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Bowing her head, she offered a silent prayer then cut into the pork.
Stripes wove between them, rubbing against Mr. Smith’s boot. He gave her ears a gentle scratch and was rewarded with a grateful purr. The way people treated animals said a lot about them. “Where’s home?” she asked.
“Nowhere in particular.”
Eyeing him, she scooped egg onto her fork. “We’re all born somewhere, Mr. Smith.”
“Yes, ma’am, but… I don’t know exactly where.”
Her hand stilled. “Care to explain?”
“I grew up in an orphanage.” He’d said the words in a matter-of-fact voice, with no trace of emotion, yet his eyes didn’t meet hers.
The bite of egg lodged in Callie’s throat. If not for Aunt Hilda, Callie would’ve met the same fate. Swallowing hard, her gaze darted his way.
He looked tranquil enough, but a twitch in his jaw suggested otherwise. “Not a happy experience?”
He shrugged, but the raw bleakness in his eyes confirmed her opinion.
“You got kin around these parts?” he said, deftly changing the subject and avoiding his past.
“My late husband’s parents live a few blocks west.”
“I’m sorry about your husband.” Green eyes locked with hers. “Must be comforting, having his family nearby.”
She nodded. Those searching eyes noticed her lack of enthusiasm. The man missed nothing.
“So what brings you to Peaceful?”
He gave a lopsided grin. “Reckon I’m here to help you.”
“Are you saying you came to Peaceful by chance?”
“The town’s name drew me.” He laid his plate on the bench. Except for a few biscuit crumbs, he’d wiped it clean. “Thank you for the meal.” His gaze settled on the lean-to. “And for the lodging.” He plopped his hat in place. “I’d say I got the better end of our deal.”
“You may think otherwise once you wrangle with the roof.”
“I’m part mountain goat.” He rose. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll repair the roof this morning. Tackle the porch during the heat of the day.”
“Do as you think best.”
A flicker of surprise skidded across his face. That boss at the construction company must’ve been a stickler.
“I’ll bring your dinner out at noon. Wait a minute.” She walked inside, grabbed a fruit jar with a galvanized lid from the kitchen. “It’s going to be a scorcher. Fill this or you’ll wear yourself out making trips to the pump.”
He took the jar and tipped his hat. “Much obliged.”
“Take care on that roof. It’s steep.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes sobered. “I will.”
He strapped on a pouch of nails and stuck the hammer under his belt, then leaned the ladder against the back of the house, making adjustments until he had it centered to suit him. Before she could steady it, he’d grabbed an armload of shingles and scrambled to the top and out onto the roof. As he clomped up the incline, she held her breath and then slowly released it, noticing his confidence and agility.
And the way his back muscles rippled through his shirt.
At the unwelcome response to the man, her cheeks burned. With her hands full to overflowing and no idea where she’d get the money to take her and Elise through the winter, how could she keep noticing a man’s muscles, a drifter at that?
Her father-in-law would say only a no-account man chose to work for room and board, instead of settling down with a good-paying job.
Callie shivered. Jacob Smith had been closed-mouthed. Was he running from something? Or to something?
Whatever his motive for coming to Peaceful, she didn’t need another complication in her life. How long before he could get the work done and leave?
Couldn’t be soon enough to suit her.
Sweat stinging his eyes and blurring his vision, Jake pulled a nail from the pouch and fastened a shingle in place. He yanked a handkerchief from his hip pocket, threaded it under the crown of his wide-brimmed hat, then plunked it on his head.
Laying shingles in this unseasonable heat was hard, dirty work, but he welcomed the exertion, liked being in control. Control he’d lost in jail, but needed badly. A man felt alive when he pushed the limits of his endurance. Afterward, his muscles might ache, but nothing equaled the satisfaction of repairing something broken. If it sometimes ate at him that remodeling houses came as close as he’d get to a home of his own, he forced the thought away. No reason to expect anything more. He had no interest in forming a family.
Every half hour like clockwork, Mrs. Mitchell came out to check on him. No doubt scared he’d break his neck. Not that he blamed her, considering what happened to her husband. If she knew how at ease he felt perched on this roof, she’d worry less.
He liked the expanse, the sense of freedom, the clear view of nearby gardens with slender rows of leaf lettuce and green onions. A few patches overgrown with dead pumpkin vines and cornstalks bordered red barns, whitewashed sheds and outhouses, all tucked behind clapboard houses.
