Sam lowered his butt to the ground beside Lane, biting off half his sandwich at one clip, and Lane herded his thoughts in another direction. He nodded toward Billy. “So what’s the story with the kid?”
“Why’s he here, you mean? He’s working off some community service hours by helping out the various farmers and ranchers in the area.”
“Oh?” The kid was quiet and seemed polite enough, from what little contact Lane had had with him. Hard worker, too. “What happened?”
“About a year ago, Billy got the bright idea to hold up the Git-n-Go with a fake gun. Stupid kid prank, but one that definitely needed nipping in the bud. But the judge decided sending him to jail would serve no good purpose, so he came up with the community service idea instead.”
Lane watched the young man for a second, then said, “You think the judge made the right decision?”
“Absolutely,” Sam said around the bite in his mouth. “I’ve seen a big change come over him in the past several months. He still keeps to himself, but doesn’t goof off, never gives me lip, and you can practically see his confidence swell when he’s done a good job.” Sam knocked back several swallows of water and said quietly, “Most everybody makes a few bad choices along the way. I sure as hell have. But it seems to me, especially with kids like Billy, the trick is to catch ’em and get ’em turned around before they start believing their own bad press. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Sam leaned back against the tree, one leg stretched out in front of him. “I think with Billy all it took was having somebody believe in him, somebody willing to look past all the crap to see the real kid caged up inside.”
“And that would be you?”
“Not just me, no. The judge, for one. And all of us who said we’d give the kid a chance.” He sort of laughed. “Hell, guess we figure there’s so few of us as it is, we can’t afford to let one of our own go down the tubes.” Then he looked over at Lane, his eyes shining with a conviction that stems from something far deeper than blind faith, Lane thought. “It doesn’t always work, I know that. Some folks seem bound and determined to shoot themselves in the foot, no matter what. But I think most people appreciate a hand to help pull them up out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves.”
Lane let his gaze drift out over the mowed field dotted with bales. “You sound a lot like my wife. I don’t know how I would have made it through Carly’s teenage years without Dena. She was always the calm one. The trusting one.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.” Sam exhaled loudly. “I’ve got six kids, Lane. And God knows I’m trying to do right by them, to set the best example I know how, but even the best kids sometimes pull some real dumb-assed stunts. So I’d like to think, if I wasn’t around for whatever reason, and one of ’em screwed up, that there’d be somebody willing to give them another chance to get it right, that’s all.”
“You’re worried about Libby, aren’t you?”
Sam stilled, water bottle halfway to mouth. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I still worry about Carly, even though she hasn’t been a teenager for almost twenty years. And I hate to tell you this, but your girl gets this look on her face that’s like looking back in time.”
“You know, I could have gone all day without knowing that.”
Lane chuckled, his laughter fading as he realized Sam was holding something back. “And…?” he prompted.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had some reservations about putting the two of them together.”
“Afraid my girl would corrupt yours, you mean?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly…”
“Yes, you would. And it’s okay. In your position, I probably would have thought the same thing.” Sam grunted. Lane glanced over at Billy, who was lying down, his hands braced under his head, plugged into a portable CD player. “You didn’t have to take us in, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. But I decided any gal who volunteers to take her father on an extended road trip can’t be all bad.”
Lane smiled. “You’ve got a point.”
Sam sloshed the water around in his bottle, then said, “I could be dead wrong, but something tells me that underneath all that attitude, she’s got a soft spot she doesn’t let many people see.”
Lane felt the helpless pang of any father whose child is so obviously hurting. “I think you’re probably right,” he said, once again thinking about Dena and how little he’d realized, until this minute, exactly how much of his strength he’d gleaned from his wife.
“You think you’ll ever get married again?” he asked, the question surprising him as much as it apparently did Sam.
Sam took another swallow of water and said, “I think I’ll have to give you a qualified ‘no’ on that.”
“Why qualified?”
“Because I learned a long time ago that nothing’s set in stone, that what seems perfectly logical one minute won’t make a lick of sense the next. So all I can say for now is, it took me a long time to adjust to life without Jeannie, to get the kids adjusted to getting along without her, and frankly, I’m not sure how anybody else would fit in. Or even if anybody’d want to.” He turned to Lane. “What about you?”
“I don’t know. Carly’s mother would be a hard act to follow, that’s for sure. But I liked being married. Liked the constancy of it.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Me, too.” He shifted again, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. “Nights are the hardest. And I don’t mean the sex, necessarily. I mean having someone to talk to. To listen. To make me laugh. I miss that.”
“I know what you mean.”
A browned hand streaked a hand through hair not much darker than Lane’s. “The other night, I gave Carly this whole song and dance about how it’s hard to miss somebody who’s still so much a part of your daily life. But anymore… Maybe I’m fooling myself. About not needing anybody else, I mean. I liked being married, too. Liked it a whole lot. I just don’t know if I could pull it off with anybody else.”
“Which isn’t enough to stop you from being attracted to my daughter.” Sam’s eyes shot to his; Lane chuckled. “Yes, it’s that obvious.”
