And Evan didn’t want to worry his father. “Be good to go before winter sets in.” Thanksgiving was right around the corner; Christmas would descend in seeming days.
“That’s what I was thinking. Chloe says her father used to go ice fishing up in Wisconsin. Makes my bones shiver to think about it.”
Evan glanced in her direction. “Doesn’t your father ice fish anymore?”
“My dad died when I was in junior high school,” she explained. Although Chloe’s voice was steady, he glimpsed a flash of pain in her eyes.
“Sorry.” Evan knew the words were inadequate. He had heard the phrase often enough in the past two years.
“It’s been a long time.”
But never long enough. Time heals all wounds. He had heard that one so much it made him sick. That and the Lord never gives us more than we can bear. But there had been no reason to take Robin and Sean. Again his throat swelled and Evan couldn’t speak around the lump it caused.
Chloe glanced down, then patted Jimmy’s knee. Clearly, she knew that the discussion could upset him, might have already done so.
Evan wondered how Wainwright had found this woman. Someone as pugnacious as a bulldog, yet obviously sensitive to a child’s needs.
Gordon stood and clapped one hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Let’s go in the den. Those flies aren’t going to tie themselves.”
They had barely begun walking from the room when Chloe rose. When she passed his chair, Evan snagged her arm.
Startled, Chloe pulled back, her hand immediately brushing the spot where he had touched her.
Funny, he felt a strange tingle at the touch himself. Ignoring it, Evan waited until Gordon and Jimmy were out of hearing. “We need to talk.”
“In here?” she asked weakly.
“No. Too many interruptions.” He stood, grabbing her hand. Again the feeling shot clear through his body. Again he ignored it. He led her through the kitchen, out the back door. The wide, wrap-around porch was lit by soft gas lights.
“The days are shorter,” Chloe commented, sounding nervous. “Gets dark so early.” She pointed toward the sky. “Good there’s moonlight.”
“Are you a stargazer, Miss Reed?”
“Chloe,” she insisted. “Yes, I suppose I am. Not that I’ve had time to—”
“How do you spend your time? Convincing people to make bad decisions?”
Anger flashed in her sea-green eyes. She was right. The light from the moon aided the gas lights enough to read her expression. Chloe’s mouth opened, then she firmed her lips into a resolute line as she pulled her shoulders back. “I work, if you must know.”
“That’s what you call it?”
The anger in her face intensified. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
So, she had a temper. “Surely it’s clear, even to you, that Wainwright’s plan isn’t going to work.”
“Why are you so negative? You act as though Jimmy has some sort of disease. He’s a wonderful child!”
“I didn’t say he isn’t.” The boy seemed like a good kid. On the quiet side, but Evan didn’t expect anything different after what Jimmy had been through.
“Then what is it?” Exasperation spilled into her voice.
“I told you my answer is no.”
Chloe paused, tilting her face so that the moonlight enhanced the beguiling heart shape of her face. “Your father seems to have a different opinion.”
Evan tried to ignore the unwanted feeling her proximity caused. “It’s not going to work, regardless of what my father says. There’s no room in my life for a child. I’m fighting to keep the business alive. I have twenty-seven employees who depend on me for their livelihood. Do you expect me to forget about them?”
“Of course not.” The exasperation had left her voice. Concern replaced it. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t do both. You have help—your father, Thelma and Ned.”
“What is it about no that you don’t understand? This isn’t like a pet rescue. I can’t turn Jimmy out in the yard with Bailey if I don’t want him close to me. He needs parents, not a guardian.”
“But with time—”
“There isn’t going to be any time.” Evan’s constant anguish flared so fiercely it felt like a physical blow. The back door opened and Jimmy ran outside, followed more slowly by Gordon.
“Guess what?” Jimmy asked Chloe with a glimmer of excitement. “Tomorrow we’re going to see the school.”
All four adults looked at one another. Chloe seemed uncertain. Gordon was determined. And Evan knew he had to stop this from happening. At all costs.
Chloe and Jimmy had disappeared upstairs. Evan made certain of it before he confronted his father. “What were you thinking? Telling the boy you’ll show him our school?”
Gordon knocked the ashes from his pipe into an ashtray. “Why shouldn’t he see it?”
“You know exactly why. Jimmy will think that means he’ll be staying on for a while.”
“Son, he needs us.”
Evan snorted. “There are thousands of orphaned children who need homes. Are we going to take them in as well?”
Gordon packed cherry tobacco into the bowl of his worn pipe. “He’s family.”
Evan felt his chest heave with pain. Family would never again mean the same thing for him. “Are you planning to take care of him?”
“We had that talk when Wainwright first called.”
Slumping into a deep leather chair, Evan sighed. “Why are you doing this to me, Dad?”
Gordon stopped tamping down the tobacco, which didn’t really matter since he never lit the pipe. “It’s not to you, son. It’s for you. When we first lost Robin and Sean, I knew it would take you a long time to accept that you still have a life. It’s natural.”
“Accept it? I’ll never accept it. There was no reason for them to die.”
“You did everything you could to—”
“But the Lord didn’t!” Furious, he rose.
“We don’t always understand—”
“I’ve heard it all before. And I don’t want to hear it again.”
Gordon sighed. “This boy is another chance for you, son. The Lord knows of the hole in your heart.”
“A replacement?” Evan laughed bitterly. “A cosmic reparation? No. I lost the only son I’ll ever have.”
“Evan, you—”
“If you persist in having them stay here, he’s your responsibility.”
“Son, it doesn’t do you any good to be angry at the Lord.”
Sadness and pain settled in Evan’s heart. “I’m not angry at Him. I’m disappointed. And that won’t ever change.”
“All the grades go together?” Jimmy asked in a hushed voice, tightening his grip on Chloe’s hand as they stood in the main hall of Rosewood Community Church’s school.
“Not in the same room,” Chloe explained, although she wasn’t certain just how the school was organized.
Gordon nodded. “That’s how it was when I was a boy.”
Jimmy looked at him in