Did one of these homes hide the woman who’d given him birth?
Not his mother. A mother took care of her child. Fed him. Tucked him into bed at night.
Or so he understood.
But one thing he knew—a mother didn’t toss her baby away like an unwanted trinket. Clenching his jaw, he slammed the hammer into the head of the nail, driving it in place. He wanted that woman to know the price he’d paid for her negligence. The orphanage had provided the basics to sustain life, but no affection, no encouragement, no joy, merely existence.
She sent a yearly birthday greeting to the orphanage addressed to Jacob, not even using his last name, as if Smith was a lie. Those cards didn’t diminish her desertion. Merely proved she knew his location yet never bothered to see him. Never bothered to reveal his roots. Never bothered to make sure he survived.
As he pounded shingles into place, his mind drifted back to the winter he was seven. He’d fallen from a tree on the orphanage grounds. With pain searing his broken arm and emptiness branding his heart, he’d lain on the frozen earth staring at the bare branches, silhouetted against a cloudless sky. A boy surrounded by people, yet starving for love, he’d cried out for his mother. No one came.
From that moment, Jake dropped the pretense he’d clung to and faced the truth. He had only those postcards. Postcards couldn’t hold him. Postcards couldn’t wipe away his tears. Postcards couldn’t atone for her abandonment.
At last he’d quieted, then struggled to his feet. Cradling his broken arm against his chest, he’d shuffled toward the orphanage, a vow on his lips.
Never again would he care about that woman. Never again would he deceive himself into believing that one day she’d come for him. Never again would he hold on to hope for a family.
His arm had mended. But in the sixteen years since that day, nothing had proved him wrong.
Even as an adult, when he knew circumstances might’ve made her coming for him difficult, even impossible, he couldn’t find it in his heart to excuse her.
The postcards had been postmarked Indianapolis. Once, just once, a card had come from Peaceful. He’d kept all those postcards. Just to remember the town names. Not that they meant anything to him.
As he hammered another nail home, his stomach clenched. In truth, he’d studied each stroke of the pen, compared the handwriting to his own, searching those pitifully few words for some connection. Never finding one.
After his exoneration and release from prison, he’d spent a month in Indianapolis, searching birth records, locating every Smith he could find, but he hadn’t turned up a clue. For some reason, he had the strong feeling she’d sent the postcards from there to throw him off her trail and he’d find her in Peaceful.
Well, if she’d found peace in this town, perhaps he would, too. Once he’d given her a huge hunk of his opinion. Not charitable of him, but the best he could do with all the bitterness burning inside him.
He didn’t wish her harm. He didn’t even want to disgrace her. He merely needed her to know the penalty he’d paid when she’d swept him under the rug of her life.
The beat of his heart pounded in his temples with the rhythm of his hammer. If there was a God and He was the Author of Life, as some claimed, He hadn’t gone out of His way to lend a hand to Jake’s life story.
Not in the circumstances of his birth.
Not in those years in the orphanage.
Not in the injustice exacted in that courtroom.
He sighed. Why not admit it? He wanted to see his mother with a desperation he couldn’t fathom, yet couldn’t deny. He wanted to meet her. See if they shared a resemblance. Learn the identity of his father. Maybe then he could move on with his life. If only he had a way to make his search easier, a sign with an arrow pointing in the direction to turn. He huffed at such absurdity. What would the sign say? This way leads to Jake Smith’s mother?
“How’s it going?”
Whirling around, Jake scrambled for footing, scraping his knuckles against the hot shingles.
Mrs. Mitchell looked up at him, eyes wide with alarm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, but dinner’s ready.”
“My fault, I didn’t hear you coming.” He forced his lips into a grin that pinched like ill-fitting shoes. “Your timing’s perfect. I just replaced the last shingle.”
Her eyes lit. “Oh, now I won’t have to cringe at the first peal of thunder.”
Forcing his gaze away from that sparkle in her eyes, that sweet smile on her lips, he tucked the hammer into his belt. She drew him like a mindless moth to a candle’s flame, a lure that would prove as lethal.
“Any damage inside?” he said, barely able to concentrate with her peering up at him.