Sam’s gaze held in his for several beats before, on a rush of breath, he looked away. “I haven’t even been tempted to get emotionally involved with somebody else since Jeannie passed. Still not sure I want to, or that I’m ready, or whatever. But even if I thought Carly and I had anything in common, even if I was absolutely sure I was ready to move on, for sure I’m not about to let my feelings get all tangled up about a woman who’s leaving in a few days.”
“I can understand that.” Lane paused, then said, “Three years is a long time.”
“Not compared with more than twenty,” Sam said, but without much conviction. But then he rallied with, “Besides, I don’t know what your daughter’s looking for, or even if she’s looking for anything, but I’m pretty sure I’m not it.”
“Then why are you going out of your way to avoid her?”
Sam laughed, a hollow sound. “Because in spite of everything I just said, there’s a little devil in my head hell-bent on convincing me I don’t know what in the blue blazes I’m talking about.” He stood, tossing his empty water bottle back into the cooler, then signaled to Billy it was time to get back to work. “If we haul ass, we should be able to finish this by sundown—”
Lane got to his feet, as well. “You know, now that I think about it…”
“Billy and I can finish up, if it’s too much for you.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s…”
And what did he think he was going to say? I think you’re exactly what my daughter needs? Oh, yeah, that’d go over really well. With both parties.
He laughed softly, tapping his head. “Too late. Whatever it was, it’s gone now. One of the hazards of growing old.”
“Shoot,” Sam said with a grin, “I’ve been doing that ever since I can remember. So…you wanna rake or bale?”
And that w
as the end of that discussion.
For now, at least.
Carly had to admit the past few days had been among the more peculiar of her life. Not because of anything that had happened—heck, she was in the middle of nowhere, nothing had happened, other than that one of the sows had given birth to about a million piglets—but because of all the weird stuff going on in her brain.
She’d assumed she’d go crazy in the country: she didn’t. She’d assumed she’d miss her life back in Cincinnati. She hadn’t. At least, not all that much. She’d assumed, when it became obvious that Sam was avoiding her, she’d shrug, say, “Whatever,” and stop thinking about him.
She couldn’t.
Even despite the one reaction that hadn’t surprised her in the least, that all these kids gave her the heebie-jeebies.
Nope, no dormant maternal instincts suddenly blossoming here. If anything, every time somebody clobbered or yelled at or wrestled with somebody else, she could feel her ovaries shrink in horror, clutching their little eggs and hanging up a little Sperm Not Welcome sign.
But back to Sam. Who was avoiding her. Whom she had to admit made her widdle jaded heart go awwww every time she saw him with one of the ovary-shrinking darlings. Because, well, there was a lot to be said for a man who could walk into the middle of a fracas, utter a single, deep-voiced, “Cut it out,” and cut out, it was. There was a lot to be said for a man comfortable with hugging and kissing his sons, a man who’d tear the house apart—and commandeer everyone else to help him—in order to find Travis’s favorite stuffed animal. An animal that Carly had yet to identify as having ever been part of the known animal kingdom.
There was a lot to be said for a man who could look a woman in the eye in such as way as to leave no doubt of his interest, but who also made it clear that nothing was going to come of it and yet, somehow, not make the woman feel rejected in the process. Truly, this was a gifted man.
Not that—between his work, her father, and all these kids—there’d been any way for anything to come of it, but still. A girl can dream.
And in less than three days—since Darryl Andrews had called and said the axle had come in, so he’d be finished up by Monday—that’s all this would be. A dream.
“You ready?” Libby said from the kitchen door.
“Yep,” Carly said, finishing her coffee. “Just let me go pee and we’re off.”
Okay, so maybe she’d sort of bonded with one of Sam’s off-spring. After that first rocky night, she and Libby had settled into a fairly calm relationship, based mainly on Libby’s griping about life in general and Carly’s sympathetic “Hmms” at appropriate places.
Another assumption blown to hell. That having a young girl dump on her would irritate the life out of her. Of course, knowing that the dumping had a limited run might have something to do with her tolerance level.
Libby—and Carly’s father, and Travis, and Radar, sheesh—were in the van already when Carly got outside. Sam was still doing his thing with the alfalfa, and apparently all the other boys were otherwise engaged, either helping their father or…whatever boys did when they weren’t at school or doing chores. So Carly and Dad, who needed to go into town anyway to stock up for the next leg of their trip, had volunteered to haul Libby, and whoever, along with them. Not that there was a whole lot of shopping one could do in Haven, but Libby said the Homeland would be fine for what she needed, that she had too much to do to take the time to go to the Wal-Mart over in Claremore.
Carly’s father opted to sit in back with Travis and the mutt, leaving Carly to drive and Libby with the passenger seat, which she clearly didn’t mind. Although her makeup was done more expertly than Carly’s, the skin under her eyes still sagged from her being up all night with Bernadette, the sow who’d given birth. Farrowed, Carly reminded herself, even though she predicted scant opportunity to work the word into the conversation once she left here.
“How’re the babies?”
That got a bright smile, even if the sow’s labor had put the kibbosh on Libby’s friend April spending the night. “Did you see them? Aren’t they gorgeous?”
“I did. And they are.” For pigs. “How many did she have again?”
