She sighed and then squatted in front of him to put herself at eye level. “Caleb, your grandma is okay and your dad is going to pick you up at my house. We’ll hang out together and maybe we can convince your dad to bring pizza later.”
“Do you have toys?”
She grinned. “I have a few trucks that my nieces and nephews play with at my house.”
“Girls play with trucks?” He wrinkled his nose.
“Yeah, they do.”
“Okay.” He looked up and grinned, but not at her. “Hi, Jackson.”
She glanced back and then up, frowning at her brother. “I’m going with Gran.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I know and I wasn’t going to try to talk you into going to the house. I wanted to see if I could keep a mare at your place.”
“A mare? Because you don’t have room for one more?” They both knew that wasn’t the case. She held out a hand and Jackson pulled her to her feet.
“I picked her up from a place north of Grove. The owners lost their farm and went to Tulsa. She’s been in a corral for a few weeks and needs to be stabled and have some weight put on her.”
A broken horse to fix. She knew this game. When she’d first moved to Cooper Creek twenty years ago, she’d been given a sick goat to care for. She had kept that goat for years. That goat, crazy as it seemed, had probably saved her life.
“Jackson, I don’t need a project.”
His eyes widened. “Who said it was a project?”
“I know you too well. You’re the guy who led me out to the barn and told me that the sick goat wouldn’t live if someone didn’t take care of it.”
“It lived, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, it did.” And so had she.
She remembered her mother lying on the floor, OD’d, and police moving through the house. She’d hidden her siblings under a bed because it had always been her job to protect them. She shivered even with the warmth of the sun pouring down on her.
“Mia?”
“Bring it by tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Jackson ruffled Caleb’s hair. “Later, buddy. Don’t let Mia get you into trouble.”
The little boy looked up at Jackson and grinned big, probably thinking trouble sounded like fun.
Her grandmother finally joined them, looking a little spacey, smiling like a woman with a secret. And Mia knew that it had to do with an old farmer named Winston. Her grandmother, at eighty-five, was in love.
Love? Mia shook her head as she opened the back door of the sedan for Caleb to climb in. Love wasn’t her thing. She’d tried it once, but the man in question hadn’t been able to handle a woman in law enforcement with a gun and better aim than him.
Not that she had a career now. It still didn’t mean she wanted romance with flowers and moonlit walks. No, that wasn’t her cup of tea. She’d never really dated. In high school she preferred the easy camaraderie of her brothers and their friends to the complicated relationships her friends seemed to seek out.
She slid into the front seat of the car and glanced back at Caleb. His attention was focused on the window, but she saw worry reflected in his eyes. Stoic. She got it. She knew how it worked. If you didn’t talk about it, it didn’t hurt. Or so she’d always tried to convince herself.
“What do you want for lunch?” she asked and he turned from the window to face her.
“I like peanut butter.”
“That sounds good. I like mine grilled with strawberry jam. Have you ever had grilled peanut butter and jelly?”
“That sounds gross.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I guess it does. But it tastes good.”
He turned back to the window. “I’d like to see that horse.”
“Huh?” She looked out the window, but she didn’t see a horse.
“The horse Jackson has.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll have your dad bring you by to see it.”
“Okay. And I’d eat that sandwich.”
Granny Myrna chuckled but she didn’t say anything. Mia shot her a look. “What?”
“Nothing.” The older woman shifted into Drive and eased the car forward. “I’ll help you make those sandwiches.”
“I can do it. You go ahead and have lunch with the family.”
“Two of us can skip out on the interrogation.”
Mia smiled. “So you’re avoiding questions about Winston.”
“That I am. And you’ve been avoiding the inevitable for years.”
“What does that mean?”
Mia’s grandmother kept driving. “Mia, you have to stop running.”
“I have. The doctor told me...”
Granny Myrna gave her a full-blown angry look. “I am not talking about actual running. I’m talking about facing your life, your past and all that stuff you’ve bottled up inside you that you pretend you’ve dealt with.”
“Oh.” Mia didn’t know what else to say. She could argue, but arguing with her grandmother never worked. Granny Myrna would remind Mia that at eighty-five she had lived a lot and seen a lot.
“Is that all you have to say?”
Mia glanced back at Caleb. He was sound asleep.
“Gran, I’m good.”
“No, you’re not. You’re good at avoiding, but that isn’t good. You watched your mother die. You lost your siblings. You’ve lost a lot.”
“I have people who love me. I have a family.” And she’d never been one to dwell on the past. “I’ve lost, but I’ve gained, too.”
“Yes, you do have people who love you, and I’m one of them. But I think you stay as busy as possible and you hold yourself back for fear of losing again.”
“Have you been watching Dr. Phil again?” Mia admitted to herself the joke was getting old. But her grandmother’s words ached deep inside and she didn’t want to explore her feelings today, tomorrow or anytime soon.
They had reached Mia’s house and Granny Myrna pulled up to the garage and parked. “You need to think about what I’ve said.”
“I will.”
“And I am going to come in and fix you both sandwiches.”
“Thanks, Gran.”
Mia managed to wake Caleb up. He rubbed his eye a few times and blinked. “Is the horse here?”
She reached for his hand. “No. Let’s go in and have lunch. The horse won’t be here until tomorrow.”
“Oh. I think I had a dream.”
“Did you?”
He nodded as Mia opened the door wider for him to get out. “Yeah, we were riding that horse faster than Uncle Gray’s motorcycle.”
“That would be something, huh? Someday maybe we’ll ride her.”
“Soon?” He rubbed his face again and yawned.
“Yeah, soon.”
They walked up the steps of the porch, Granny Myrna in the lead. When they reached the door she turned and looked back at Mia and