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Silas glanced from one girl to the other, feeling as if he was being played like a cheap guitar.
“I promise I’ll take care of her.” Josie’s husky voice held a touching vulnerability. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that she and Alyssa got away from me that day of the tornado, and I realize you were frantic with worry, because so was I.” Josie looked down at the girls. “And if these two promise to never do anything like that again, I’m sure we can believe them.”
As she raised her brown eyes to his, bits and pieces of other conversations intruded. “Raising Cane,” one of the guys at the feed store had called her, alluding to her wild past. A young man, apparently a onetime fellow classmate, followed this up with stories of some heavy-duty partying on Josie’s part.
Silas didn’t know any of the stories personally. He had moved here ten years ago from Colorado. Then he met Kelly, fell in love and got engaged. They were full of hopes, dreams and plans. Silas had dreamed Kansas was where it was going to happen for him and it had. He and Kelly started their life and those first few years he and Kelly had been too involved in their own plans to get caught up in the comings and goings in High Plains.
So all he knew about Josie Cane was that she had lived it up and partied hard until her sister died, leaving her with an orphaned niece.
Could he really trust this woman with his daughter?
“Please, Daddy. Please. I’ll be so good.” Lily ran up to him and grabbed his hand. “And I won’t complain about watching television while you work or eating grilled-cheese sandwiches for supper every night.”
Didn’t that make her life sound completely pathetic compared to baking cupcakes with the lovely Ms. Josie? What else could he do but give in?
“If you could have her for today, that would help me out for now,” he said.
“I promise to take good care of her,” Josie said.
The ringing of the school bell broke into the morning. Josie bent over to give Alyssa a hug. “Have a good day, sweetie.” Josie tweaked the ribbon on the little girl’s braid, then stroked her cheek. “Love you.”
“Love you, Auntie Josie.”
“Bye, Daddy.” Lily tossed off a wave, grabbed Alyssa’s hand and the two of them ran off, Alyssa’s perfect braids bouncing on her shoulders and Lily’s crooked ponytail bobbing behind her.
The school doors fell shut behind the girls and Josie turned to him, pushing her hair back from her face. “Thanks for letting her come to the program,” Josie said with a careful smile. “Alyssa has been after me for the past couple months to get Lily to come, but I knew how you felt about it.”
“But they see each other every day at school.”
Josie lifted her hand, then let it drop in a what-can-I-do gesture. “I don’t understand the obsession with seeing each other every day, either, but I’m learning as I go.”
Silas gave a short laugh. “I feel like every day there’s something else I don’t know.”
“And just when you’ve got it, they throw something new at you.”
Like a picture of their teacher.
“So I just let her come to the class? I don’t have to do anything else?”
Josie shook her head, then glanced down.
Silas followed the direction of her gaze and saw her twist her wrist as she checked her watch.
Time to push off.
“Then I’ll see you later today,” he said, taking a step backward. “Gotta run.”
“I promised my grandmother I’d be back right away,” Josie added as if she felt the need to explain. “And I hope you have a happy birthday.”
Silas thought once again about the birthday present lying on the seat of his truck.
And what was he supposed to do about that?
Chapter Two
“So what are you staring at?” Nicki’s voice pulled Josie’s attention away from Silas, who was getting into his truck.
“Nothing,” Josie said with an airy tone, tucking her hair behind her ear in a casual gesture. She gave the toddler perched on Nicki’s hip a gentle smile, hoping to distract her friend. “Hey, Kasey, how are you?”
Kasey blinked, then turned her face into Nicki’s slender shoulder, her fingers tangling in Nicki’s long blond hair.
“She’s out of sorts today,” Nicki said with a wistful smile. “She had a bad night.”
Josie gently touched the toddler’s wispy hair. “Nightmares, you think?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. I know I would have nightmares if I was found wandering alone on the riverbank, after a tornado had just swept through town.” Nicki shuddered. “It still gives me the creeps to think how close she came to drowning.”
“And still no word from her parents?”
Nicki shook her head, holding Kasey even closer. “Not since those people falsely claimed they knew her, hoping to cash in on the fund set up for her.”
Josie shook her head. “I still can’t believe people would do that.”
The sound of a truck caught Josie’s attention and as she glanced sidelong, she caught sight of Silas driving past. He was watching her. She flushed again and turned in time to see her friend give her a thoughtful nod.
