitated near the door. “No. I’m probably on a wild-goose chase.” He opened the door. “I’ll give you a call when I get there.”
John drove up Violet Jenkins’s neatly paved driveway. The flowers she was known for were in full bloom when others’ flowers had yet to break the surface. He glanced at the daffodils, multicolored tulips and lilac bushes that needed a little trimming hugging the front of the single-story white house. Violet had lived here with her husband for some forty years before Jasper died five years ago. They’d never had children. Whether it was by choice or because they’d been unable to, nobody knew for sure. The couple had kept pretty much to themselves, with Jasper commuting to the next town for his job as comptroller for the canning factory there. They’d attended church services in town, went to all the town events, were friendly and unassuming, but Violet appeared to prefer her garden to people. Seemed fitting, then, that her dead body was found slumped over her tulip bed six months ago, her gloved hands still buried in the soil.
John coasted to a stop, then switched off the ignition. The house didn’t look any different than it had more than a week ago when he’d first apprehended Lyle and Ted Smythe. He’d been on a routine drive-around at the time, the Jenkins house a frequent stop because it was empty, and because of the rumors still circulating about what Violet had done with her husband’s life insurance money. She’d never deposited it in her bank account. John stepped toward the side door. He preferred to think she gave the funds to charity. Others, however, were convinced she’d stashed it inside the house somewhere, sparking the interest of several local treasure hunters. He couldn’t count the number of people he’d had to chase off in the weeks after Violet’s death.
Things had been quiet lately, though. At least until the two fugitives had come to town.
John reached out and tried the doorknob. Locked. As it should be. He glanced through the window, saw nothing out of the ordinary inside and started toward the back of the house.
Lyle and Ted Smythe were probably long gone, Old Orchard nothing but a bitter memory for them. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at his watch. He wondered what Darby was doing. And whether or not she’d welcome a surprise visit.
He rounded the corner of the house and found out the hard way that his instincts had been right. The fugitives had, indeed, returned there.
If the whack to the back of the head wasn’t proof enough, watching the two fugitives, still in sheriff’s office jumpsuits, running away from him as he lay there trying to shake the bells ringing through his head definitely was.
Then he realized in which direction the fugitives were running.
“Damn.”
John tried to scramble to his feet, but he fell back again and his world went black.
“Erin, don’t feed Billy your chocolate-chip cookie—he’ll get sick,” Darby called from her side of the barn. It was midafternoon and they were nearly done with their chores. Which was more than okay with Darby, because it meant she was that much closer to the time she’d see John again.
Erin immediately put her hand behind her back and gave Darby a smile that was all innocence and sunshine. “What, Mommy? I wasn’t feeding Billy anything.”
Darby rolled her eyes and spread fresh straw in Lily the Llama’s stall. The animal had been a neighbor’s idea of a unique pet for his wife. Only his wife hadn’t wanted the animal, or any animal for that matter, and within a week Darby found herself with a new addition to The Promised Land farm, along with a healthy donation to see to the animal’s upkeep. Which was more than she got with most of the animals. Usually they were left either in a box or tied to her side door with no note. Although, given the size of the town, it wasn’t difficult to find out who had left what.
Darby sidestepped the llama as the animal hoofed her way in to check out her clean digs. Following on Lily’s footsteps was the runt of the barn cat’s latest litter, making a nest in a corner of the stall, then curling up in it and going to sleep. Lily nos
ed the feline, then made a sound that conveyed to Darby a llama’s version of a thumbs-up. Considering the interesting mix of animals, it wasn’t all that unusual for different breeds to cozy up to each other. Darby smiled. This match was as unusual as it got.
“Happy you approve,” she said, patting Lily’s nose.
She backed out of the stall, taking her rake with her, one eye on the girls at the opposite end of the barn.
Lindy seemed to be adjusting well after their talk that morning, while her talk with Erin about her rudeness to John seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Just when, she wondered, had Erin gotten so stubborn? She blew her hair from her brow and watched Erin snatch something out of Lindy’s hand. Lindy gave chase and both girls ran outside the barn.
“Don’t go where I can’t see you,” Darby said automatically.
Neither responded. She sighed and returned to her chores. All that was left was to check the hay bales for dampness and peek in on the new piglet.
After determining that the bales were fine, she stopped outside the indoor portion of the pen Arnold—named such by the girls who didn’t understand the sex argument—and her own six piglets called home and crossed her hands on top of the wood rail. “How are you doing, Curly?” she asked the new addition.
The piglet was the same age as Arnold’s piglets and, she hoped, would fit in faster than another piglet might. It all depended on Arnold’s feelings on the matter. Darby reached into her pocket and took out her last apple half, extending it through the slats. Arnold waddled over, sniffed then gobbled the snack up, her wet nose giving Darby’s hand another pass. Darby stroked her fingers over her snout. “You’ll take care of Curly, won’t you, girl?” She glanced at the piglet cowering in the corner.
She kept stroking Arnold’s snout, her own piglets contenting themselves with checking out the freshly laid straw. She noticed Curly step forward, then fall back again.
“Come on, baby,” Darby quietly encouraged.
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