by Norah Wilson
“It really does sound like a great offer,” April said. “Sidney would have to be enrolled in school...”
“No problem,” Sid said. “I’m smart as hel—uh, heck. I can handle this, Mom.”
April waved her off, as if handling it hadn’t been a worry. As if her daughter’s ability was a given. “I know how smart you are, Sid. But…”
“But I’ve changed schools before.”
“I know, Ladybug. Too many times.”
Scott knew she’d be more than fine. She was smart as hell. If he knew Sid the Kid, she’d be leading the class by Christmas.
Then what happens for Sidney? For April?
He shook the thought away.
“So what would the job entail, exactly?” April’s hands were folded in front of her on the kitchen table. Neatly. Definitely in down-to-business mode.
Thankfully, Uncle Arden was quick to answer.
“Meal planning, shopping to stock the stuff you need, cooking, maybe some cleaning,” he said.
She frowned. “I can’t see that filling all my time.”
“Don’t forget the Halloween party!” Sidney said.
“Halloween party?” That was the first Scott had heard of a Halloween party in…well, years. By the look on everyone else’s face, he was pretty sure it was the first any of them had heard about it.
The surprise must have registered with Sidney too. She looked at Scott.
“You said the party was a yearly event here. A big one. There was bobbing for apples, and pin the tail on Frankenstein, and that the old folks would bring real caramel apples—Mom makes those. And fudge. She makes that too. Almost everyone dressed up, even the adults. Don’t you remember?” She looked at him imploringly.
“I do.” He grinned. “One year Titus dressed up as Batman. Split his tights bobbing for apples. And all I can say is thank goodness for the cape.”
Sid giggled.
Titus shook his head. “Ah, that never gets old, does it? Oh wait, it is old. Like almost fifteen freakin’ years.”
Arden put a hand on Titus’s shoulder before the sibling one-upmanship escalated. “You know, boys, we’re sprucing up the Far South Barn anyway. I know it’ll be busy with the apple-picking, but with April’s help, we could get the place ready for a little Halloween event. Maybe something small scale.”
From Scott’s experience, no matter the intentions, there was no such thing as small scale when it came to parties in the Far South Barn. Not when word got around that one was happening. And if they went ahead with it, it would be the first Halloween party in that barn since the Standish kids were in high school. Once his mom, Margaret, had taken ill, that one tradition had ended.
For the community’s sake, Titus had ensured that the Christmas dances continued, usually with a crap-load of help from Ember. Scott felt that familiar dusting of guilt. He could have done more; should have done more. While Arden approved, he hadn’t had the heart to participate at those events, beyond making a brief appearance. The Halloween event, on the other hand, had been easy to let go. With the Standish kids grown and two out of three of them no longer living in Harkness, it just seemed like too much work.
Scott was glad to see Uncle Arden offering to resuscitate the tradition, apparently happily. That was huge, given his ambivalence about anything that happened in that barn now that Margaret was gone. Sid the Kid seemed to have found an ally.
“A Halloween party?” Titus shrugged. “Yeah, that’d be doable, as long as someone is prepared to do the planning and preparation.”
“Excellent.” Arden rubbed his hands together. “It also sounds like a good way for our Sidney to make some new friends.” He turned to April. “I mean, if you intend to stay.”
“Do you really need the help?” She addressed the question to Arden, not Scott.
Scott held his breath as he waited for Arden to answer.
“I know you think we’re trying to help you out here,” Arden said. “And if it does help, so much the better. But you’d really be helping us out too. There’s lots to do around here, and this place can use a woman’s touch.” He looked at his sons sharply. “If either of you tell your sister I said that, I’ll skin you both.”
Scott looked at April. She met his gaze with those beautiful, changeable brown eyes. At that precise moment, they looked the color of copper pennies. She drew a deep breath and he knew she was going to accept. His heart started thumping crazily, but he couldn’t have said whether the spike was from pleasure or trepidation.
April looked at Sid. “You really want this, don’t you, Ladybug?”
Axl had been sitting by Sid’s stool. As if he could feel the shift, the dog’s tail started wagging even before his new friend’s feet hit the floor. Sid launched herself into her mother’s arms. “Oh, yes! Can we please?”
“We can,” she said. “But only until Christmas.”
Sid pulled back. “Why just till Christmas?”
“Because…I have another job starting then.”
That’s the first Scott had heard of it. “Oh, yeah? Where’s that?”
She wet her lips. “I…I applied to a small resort in Northern Ontario. They have a position coming available in the new year and they want me to fill it.”
“In Northern Ontario?” Arden looked to almost shudder. “Pretty cold part of the country.”
“Where specifically?” Titus asked.
April shrugged. “Small town. I don’t recall right off.”
Not the best lie Scott had ever heard.
“But you don’t have to take it,” Sidney pointed out. “We don’t have to leave at Christmas.”
April sent Scott a pleading look.
True, he’d only offered her the position for the next two months, but mostly because he didn’t think she’d accept anything longer term. But just because he was leaving after Christmas didn’t mean she had to go too. He just sort of figured there’d be time enough to talk about an extension down the road if he could only get her to accept the job now. Once she settled in, she’d be comfortable here in Harkness in her own right and wouldn’t need him around.
