“Wyatt,” the man said, extending a now clean hand.
“Sawyer.”
“I think I’ve seen you over at The Depot,” Wyatt said. “I tend to get my coffee at the bakery, but when I need the high-octane stuff, The Depot’s the way to go.”
“I agree.” Sawyer realized he ought to explain himself. “I saw the door open and I thought I’d better come get a good look at the hippo.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes at Sawyer until he connected the dots. “Oh, the parade thing. Your kid building a hippo?”
It felt odd to have people make that assumption about Zack. “Just helping out a friend.” At that moment it struck him he didn’t know if he meant Molly or Zack. Both, actually. When had he become friends with a second grader? “Zack Kane.”
“Kane...” Wyatt looked off to one side as he tried to place the name. “Little guy. Kinda quiet.” He held up a hand. “About this big. Wouldn’t have pegged him for a hippo guy.”
“It was a close call between that and the kangaroo,” Sawyer offered.
Wyatt pointed at Sawyer. “Now, that I can believe.”
A sudden, ridiculous jolt of worry shot through Sawyer that Zack had made the wrong choice. Wasn’t he the one who staunchly assured Zack there was no wrong choice?
Wyatt stepped up on the carousel platform. “So you must know Molly.”
“Yeah.” There wasn’t a simpler answer to a more complex fact in all of Colorado. “I’m teaching Zack to play golf.” Why had that irrelevant fact jumped out of his mouth?
Surprise widened Wyatt’s eyes. “You’re that guy? You’re the pro at Mountain Vista?” His question held no hint of admiration, but Sawyer was used to that.
“Far from it. I’m just the night security guy. But Molly asked me, and it’s hard to say no to that woman.” The fact that he was standing here considering carousel hippo construction was a testament to the truth of that statement.
Wyatt leaned his weight on the kangaroo. “Folks here aren’t big fans of that place, but I expect you already know that.”
“I get the general impression. Job’s a job, right?” That was what he told himself every time he clocked in. Or every time someone stared too hard at his uniform shirt if he stopped at the market on his way home some mornings.
“If you’re the kind of guy who can slough it off, sure. But you might want to look into a new line of work if you want to make friends in Wander.”
He didn’t want to make friends in Wander. He already had two more than he planned, and they were complicating his life enough as it was. It was time to change the subject. “So, building the hippo?”
“Easier than some, I expect. Big and square enough you could build it around almost anything. Not like the rooster or the seahorse. Those would be tougher to build.” Wyatt got a glint in his eye. “Can you swipe a golf cart? You could build the biggest, baddest hippo Wander has ever seen if you could build it on a golf cart.”
Sawyer wasn’t ready to admit he had actually thought about it. “Maybe.” He was actually calculating how to ask the grounds manager to lend him an out-of-service golf cart for two weeks, which told him his commitment to this idea had just ratcheted up to absurd.
Wyatt stood in front of the hippo and waved his hands around, visualizing. “If you sat the haunches over the wheels, and used the front end as the nose, it’d be amazing. Way better than the pair of flamingos I have to build using my girls’ bicycles.” He gave Sawyer a conspiratorial look. “Don’t suppose I could talk you into a trade?”
Sawyer would admit he was growing fond of Zack. But enough to build a flamingo rather than a hippo? Not even for Molly. “Nope.”
“I wouldn’t, either, if I were you.” Wyatt stepped down off the platform. “Nice thing you’re doing there, helping the little guy out. His dad’s not around much, is he?” He shrugged and offered, “My wife sings in the choir with Molly,” by way of explanation.
“Not at all from what I can see.” Molly seemed to sing with or to nearly everyone in Wander Canyon. So why on earth had she chosen him to help Zack? There had to be other people she knew better, ones more suited to the job. The unlikely choice she’d made in him followed him like a lost dog.
“Shouldn’t be that way, should it?”
Again, a far too simple statement for a complex problem. “No.”