“Seventeen.” Carly’s ovaries whimpered. “But she only has fourteen teats, so we’re all taking turns feeding the extras.”
That would account for the pig-filled box on the back porch. And to think, they’d all had bacon this morning. Bacon from something that had once maybe been a tiny piglet in a box on the back porch, being bottle fed every few hours. Definitely a strange way to live.
A few minutes later, she parked the van in the supermarket’s lot and they all scrambled out, except for Radar who took his vehicle protection duties very seriously. All along the front of the store, letter-size photocopied posters of two women apparently running for mayor were stapled, taped and hung, the papers making a weird buzzing sound when the wind blew across them. Her father stopped in front of one for a second—maybe ten seconds, actually—before they all went inside, where he promptly plodded off to the magazines and books. Carly pulled out a cart and was contemplating how to haul the runny-nosed little boy beside her up into it without doing herself a mischief, when Libby took Travis’s hand. “We’ll meet you out front in like, twenty minutes?”
Knowing what Libby was planning on buying, Carly glanced at the four-year-old, then back at his big sister.
Libby laughed. “I know what you’re thinking. But being the only female in a house full of guys, you get over feeling self-conscious about certain things real fast. At least, a lot faster’n they do! And he’s been missing me since school started, haven’t you, short stuff?”
The kid nodded, snot glistening on his upper lip.
Oh, brother.
Carly dug a tissue out of her shoulder bag and cleaned the kid up, then stood there as Libby and Travis disappeared into the Saturday morning crowd, the tissue pinched between her thumb and forefinger as though it were radioactive. A situation readily handled when she spied a trash can tucked under the counter behind one of the cashiers. The tissue duly dispatched, she steered the cart toward the magazines, but there was nobody there except a couple of young mothers with what looked like a dozen kids between them.
Carly scanned all the nearby aisles, frowning. Now where on earth could Dad have gotten to that fast?
Ivy nearly caused a cucumber avalanche when her daughter nudged her.
“Don’t look now,” Dawn said, “but you’re being seriously cruised.”
Ivy glared at Dawn, then smiled for Max, her six-month-old grandson toothlessly grinning at her from his baby seat in Dawn’s cart, before oh-so-casually moseying over to the tomatoes, despite not needing any since everybody and their cousin had had a bumper crop this year and kept pawning them off on Ivy. Dawn followed her, hissing, “Not over here, over there,” which made Ivy turn to do some more glaring, which is when she saw him.
Her head whipped back around. “That’s the man I was telling you about,” she whispered. “The one who kept staring at me in Ruby’s the other morning.”
Dawn handed Max a teething biscuit, angling herself to get an eyeful, then frowned at Ivy. “And you’re not staring back why?”
“What would be the point?”
“If you have to ask—”
“Morning, ladies,” said a deep baritone beside them.
They both jumped; three tomatoes rolled off onto the floor, two of which became tomato puree at their feet. The third one, however, bounced, then took off toward the lettuce. Everybody took two steps over like they had nothing to do with the mess.
“Aren’t you the lady running for mayor?”
“She sure is,” Dawn said, and then he smiled, and Ivy knew, with that sinking feeling one gets at times like this, that it was gonna take a whole lot more than heaven to help her.
“Ivy…Gardner, right?”
A come-on in the produce section of the Homeland. Yeah, that sounded about par for the course. Dawn made like s
he was gonna nudge her again, but Ivy leaned out of range.
“Your picture doesn’t do you justice,” the man said, and Dawn started coughing, since Ivy had comfortably settled into her cronedom some years ago. Despite Luralene’s nagging her about ditching her braid for a more stylish ’do—which, translated from Luralese, meant something involving teasing combs and copious amounts of AquaNet—Ivy had determined from the start of this so-called “campaign” that if the town really wanted her for mayor, then they’d just have to take her as she was—saggy, baggy, and crone-headed. Then Dawn started in about needing to get Max some Huggies, she was nearly out—Ivy’d given up on trying to get her to switch to cloth diapers, there was just no talking sense to the woman sometimes—and disappeared. Ivy wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Especially when the man smiled again and put out his hand and said, “Lane Stewart. My daughter Carly and I have been staying with Sam Frazier, maybe you know him?”
Ivy laughed, even though he was holding her hand in both of his, gently, like a bird he’d captured, and her heart was beating about as fast as that bird’s, proving that there really was no fool like an old fool. However, she composed herself enough to get out, “Know him? I delivered all six of his babies.”
“You’re a doctor, then?”
“Midwife.” He had yet to let go of her hand. Not that this was a problem. Except for Millie Pennyweather’s standing there, gawking. Ivy was tempted to glower at the woman until she remembered she needed her vote. But then she remembered she also needed to take control of this bizarre situation, so she extricated her hand from Lane’s, shoving it into the pocket of her sweater coat. “You enjoyin’ your stay in Haven?”
“Very much.” He paused, his eyes full of intent. “It’s a shame we’re leaving on Monday.”
Ivy couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her with anything even remotely resembling intent, let alone when one had gotten things to fluttering inside her. Except, since the man wasn’t sticking around, anyway, she couldn’t even count on him for a vote, much less anything to make the fluttering worthwhile.
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