But she didn’t know that, of course.
When this master plan had come together in his mind, he wasn’t sure. But the more he thought it through, the more he wanted to make it happen. For April and Sid.
And crap, was she lying about having that job lined up in Northern Ontario for him? So that Sid wouldn’t blame him when the job expired and they had to move on.
Unless…maybe she didn’t want to stay past Christmas?
He searched her face. She seemed to want him to back up the two-month term, so he did. “That’s all the job here is for, Sid, to get us over a hump. You must have missed that part of the conversation when you overheard your mother and me talking.”
Titus and Uncle Arden said nothing.
April telegraphed her thanks with her eyes. Well, at least he’d made one of the Morgan girls happy.
“This sounds like our respective problems are solved—a match made in Heaven, as they say,” Arden said. “That is if you’ll say yes.”
April looked at each of them, ending with her daughter. “Sidney, if we stay, there’ll have to be a few conditions.”
“Like what?”
Scott knew what was coming.
“No more running away,” April said sternly. “That’s the big one. I’ve never been so worried in all my life as when I found you missing. And then there was the little thing with sending all that money to the dog shelter.”
“Did the Boisverts fire you?”
“Leaving was my decision,” she said quickly. “But Dr. Boisvert was very upset.”
He knew she hated to lie, especially to her daughter. She really wasn’t very good at it. Color rose in her cheeks.
Sid dropped her gaze. Axl nudged her hand and she sank her fingers into his fur. From the rise and fall of her little chest, Scott could see she was near tears.
“You two must want to talk,” Scott sa
id. “Have some alone time.”
The phone rang—thankfully not the search and rescue distinct ring. Arden excused himself to go answer it.
“I’ll give you a hand with the painting, bro,” Titus said.
“That’d be great.” He nodded at April and Sid, “Later ladies.”
The two men walked in silence to the Far South Barn. But it was a silence Scott didn’t figure would last. He was right.
As soon as they reached the barn, Titus said, “So where are we going to keep everybody?”
“Keep them?”
“Sleeping arrangements,” Titus said. “I know Ember doesn’t mind sharing the room with Sidney –she’s been spending most of her nights with Jace anyway.”
“Does Uncle Arden know this?”
Titus cast him a get-real look. “She’s twenty-eight, Scott.”
True, but she was still their kid sister.
“Maybe we could move things out of Mom’s old sewing room?” Titus said. “Fix it up temporarily for April. Pretty small room, though. Probably wouldn’t hold more than a single bed and a dresser.”
“She can sleep in my room,” Scott said.
Titus raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll sleep in the loft.” He nodded up toward the hay mow. “I do that half the time when I’m home anyway.” He’d bought a latex foam mattress, lugged it up there, and laid it out on a sleeping platform he’d constructed. The air was fresher out here, especially when he threw open the wide hayloft windows to stargaze. When he left again, the mattress and blankets could be quickly rolled up and shoved into the truck bed chest he’d bought secondhand for rodent-safe storage.
“That’d work,” Titus conceded. He strode over to the staging Scott had erected yesterday, testing its strength. Apparently, it met his approval. He turned back to Scott. “You know you’re going to be April’s employer, right?”
“You think she can’t do the job?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure she’s more than capable of taking care of things around here. You didn’t exactly look underfed when you got here.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’ve never been accused of understanding women—”
“I know. Everyone’s surprised as hell you ended up with a great gal like Ocean Siliker.”
Titus smiled. “She’s a keeper.”
A keeper—oh God, why did that word send cold fingers up his spine? Why did it give him the urge to get out while the getting was good? Like he would be the end of December. His mind flashed to April, Sidney—and having to say goodbye to them all over again.
Titus continued, “But I’m guessing she’d be out of here in a flash if she thought it was some sort of pity project.”
“She would.” He cast Titus a look. “By the way, thanks for backing me up in there when I dropped that on you guys.”
“No problem. But my point is you can’t be with her while she’s working here. No hanky-panky.”
“Hanky-panky?” Scott snorted. “What are we? Twelve? And what makes you think I’m interested in her that way?”
“’Cause you’re not a fool. Well, not much of one. She’s beautiful, purportedly talented in the kitchen, and it would seem she’s currently in need of help or shelter. At least two of those things are in your romantic wheelhouse, and I’m not talking about her cooking.”
“She’s also a single mother who has no interest in a temporary hook-up with a rolling stone like me.”
“Then I guess we can add smart to the list of her attributes.”
“Gee, thanks, brother.”
“You said it yourself—not much future for her in that kind of relationship, especially with the kid in tow. I was just thinking you don’t want her feeling this job you offered her comes with any…expectations.”
“Of course it doesn’t!”
He held up his hands. “Glad to hear it. But I saw the way you looked at her. Maybe I don’t know much about women, but I know you. You’ve got feelings for April. And the child.”
“Kid.”
“Come again?”
“Sid’s a kid. Not a child. There’s a difference, evidently.”
Titus scratched a hand along the back of his neck. “The thing is, I know you didn’t hire April thinking there was any expectation of sex. Just make sure she knows.”