“Well, then, it’s a fine thing for you to step up. I’d be obliged to help in any way I can. I’ve had my fair share of Wander Canyon peering down their noses at me, so just give me a call if the Mountain Vistalanties get to you.”
“The Vistalanties?” Like vigilantes? They actually had a name here for people opposed to the resort. Maybe he shouldn’t use a golf cart. He and Zack might get pelted with rocks—or even golf balls—if they drove a decorated golf cart down Main Street as part of the anniversary parade.
“Probably should keep that little joke to myself. Folks here are nice, mostly. Narrow-minded, but most of ’em mean well. And no offense, but the resort deserves the reputation it’s got. They haven’t played nice.”
“None taken.” Sawyer gave his standard reply. “I just work there.”
“If you want, I could keep an ear to the ground for a new job? I’m actually looking for a replacement for carousel repairman over here.”
The world could not offer up a less suitable job for him than repairman for the Wander Canyon Carousel of Happiness. “You have no idea how unqualified I am for that.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Wyatt said, nodding his head toward the little maintenance closet on the far wall. “Sure you don’t want a ride? I’ll turn it on for you if you’d like.” He leaned in and whispered, “No one will ever know.”
For a handful of seconds, Sawyer tried to visualize himself atop one of the animals, bobbing around the room while calliope music filled the air. The absurdity of it made him laugh. “I’ll leave the riding to Zack.”
“Your choice. But you strike me as a dragon kind of guy.”
He had to ask. “Why do you say that?”
“All sharp teeth and hard scales on the outside, but I suspect soft and loyal on the inside. What other kind of guy researches a hippo for a little kid and his mom?”
“It’s not like that,” Sawyer said a little too quickly and with a bit too much emphasis.
Wyatt laughed and got the strangest look on his face. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I told myself at the beginning, too.”
* * *
Molly glanced around at the faces of the other women in the Solos Bible study Tuesday night. They held nothing but compassion. Each of these women knew the particular struggles of raising a child alone. I have no reason to think twice about sharing with them.
And yet she did. It was ridiculous, prideful even, to hold herself back from the love she knew these women would offer. There’d be no judgment. That was what the prayer requests time of their meetings was about, wasn’t it?
Tessa was leading this week—they all took turns—and Molly felt her calling on each woman around the circle like a tidal wave coming at her. She was so busy worrying about her own inability to hold it together that she wasn’t even listening to the requests the other women were sharing. How awful was that?
The weekend had offered so much hope, but Monday had been absolutely awful. Today wasn’t looking any better. Molly felt as if she was standing on a frozen lake, listening to the cracks in the ice travel toward her and waiting for the moment she went under.
“Molly?” Tessa’s voice held an insistent concern. “You okay?”
It came out in a gush. An uncontrollable blurt of panic and frustration. “I-don’t-know-if-I-can-do-it-anymore!” poured out of her along with a sudden bout of tears.
The women around the circle had every right to look surprised. She was supposed to be the sunny optimist, the Unsinkable Molly, as one of the older women in the
choir was fond of saying after the old-time movie.
“I don’t know what to do with Zack,” she sobbed while accepting a tissue from the woman next to her. “I can’t ever figure out what helps him. We take one step forward and then...” She didn’t even have a word that didn’t sound catastrophic. It wasn’t—some part of her knew that—but it surely felt that way.
“What happened?” Tessa asked. “I thought you said Mrs. Hollings’s golf idea was working out.”
“It was.” Was. The roller coaster of what worked and then didn’t was the thing that made it so hard. “I got all excited for him. He has this connection with the guy who’s teaching him. They seem to understand each other instantly. I’m jealous of that.” The tears started up again. “I’m jealous of something good for my son because I can’t seem to do it. What kind of mother does that make me?”
“An exhausted one,” another woman chimed in with kindness in her eyes.
“Tell us what happened,” Tessa repeated.