“My bedroom ceiling’s cracked. I moved the bed to ensure that I won’t awaken one morning blanketed in plaster.”
Knowing the danger of entanglement, yet unable to stop himself, he said, “Can’t have a chunk of ceiling marring that pretty face of yours.”
The apple of her cheeks colored, but her eyes turned wary. “You men know the words a woman likes to hear.”
Why didn’t an attractive woman like Callie Mitchell appreciate a compliment? “I’ll take a look at the ceiling when I’ve finished the porch.” Jake pivoted out onto the ladder, descending the rungs two at a time, the ladder vibrating with each footfall.
By the time he’d reached the bottom, she’d dashed over and gripped the sides. He all but bumped into her coming off the last step. Wide-eyed and obviously shaken, she quickly moved aside. When had anyone worried about his safety?
“I’m accustomed to ladders and this one’s sturdy.”
“Even a careful man can meet disaster, Mr. Smith.”
No doubt she referred to her husband’s fall, but her remark summed up his life. “Your words don’t give a man much hope.”
Her eyes narrowed, as if trying to see inside of him. “Hope doesn’t come from words of mine. Hope comes from God’s Word.”
A man couldn’t manufacture something he didn’t believe. “I don’t see a point in opening a Bible.”
“Without God’s Word to point me in the right direction, I’d lose my way.” Mrs. Mitchell looked at him with eagerness. “You might give the Bible and church a try.”
“From what I’ve seen, churchgoers aren’t likely to offer clemency.” The words shot out of his mouth before he could stop them. What about this woman made him bleed his innermost thoughts?
Her gaze bored deeper. “Do you need clemency?”
Jake removed his hat and slipped the handkerchief stuffed inside into his hip pocket then swiped the sweat off his brow in the crook of his elbow. It didn’t take a genius to recognize prying. “Reckon we all do.”
A flash of remorse traveled her face. Her eyes lifted to the roof, filling with anguish and self-reproach that pushed against his core. If he didn’t know better, he’d believe Mrs. Mitchell shoved her husband off the roof. Well, he had no interest in getting involved with her or her problems. Yet she looked so fragile standing there fighting back tears.
An overpowering urge to tug her to him, to tell her everything would be fine, mounted inside him, yet his hands remained at his sides.
Everything had never been fine.
He couldn’t promise such a thing.
To her.
To anyone.
“I’ll get your dinner.” She headed to the house, shoulders bent, as if carrying a heavy burden.
No doubt she did. A burden he could ease by repairing this house. But the rest—unwed mothers, babies, grief over her husband’s death—he’d stay clear of all that.
At the pump, Jake stuck his head under the spout. Cold water sluiced down his throat and into his sweat-soaked shirt. Perhaps the dousing would cool his empathy for the young widow.
The woman tried to shove God and church down his throat, a prescription Jake couldn’t swallow. She’d indicated that the Bible would point a man in the right direction, as if the road ahead lay with God. He’d more likely find that arrow he wished for earlier than answers in an ancient gilded book.
And as for prayer—
If God existed, He didn’t give a fig about Jake. No matter what Callie Mitchell said, God wouldn’t be helping him. Jake would need a sensible way to find his mother.
Wielding a crowbar, Jake pried a rotted board from the porch floor, easy to do with the missing or inadequately set nails. He’d make repairs and ignore Mrs. Mitchell’s attempt to get him to church. Yet, he could feel himself getting drawn into her life. Worse, drawn to her. That scared him silly.
The faint scent of roses drifted through the air. Mrs. Mitchell stepped onto the porch, a straw boater perched at a jaunty angle on her head, wearing a high-neck white shirtwaist and gored skirt that rustled at the hem as she moved.
Jake sat back on his heels and drank in the sight of her, the gentle arch of her brows, her almond-shaped aquamarine eyes, her thick tresses the shade of rich coffee.
“Hello.” He’d sounded like a smitten schoolboy instead of a man who’d been burned.
“Hello.” She smiled at him. “Lovely afternoon.”
“It is.” Especially since she’d appeared, but he wouldn’t say that. If he had one speck of control over his addled brain, he wouldn’t think it, either.
“I’ll try not to get in your way.” She edged across the porch to check the flower boxes of pansies.
“You aren’t bothering me.”
When had he told a bigger lie? He could barely keep his eyes off her as she nipped off some dying blooms.