Scott nodded. “Got it.”
“Another thing,” Titus said. “I know you’re running the farm now for the next few months. Thank you again for that. I’m enjoying the break.”
“Least I could do.”
“Dad’s got a handle on the bookwork,” Titus continued. “But where are April’s wages going to come from? Have you thought of that?”
He had. “They’ll come out of mine.”
There had always been a ‘wage’ paid from the farm to the family in proportion to their responsibility. Even as kids, allowances were given based on how much they contributed. Want more—do more. Ember had worked sixty-hour weeks on her summer vacations in high school to earn what she could for university. When Scott had been saving for his first dirt bike, he’d put in just as many. That was the way it was on the farm too when they were grown. Titus was temporarily stepping down from managing the place, handing over the small salary to Scott, along with the responsibility.
“Even if you split it fifty/fifty with her, that’s not going to be much of a salary—for either of you.”
“We won’t be splitting it,” Scott said. “She can have it all.”
Chapter 9
“IT’S A start, right?” Sidney put the question to the Harkness sky, awash with more stars than she’d seen in her life.
She pulled Scott’s jacket a little bit tighter. Her fall coat was in the wash. She’d gotten some grease on it from her travels in the back of Scott’s truck, and her mother insisted it needed laundering before her first day of school. So when she’d headed out the door after supper, Scott had stopped her and handed her his coat. She’d swung it on gladly, practically disappearing into it.
Even with the oversized coat, the cold of the wooden steps beneath her butt worked its way through.
She’d thought about setting up her telescope, seeing if Scott wanted to come out and look at the sky with her like he had on her birthday. Not that she needed the help with the setup anymore; it was simple. But in the end, she decided against it.
She’d save that nocturnal sightseeing for another time. A more important time.
She listened to the evening sounds around her—that wind rustling through the trees, a distant dog’s low woofing from somewhere up the road. It was only six forty, and already the sky was dark—the stars were coming out. She’d missed that very first one…
So she’d try again tomorrow.
For once, Axl wasn’t beside her. There’d been quite a crowd for supper—Titus and his girlfriend Ocean. Ocean’s mom, Faye. Ember and Jace, Scott, Uncle Arden, her mom. With the extra table scraps Axl had scored, he was now sound asleep on the rag rug in the hall.
Sidney had felt awful when her mom had told her how worried she’d been to find her gone. But the smile on her face at suppertime had been real. Sid knew the difference. She wasn’t just smart about book stuff and memorizing facts. She was smart about people stuff too.
Where to explore…
Sidney pushed to her feet and walked around the house. This late in the fall, the leaves that remained were dried out and crunched under her sneakers as she shuffled through them. That was fine. There was a beauty to the brown curled leaves as much as to the red, gold and yellow ones. And besides they were louder. And you could kick them higher when you walked.
She didn’t explore far, mainly because she wanted to keep the light of the house in sight. The curtains were drawn back on the kitchen window and the brightly lit square of glass felt like it was both watching over and welcoming back.
She ended up at the edge of the lawn, where a single big apple tree stood. Scott had called it a Bramley. She remembered everything
he’d told her. These were the apples that his Harkness mom, Margaret, had made all those pies from.
She moved closer until she stood under the tree’s gnarled branches. Most of the apples had already been picked from this particular tree. There were still plenty of apples on the trees in the actual orchard, though. Mostly Sandows, Scott said, because they were the easiest to grow without chemical spraying. Something about not being scabby. She’d thought that was pretty funny—apples with scabs—but he assured her it was true, that it came from a fungus.
Scott had said he’d take her to pick some. They’d need a fair bunch for bobbing at the Halloween party, and her mother would need some for the candied apples she was going to make.
It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a really nice, shiny apple for the teacher. She was going to get registered for school tomorrow morning. From her many experiences changing schools, she knew they might not let her join the class straight away. Sometimes they took her in just as soon as the paperwork was signed if the class wasn’t too big. Sometimes they had to do some juggling to squeeze her in. She hoped she got to stay tomorrow.
Her stomach fluttered thinking about it. She was happy to be here in Harkness, excited to start school. But nervous too. It was always good to get the first day over and done with.
Sidney trailed her left hand along the rough bark of the apple tree as she walked around it, under the dark, low branches. She stopped, facing the mountain. Harkness Mountain. That place with all the trails, the slopes and that little cabin Scott’s great-grandmother and her sisters used to grow flowers in as a side business years ago.
Yeah, right! She wasn’t so young as to believe that! They wouldn’t grow flowers up there. Tomatoes, maybe, but flowers? Doubtful.
She was pretty sure everything else Scott had told her about this place, about growing up in Harkness, was true. She’d listened to him all summer long. She turned her head slightly west, looked past the house. A cold night was settling in over the straw-covered fields, and she shivered inside Scott’s coat.
The Bone Road was that way. When Scott was fourteen, that’s where he’d spilled his first dirt bike. His Harkness Mom never knew. If she had, she’d never have let him ride again. But Uncle Arden came across him and Titus when they were trying to secretly repair the bike before anyone learned about the accident.