They ate until the only thing Jayne wanted was a nap, but when Rebecca got to her feet, ready to work, Jayne pulled herself up, too. “You get dressed and brush your teeth,” she told Lucy. “Put on old clothes, okay? Then come on around back.”
They chose a place to start a burn pile, then began cutting the clumps of shrubs Jayne had trimmed around. For a time Rebecca offered advice—how to keep the shrubs under control; who to call for a new trash barrel; where to buy a window air conditioner.
Finally, though, when the pile of cut branches was as tall as they were, Rebecca’s conversation turned personal. “How long have you been divorced?”
Jayne stopped in the act of pulling at a branch from one of the fallen trees. Getting used to thinking of herself as divorced had been tough. But for so much of her marriage she hadn’t felt very married, either. She and Greg had become more like roommates—and not particularly friendly ones. They’d lived as if they were single long before it had become fact.
“Sore subject?” Rebecca asked softly.
Shaken from her thoughts, Jayne smiled. “No, not at all. we were married six years. We’ve been divorced five months.”
“Did he break your heart?”
Jayne glanced at Lucy, who’d given up on dragging smaller pieces of debris to the burn pile and was now crouched in the grass, watching ants march along an unseen trail. “No, no heartbreak. Just a lot of disappointment, in him and myself. I married a charming, irresponsible man and expected him to transform into husband-and father-of-the-year material. I knew better. I knew he was just six months of fun and fond memories. But—” she looked at Lucy again and smiled “—I got pregnant. I was old-fashioned enough to want to be married before the baby was born, and he swore he was ready to settle down. Unfortunately, he was just a kid himself.”
He was all about fun, games and living for the moment. What had appealed to her before Lucy was born had become frustrating after. She called him unreliable. He said she was rigid. He couldn’t act his age. She didn’t know how to have fun. He was careless. She was a bore.
Six years. Was that a testament to their commitment or their foolishness?
In a casual voice Rebecca said, “It’s funny, isn’t it? Your Greg is a kid in an adult’s body, and Tyler’s been grown up since he was about three. He’s the most responsible man you’ll come across.”
Responsible? Jayne wouldn’t argue that. Unfriendly, distant, aloof—those were true, too. But she kept that to herself when she answered just as casually, “How lucky for the women in his life.”
Rebecca snorted. “Right now that’s you, Lucy, my mom and me.”
Bending, Jayne took the clippers to the suckers growing around the trunk of one of the fallen trees. “Too bad I’m not looking for a relationship.”
Rebecca was undaunted. “Hey, sometimes you find the best things when you’re not looking. Like this.” She pulled back a layer of vines she’d cut to reveal a small statue. Cast of concrete, it was two feet tall—a small girl in pigtails carrying a bucket with a puppy sticking its head out.
Jayne admired it, then returned to work. Sometimes you find the best things when you’re not looking. That sounded like something her heroine Arabella’s sister would tell her. In fact, she was pretty sure one of her heroines’ friends had said exactly that.
The thing was, it was true in a romance novel. But life wasn’t a romance novel. Her years with Greg had proven that. She was the only one in control of her happily ever after. And she knew one thing for sure.
It wasn’t going to rely on a man.
Rather than haul his saw over to the Miller house, Tyler walked over early Saturday morning, took the necessary measurements and was on his way back to the shop when a small voice called, “Hey! Wait up!”
He grimaced, then wiped the expression off his face before turning to face Lucy, leaping from the steps to land flat-footed in the recently mowed grass. She wore red boots with a white-and-purple nightgown that left her arms bare, and her hair was standing up in all directions. She ran to meet him, flashing a grin. “What’re you doin’?”
Regretting this offer. “I’m going to fix that step.”
“Can I help?”
He glanced back at the house. The front door was open, but there was no sign of Jayne. “Where’s your mother?”
“Asleep. She was pooped last night.”
He’d seen the pile of branches when he’d come home the night before and been impressed. She’d made good use of his lawn mower, trimmer and chain saw and had a nice stack of firewood against the north side of the house. He wouldn’t have figured she’d even know how to start the chain saw.
“You’d better wait for her to get up.”
“Aw, that could be a while.” Her face fell, then she grinned again. If her pale hair was curly instead of straight, she’d look like a greeting-card angel…at least, until it came to the red boots. “I won’t get into nothin’, I promise.”
She didn’t have much experience with being denied what she wanted—no more than he had in doing the denying. Besides, he would be in the shop only a few minutes, and as long as she stayed away from the tools…
“Okay.” He started walking again, realized she was running to keep up and slowed his steps.
“Where’re Cameron and Diaz?”
“Out running in the woods.”
“Where do they go?”
“I don’t know.”
He would have sworn she’d gotten in another fifteen questions in the few minutes it took them to reach the shop. Once inside, she started again. “What’s that?”
A table saw. A router. A belt sander. A palm sander.
“Why do you have two sanders?”
“Because they do different types of sanding.” He picked up the lumber he’d gotten in town the day before, marked the measurements and took it to the saw. He was about to flip the power switch when her face popped up on the opposite side of the table.
“What’re you doing?”
“Come here.”
She ran around the table, her boots clomping on the cement, and he swung her up onto the workbench behind him. She didn’t weigh as much as an armload of good oak boards. “Sit here.”
“But I wanna help.” Her bottom lip poked out as she pointed to the saw. “I want to do that.”
“Maybe some other time.” When she was twice as old and half as curious. If she and her mother stayed around that long.
He cut the board to size, measured it again, rounded off the sharp edges, then started toward the door. He was almost outside when Lucy spoke again. “Hey. You forgot me.”
She was sitting there, boots swinging way above the floor, arms outstretched. He switched the board to his other arm, caught her around the waist and swung her to the floor. It had been a lot of years since he’d held a kid, but for just a moment the sensation was so familiar. How many times had he picked up Rebecca, Aaron, Josh or Alex? Dozens. Hundreds. When they’d been scared, when they’d been tired, when they’d needed to feel safe… He’d been their safe place, according to the court-ordered psychologist they’d seen.
And this mountaintop was his safe place. Alone.
“Look, there’s a squirrel. If you had a horse, I’d take care of him for you. I’m gonna be a cowboy when I grow up. Our TV doesn’t