Molly told the story of the night Sawyer put the golf holes in their backyard. The new boldness—small, but definitely there—she saw in Zack’s asking for Sawyer’s help. The delight in his eyes when he sank that first putt. The “maybe we’re on our way out of this” feeling that filled her heart when Sawyer agreed to help build the hippo.
“And then yesterday it all went away,” she lamented to the group. “He got some directions mixed up on some homework and came home with a marked-up paper. Somebody said something at school, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I just watched him start down that whole cycle of worry again. School, the carousel festival, you name it. And do you know what I did?”
No one replied, but she wasn’t really asking the question anyway. “I told him to go outside and play with the golf holes. That was the new success, right? The thing that was working. I thought it would help.” She practically moaned the last word.
“It didn’t?” Tessa asked gently.
“It made it all so much worse,” Molly cried. “He was too worked up. I didn’t see that. He just kept missing and missing and getting angrier and angrier. I found him whacking one of the clubs against a rock, bending it all out of shape. Those aren’t even his clubs.” What was the point in stopping the tears now? It was all out there, raw and humiliating.
She’d thought about calling Sawyer last night. She couldn’t admit to these women how close she’d come to doing it. Molly was desperate not to have to keep handling all this all alone. She’d wanted to share her frustration with the man who was starting to occupy way too many of her thoughts. She wanted him to look at her with the same loyal patience he looked at Zack.
It couldn’t be healthy to lean on this unexpected, impossible-to-understand friendship—and she was going to keep using that word friendship because it was far too scary to think of it in any other terms.
What was growing between the three of them was scary. Sawyer was a virtual stranger. Good mothers didn’t deliver their fragile sons into the hands of strangers. And wise women certainly didn’t think about their sons’ unofficial golf teachers in the ways she was trying not to think about Sawyer. Trying, and failing. The tangle of new thoughts and old fears had begun to choke her lately.
“Boys are a challenge,” Grace Douglas said—and she spoke from experience. She’d never had to go fetch Zack from the Wander Canyon Police Department as many times as Grace had to with her son. Yet. “A boy like Zack? And all on your own, besides? I don’t know how you do as well as you do.”
“Not well at all.” Molly cringed. Her wailing had taken over Solos, and that wasn’t fair. Every woman in the room had struggles, not just her.
“That’s not true.” Tessa got up and crossed the room to sit next to Molly. “Zack has made progress. We all see it. You just can’t see it now on account of last night’s setback.”
“Last night felt like way more than a setback. I spent today waiting for the phone to ring about what new school closet Zack has locked himself into.” I spent today trying not to call Sawyer, too.
“But it didn’t ring,” Tessa said reassuringly. “Maybe learning to express his frustrations—granted in something resulting in less damaged sports equipment—will be a good thing for him.”
“I’m glad you told us,” another woman said. “We get it. You have to know that. We’ve all felt this way at one time or another.”
“Or seven.” A third woman managed a dark laugh and a shake of her head. “Last Thursday at our house was the stuff of nightmares.”
“Now we know what to pray for.”
“Do you?” Molly asked. “Because I sure don’t.”
“Peace in the storm,” Grace offered. “It’s all any of us really need. Just the strength to get up and do it again tomorrow. And the day after.”
Everyone seemed accepting of her outburst by the end of the meeting, but Molly’s spirit still wobbled off balance.
Tessa caught up with her in the hallway. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“What could you have done?” She was the one who ought to know how to help Zack, and any answer felt far out of reach.
“Calmed you down, maybe? Don’t ever be afraid to share that kind of stuff, Molly. We’ve all been there. Every last one of us.” She pulled Molly into a hug.
“I took over the meeting.” It felt as if she owed an apology to each mother in the room.
“Because you needed to. Two weeks ago it was Linda, next week it could be me at my wit’s end. No one needs you to be your usual bundle of happiness here. We do real life here, you know that. It’s the only way any of us can keep our heads above water.”
Tessa’s reporter observational skills seemed to kick in, and she narrowed her eyes at Molly. “This is about more than Zack, isn’t it?”
