Munching on a piece of toast, Hunter wandered out of the house to stand beside her, his backpack slung over one shoulder. “Who’s that?” he said, blessed—or cursed—with the ingenuous curiosity of a much younger child. Her mama-radar on full alert, Emma slipped an arm around her son’s shoulders, watching Cash for signs of discomfort or awkwardness. Far as she could tell, there weren’t any.
“Name’s Cash, son. Your daddy and I were friends when we were kids—”
“Cash Coch-ran?” Hunter sucked in a deep breath. “The … sing-er?”
“That’s right. Except I’m kinda taking a break right now. So I thought it might be nice to come back home for a while. Think over a few things. And while I’m doing that—” those silver eyes skidded back to hers “—I could lend a hand here.”
Now it was Emma doing the breath-sucking, as both kids’ gazes locked on the sides of her face. “Excuse me?”
“Not forever, but until you’re through the worst of it. At least until the baby comes. I reckon I still know how to fix a fence and make a raised bed. Fix that roof,” he added with a nod. “And you tell me what needs planting where, I can do that, too. Don’t know much about goats, it’s true, but I’m pretty sure I remember how to navigate the back end of a cow. Don’t suppose it’s all that much different.”
Too stunned to cobble together a coherent sentence, all Emma could manage was a strangled, “Why?”
“I have my reasons,” Cash said, coming closer. Close enough to see there was a lot more going on behind those eyes than Emma could even begin to sort out. “And I’m guessing you’d probably be more likely to accept my labor than my check.” When she started, his mouth pulled into a tight smile. “Although if you’d rather do it that way, so you could hire whoever you wanted … well, I suppose that’d work, too.”
“Ma-ma?”
Emma tore her gaze away from Cash’s to look into her son’s soft brown eyes, his beaming smile. “What, honey?”
“You were right, huh? You said … God wouldn’t let us down, that He … al-ways gives us what we need, as … long as we don’t tell Him how to do that.” Her son’s grin broadening, he pointed to Cash. “And look!”
Biting her lip, Emma looked, thinking it would take a whole lot of humility to see Cash Cochran as the answer to her prayers. Because while she had cause to feel bad for the man, she had even more cause to be wary. For her children’s sake, if not for her own.
Although she knew better than to trust what you read in the tabloids, it’d broken Lee’s heart when he’d seen Cash’s photo alongside some sensational headline slapped across the cover of this or that rag in the Walmart checkout, about the stints in rehab, the failed marriages. True, it’d been a while since she’d read or heard anything untoward. But for all she knew, his “people” had simply gotten better at keeping that stuff from getting out. Or, more likely, that Cash had slipped off the paparazzi’s radar.
Still, she thought as Cash stood with his arms crossed over his chest, the picture of patience, if she truly believed everything happened for a reason, maybe now wasn’t the time to start picking and choosing. A realization that provoked a deep sigh.
“Guess there’s no point in pretending I’m not in a bind,” she said. “Normally I’d have more help, but this was the spring everybody picked to move or retire or find other work or join the army … It would’ve been a trick to get everything done, even if Lee was still here. The kids do what they can, but … they’re kids. And the midwife more or less ordered me to take it easy for the next couple of weeks. But you don’t owe us anything, not your labor and certainly not your money—”
“And maybe I think I do,” Cash said, his eyes locked in hers. Then he glanced away, blowing out a half laugh. “God knows, nothing’s happening here the way I expected, but … it’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to be of any real use to anybody. And maybe for old times’ sake …”
He looked back at her. “It nearly killed me, watching this place die under my father’s hand. And I can see what you and Lee started here. How you salvaged whatever was left. I don’t know why, but I can’t stand the idea of it going under a second time. Any more than you can, I’m sure.”
She blinked back the sudden scald of tears. But when they cleared, she caught a glimpse of at least part of what was going on inside his head. Not in any detail, certainly, but enough to sweep aside what few shreds of useless pride she had left.
“You two need to go on,” she said to the kids, “or you’ll miss the bus. Zoey, no, get your coat, it’s still cold. I know, it’ll warm up, but I don’t want the nurse calling me to come get you in an hour ‘cause your nose starts running again. So go on.”
While Zoey fetched her jacket, Hunter solemnly marched down the porch steps toward Cash. He extended his hand; Cash took it, the wordless handshake apparently cementing something Emma couldn’t begin to understand. Then, grinning, her son trooped back to the porch to pick up his backpack; a second later Zoey streaked from the house and slipped her hand into Hunter’s to walk to the bus.
Not until the kids were out of sight, however, did Emma face Cash again. “Why do I get the feeling you want to do this as some sort of penance or something?”
The muscles around his eyes twitched before he crunched across the dead grass to the sagging wire fence edging the neglected flower garden. “I think what I’m aiming to do,” he said quietly, skimming one palm over the top, “is erase the bad memories. Or at least exchange some of them for new ones. I don’t want the land back, don’t even give that a second thought. But I want …”
Turning, he pushed out a sigh. “For twenty years I’ve been running, from this place, from all the bad stuff in my head. Didn’t do me a lick of good. For twenty years I’ve thought about nobody but myself. That hasn’t done me any good, either. Apparently. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a real human being, Emma.” Another dry laugh. “If I ever knew. So helping you … it would kill a couple of birds with one stone. You need the help, and I need to get back to basics. To somehow return to that time before everything went wrong. To maybe find the kid I once was. Because deep down, I think that kid wasn’t so bad, you know?”
His honesty shot straight to her heart. But the hard set to his mouth, the challenge in his eyes, made it more than clear her sympathy would be unwelcome. After a moment, she nodded.
“So what, exactly, are you proposing?”
“My services for …” He rubbed his chin. “Let’s say six weeks. Or until you’re on your feet again after the baby comes. Sunup to sundown, if you need it.”
If history was anything to go by, she’d be on her feet within twenty-four hours of the birth. She’d often imagined herself as one of those pioneer women who pushed out a baby a year with no sweat. “What about your career?”
He let out a little hunh. “I imagine the music world will get along just fine without me for a few weeks.”
The baby shifted; Emma rubbed his spine. “If you’re sure …”
“I am.”
“Then, all right. I can at least offer you three meals a day—”
“No! I mean, thanks, but this isn’t about …” Cash looked away. “This isn’t about getting close. Nothing personal, but that’s part of the deal. You tell me what needs doing, and I’ll do it. But that’s it.”
Emma was tempted to point out that if part of his goal was to rejoin the human race, staying aloof from the family might not be the best way to go about that. Then again, maybe it was just as well, for many reasons. Like, oh, for instance, the kids getting too close. Especially Hunter, who glommed onto everyone