Instant Prairie Family. Bonnie Navarro

room, walking like a man sentenced to face the firing squad. Abby watched him walk away and then turned to find Mr. Hopkins watching her with a guarded expression, the lighthearted humor forgotten.

      “You don’t have to go upstairs and help with bedtime, Miss Stewart. You’ve done more than I expected today. Is there anything you need?”

      Disappointment sliced through her. Why should it matter if she helped the boys into bed or not? But it did. She wanted to hear the prayers and kiss their foreheads just as she had done with her nieces and nephews for the last fourteen years.

      “I would love to read them a story if it’s all right with you.” She bit her lower lip, trying to find a nice way to imply that he might not want her involved in such a private family time. “I don’t know your routine with the boys. What they do at bedtime or what you will expect me to do in the days to come.”

      “Well, it will take some time to get used to having a woman around here again,” he stated cryptically.

      “I imagine. I was wondering... I don’t want to ask anything that’s none of my business, but just how long has it been since a woman lived here?”

      A shadow passed over his face for a minute and she held her breath, afraid she had just offended her employer on her first day there.

      “It’s been two years since my wife’s aunt left.” His vague answer left her with more questions instead of answers. Did the boys still miss their great-aunt? How much time would she have to work here before the end of the harvest? Should she hold them at arm’s length so that when she left, they wouldn’t miss her too much? Would it even be possible to hold them at arm’s length? After only two days, Tommy already tugged on her heartstrings and somber, grouchy Willy seemed to dare her to love him.

      Minutes later she was sitting between the two boys on the side of Tommy’s bed, reading to them. By the time she had finished the story, not only had Tommy climbed up on her lap, but Willy had slid over to look over her shoulder at the pictures. Story done, they took turns petitioning God with their heartfelt prayers for the cows, the horses, family they had never met, for their pa and their cousin, and they included her, as well. She said a few prayers of her own. Her thoughts traveled from her sister’s family to the Gibbonses and then all the people she had met on her trip. She asked for God’s blessing on this new family that she felt privileged to know.