Molly didn’t answer. Any denial she gave probably wouldn’t stop Tessa anyway.
They walked a little farther down the hall before Tessa asked, “Did you call him?”
“No.” It sounded so unconvincing that Molly felt compelled to admit, “I wanted to.” Seeing no judgment on her friend’s face, she went on. “It felt so good to see it all not fall on me. To watch Zack look to someone else. Part of me was grateful.” She caught Tessa’s eyes. “Part of me was jealous.”
“It’s nice to have someone pay attention to your son.” Tessa’s mouth turned up in a bit of a grin. “Maybe it’s nice to have someone pay attention to you, too.”
Molly stiffened up. “That night was about Zack.”
“Only about Zack?”
“You should have seen it, Tessa. It was like watching Zack reach for who he could be. Zack actually asked Sawyer to help. Directly. No hemming and hawing or fidgeting. And his face when he got the ball in the hole the first time? I was floating around on a cloud of gratitude.”
“Just gratitude? Maybe just a tiny bit of interest? He’s not too hard on the eyes. And good with Zack? Helping him the way he is? Hard to beat that.”
Molly shook her head. “You know I can’t go there.”
Tessa leaned back against the hallway wall. “Why not? You got a rough deal with Steve. The cancer’s been gone two years. I like to think Zack deserves a truly happy mom, not one who just acts happy all the time.”
Molly sighed and did her best to ignore the direction Tessa was leading the conversation. “I was so happy to see him happy. Thrilled to see him even a little bit confident. Yesterday’s crash wiped all of that away.”
“Hey, yesterday doesn’t take any of that away. He got there once. That means he can get there again.”
Molly wanted to believe that. She was just too tired and frustrated to hold it as truth. And, when she was truly honest, too frightened that Zack—and maybe even she—needed Sawyer to get him there.
“Make me a promise,” Tessa said.
“What?”
“Tell yourself—tell your hear
t—it’s okay to think about having new friends.” Tessa put some emphasis on the final word, letting Molly know she meant a bit more than that. “It’s what you tell Zack, isn’t it?”
Molly frowned at her friend. “No fair using my own advice against me.”
“Hey,” said Tessa with a smile. “What are friends for?”
Chapter Eight
Molly stood in the parking lot of the Mountain Vista Golf Resort the following morning while Zack was at school. She faced the little building she knew was Sawyer’s security office, standing at the ready beside Sawyer’s truck with a set of coffees again.
She’d asked for the morning off because he had to be told.
Not that spending a precious morning off getting this personal with Sawyer Bradshaw was an especially good idea, but it would prove to him why they had to be careful. It would ensure the distance between them she was coming to realize she’d need.
If she told him about what she’d been through, she could make him see why Zack’s welfare had to come before everything else. Why these weren’t ordinary golf lessons and the hippo cart wasn’t an ordinary project. Yes, she was risking a highly personal conversation with someone she shouldn’t get highly personal with, but Molly couldn’t come up with another option. She had to have this conversation. Face to face. And this definitely wasn’t one for the counter at The Depot. Or anywhere near Zack, for that matter.
Stay beside me, Lord, she prayed as she watched Sawyer exit the small building and wave goodbye to whomever was inside taking over for the day. Give me the right words.
He looked tired. No, weary. Tired was a temporary thing. Weary was a long, steep haul. It wasn’t hard to recognize weary when you slogged through it yourself. Only she kept her weariness at bay with a determined cheerfulness.
Sawyer wore his on his sleeve, a hard shell to keep the whole world at a distance. The whole world, that is, except for Zack. Does Sawyer realize Zack is cracking his way underneath that shell? Does he realize what a privilege—and a danger—that is?
Surprise halted Sawyer’s steps as he caught sight of her and the coffees waiting by his truck. He smiled before he could stop himself, and Molly tried not to let that wiggle its way inside her determination. Why did he have to have such a nice smile? And why did she have to notice he only gave that smile to her?
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