“He’s good-looking enough. In a broody sort of way,” Nicki said with a teasing smile.
“Not my type,” Josie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. Besides, he was a widower with a young daughter. Her life was complicated and messy enough.
She glanced at her watch. “I gotta run. My grandmother doesn’t appreciate being left alone too long.”
“How’s she doing?” Nicki asked.
Josie waggled her hand. “Not great. She’s still in a lot of pain.”
“I’m sad for her, but at the same time, happy for me. Because the longer you stay here, the longer I have to convince you to change your mind about moving away.”
Josie tried not to respond to the wistful tone in her friend’s voice, but it was the plaintive look in her blue eyes that almost did her in. “I can’t, Nicki. You know that no matter what I do, my grandmother won’t let me forget who I was and what I used to do.” She had struggled and prayed over her difficult decision to move. Since she had taken in Alyssa, her life had changed but it seemed her grandmother hadn’t accepted that or forgotten Josie’s part. And now, even worse, her grandmother was turning her disapproving eye on Alyssa, as well. “And it seems many of the people in this town are determined to remember, as well.”
“How can you say that? Everyone in town thinks you’re great. You help everywhere help is needed. Since the tornado, you’ve been working your fingers to the bone.” She shifted Kasey to her other side, absently stroking the toddler’s head with her cheek. “And that stuff you used to do—surely your grandmother can’t still hold that against you?”
Josie sighed. “It seems she does. And if anything, having her live with me has proved to me more and more the necessity of leaving.”
“But Alyssa and Lily…” Nicki let the sentence trail off.
Josie fought her own guilt over Alyssa. She knew how close she and Lily were and how devastated her niece would be to leave her best friend behind, but it couldn’t be helped.
Another quick glance at her watch showed her she had to move on.
“Sorry, Nicki. I really gotta run.”
“Will you still cover my preschool class after lunch? I’ve got to take Kasey to the doctor.”
“Absolutely. Drive safe.”
“And I’m going to be praying something will happen to you to make you change your mind.”
Josie just laughed. “It would take quite something for that to happen. See you.”
Josie hurried down the street, glancing at her watch again, feeling a moment of guilt as she remembered doing the same in front of Silas. She couldn’t help it. In the past month, time had become her nemesis.
After the tornado had left her and Alyssa’s home uninhabitable, they had moved temporarily into one of the cottages belonging to the Waters family along the river.
And when her grandmother was discharged from the hospital, unable to take care of herself, unable to walk and also unable to move into her home, she had moved in with Josie and Alyssa.
Every day was spent caring for her grandmother and Alyssa, dealing with an insurance company who required endless reams of paperwork, making lists and appointments for her grandmother and trying not to grieve the loss of the things she had owned.
Josie hurried up the walk to the house. This morning the physiotherapist was coming for her grandmother, then she had promised Nicki that she would cover her preschool class after lunch.
Then she had to get what she needed for her own baking class later that afternoon.
As Josie ran up the temporary wheelchair ramp to the cottage, she heard her grandmother’s shrill voice calling her name.
And she paused, her fingertips resting on the door.
Please, Lord, give me patience. Help me to care for my grandmother as I should. She waited a moment, as if waiting for a quick answer to that prayer to come raining down from Heaven, then she turned the knob and stepped into the cottage.
“I’ve been waiting for hours,” Mrs. Carter called out as Josie walked down the narrow hall to her grandmother’s room. “Where were you?”
Her grandmother lay on the bed, clutching the blankets, her frown indicating her displeasure with her granddaughter. The early-morning sun slanting in highlighted the frown lines puckering her grandmother’s forehead and the lines of disapproval bracketing her pinched lips.
Betty Carter’s long hair, her grandmother’s pride, was already neatly brushed, waiting for Josie to put it up in the chignon Betty had worn from the day she was a bride.
“Alyssa wanted me to bring her to school today,” Josie said, walking to the bed.
“Girl is up to something. You better keep an eye on her.” Betty caught the bar that had been installed specially for her and eased herself to a sitting position. “I think she’s headed for trouble. Just like you.”
The stream of negativity made Josie wonder again why she hadn’t listened to the doctor’s suggestion to put her grandmother in a short-term care facility instead of trying to take care of Betty herself.
No one would have faulted her. Josie was trying to rebuild her life one piece at a time. She had the responsibility of her niece and she had her job and she had her plans. More than enough for one person.
But when Josie had found out her grandmother was being discharged early, she knew exactly why she had to take Betty into her own home instead.
Guilt. The eternal motivator.
Guilt over the fact that her grandmother had lain, in pain from a broken femur and shattered collarbone, for four hours after the tornado struck her home before rescue workers got to her. Guilt over not spending enough time with her grandmother when she was in the hospital. Guilt over a sketchy past Josie had tried to leave behind but one her grandmother would dredge up time and time again.
And threaded through this all was the slim hope that one day her grandmother would grant her scarce approval, turning to Josie with a smile instead of her habitual scowl.
“Alyssa is a good girl,” Josie said quietly, defending her niece. “Just like her mother.”
“You better hope she takes after Trisha—otherwise you’ll have your hands full. Like I did. Visits from the cops. Phone calls from other parents. You were nothing like Trisha and even less like your mother. Debbie was a good daughter and a good mother. Good thing she didn’t live to see what happened to her girls. One dead and the other nothing but trouble….”
Josie closed her ears to her grandmother’s litany of shame as she helped Betty Carter to the edge of the bed, moving her just as the physiotherapist had shown her the last time she had come for a home visit.
“Just put your arm over my shoulder and we’ll go up on the count of three. Ready?”
A few quick maneuvers had her grandmother in the wheelchair.
“My goodness, girl, could you be any rougher?” Betty frowned as she tried to get herself settled, pulling her pink, fleecy housecoat around her with one arm. “That collarbone will never heal if you aren’t more careful and you made my leg hurt. Again.”
“What would you like for breakfast, Gramma?” Josie ignored Betty’s complaints as she shifted the wheelchair through the doorway. The temporary living arrangements had never been meant to be wheelchair accessible, but thankfully a volunteer who had come to High Plains to help with the rebuilding had built a rough ramp up to the front door.
“I’m not hungry.” Betty closed her eyes and sighed. “You can do my hair right away.”
“I’ll need to get some elastics from my room first.”
“Why didn’t you think of that in the first place? I always have my hair done in the morning. You know that.”
Josie walked to the room she shared with Alyssa, closed the door behind her and leaned against it.
“Please, Lord, give me patience,” she whispered, clenching her hands into fists. “Please help me to love her as You love her.”
She waited a moment, then pushed herself away from the door and walked to her dresser.
She shook her head when she saw the framed photograph sitting front and center on the dresser.
Her niece had come home from school one day with this picture of her best friend, insisting on putting it on the dresser.
In the picture, Lily held the reins of the horse and grinned at the camera, her hair brushed and braided. She wore a cowboy hat and blue jeans. Silas was on the horse, his mouth tilted in an unfamiliar smile. He wore a cowboy hat pushed back on his head and he leaned toward the camera, his arms resting on the pommel of the saddle, as if about to divulge some secret.
When Alyssa had brought the picture home she said it was so she could remember her friend when they weren’t together in school.
Josie picked up the picture. Lily looked a couple of years younger than now, which made Josie suspect Lily’s mother had snapped the picture. Hence Lily’s neat hair. And Silas’s warm smile that transformed a face that Josie had seen only scowling or frowning.
He wasn’t a happy man, and she wondered what it would take to see that smile again.
She set the picture back on the dresser, snatched the elastics she needed out of a basket holding Alyssa’s hair stuff and hurried back to her waiting and impatient grandmother.
“You took a long time,” Betty said, scowling at her granddaughter.
As Josie brushed her grandmother’s hair, she wondered what it would take to get a smile from Betty Carter, as well.
“Did you give your dad the picture?” Alyssa slipped her backpack on and tugged her braids loose from the straps. They always got caught. Sometimes she wanted to get her hair cut, but then she wouldn’t look like her friend Lily anymore. Lily’s dad would never let her cut her hair, so Alyssa kept her hair long, too.
Tommy Jacobs bumped her as he ran past them, heading out the door to catch the school bus. Alyssa was a bit angry with him, but then she remembered that he was a foster kid and he had lost his dog. When she thought about that, she felt sorry for him and wasn’t mad anymore.
“Yeah. He looked kind of funny when I did, though.” Lily dropped her books in her backpack, but didn’t zip it up before she put it on.
