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One of the dogs woofed softly.
“Dogs like cake,” Ruth added, more pouty now than agitated.
“But cake is not good for dogs.” Hank held eye contact with the child, not an easy thing to do.
Ruth rocked from one foot to the other again. The chair wobbled. Her tutu swayed and rustled. She looked over at the dogs sitting at the table next to her then at the man treating her with dignity and yet demanding she show a level of discipline she couldn’t always deliver.
She scrunched her mouth up on one side and lifted one foot slightly, which might have made anyone else seem off balance but somehow seemed to put Ruth at a cockeyed advantage. “Can dogs eat pretend cake?”
Hank had to tilt his head to keep eye contact, which he did. He managed a nod, as well. “I think that would be all right.”
“Pretend pink cake?” Ruth threw it out almost as a challenge, as if she wasn’t ready to believe the man had imagination enough to conjure up canine-safe and Ruth-approved pretend fare.
“Pretend pink cake with pretend pink icing on top.” He lifted up what Emma could now see was an empty cup. “Shall we sip on it?”
Ruth mimicked his motion, reaching for her own cup, then paused to warn him, “’Member your manners.”
“Oh, sorry.” With that, the rough-around-the-edges country vet delicately extended his pinkie finger.
Ruth did the same.
Hank raised the cup to his lips and made an obnoxiously loud slurping sound and that sent Ruth into a gale of giggles.
Emma’s stomach clenched even as her heart warmed. She had come here to clear her head so she could make a decision about hers and Ruth’s future. This was not helping that, but it seemed so good for her precious little girl. “Thank you, Hank—for everything.”
“You’re welcome.” He set the cup down then turned toward her. “Get enough sleep?”
“No, but I think I’m recharged enough to go see my aunt.” Emma stretched then yawned. Her dress rustled around her. “After I change, of course.”
“I didn’t think you were the kind to change for anyone.” He looked at her then at Ruth, who was swirling her empty cup through the air while the dogs looked on. “Certainly looks like you went out and got what you wanted in life after we parted ways. I hope you and your husband are very happy, Em.”
“I never married.”
“Oh?” Again he looked at Ruth.
Her often obstinate child placed hats folded from newspapers on the head of one dog, then the other.
“I…” Emma didn’t know how much she wanted to share with Hank about her choices and her life since she ran out on him all those years ago. Did he really need to know that she had never fallen truly in love with another man since him? Or that from the moment Emma had adopted Ruth straight out of the Neonatal Unit at the hospital where Emma had worked, until last year when she went to work for Dr. Ben Weaver, that Emma had put her child’s needs first and foremost? Did he need to know how all of that tied in to her hasty flight home last night?
She opened her mouth, hoping just the right amount of information would spill out. Instead, her stomach gurgled. Loudly.
So loudly that both of the dogs looked startled. One of them woofed.
“You still aren’t very good at the whole standing up for yourself and saying what you want, are you, Em?” Hank laughed. He stood and moved around to offer her his seat. “If you were hungry you should have said so, not asked me if I wanted something to eat.”
She wanted to argue but she couldn’t. She never had been able to put her own needs ahead of others. That was one of the reasons she felt so strongly about caring for Ruth by herself. It terrified her to think of even people who loved them both barging in with opinions and options that Emma feared might not be best for her fragile child. It humbled and touched her that after all these years Hank still knew her better than anyone, even than Ben, the man who said he loved her.
“Do you suppose Sammie Jo has anything but bird feed around this place?” Hank went to the nearly ancient aqua-blue refrigerator and tugged it open.
Emma sighed. She’d roused from a cold slumber thinking she needed to run to the aid of this poor out-of-his-depth man when he not only had everything under control, he actually wanted to help her. If she’d let him.
“Well, she has chickens so you know she has eggs.” Emma settled into the chair and smiled at Ruth, who was busy trying to dab the corner of a napkin over the bulldog’s lips. “I hope Ruth wasn’t too much for you.”
“Too-oo much,” Ruth parroted, still trying to get all the pretend food off the face of the very real pooch.
“She was…” He set a bowl of brown and tan and white and even pale blue eggs on the counter. Then he turned around and honed his gaze in on Emma’s face. “Surprising.”
“In a good way?” Emma gave her fondest hope voice.
“She made those hats for the dogs all by herself” was the only answer he gave her.
“Yeah.” Emma put her hand on the torn newspaper on the table, folded a corner down then tore the edges to form a two-inch-by-two-inch square, which she pushed toward Ruth. “She does that.”
A moment later the smell of the gas burner being turned on high mingled with the aroma of bread browning in the old toaster.
“Over easy or scrambled?” Hank asked.
“Scrambled. Just like my life.” Emma sat with her shoulders slumped forward. “I’m afraid with Aunt Sammie having this health scare, it might be lousy timing bringing Ruth here. I don’t suppose you have an idea about that?”
He cracked an egg into the skillet, then another. As they bubbled quietly, he turned and seemed to study them both. “I guess that depends on why you brought her here.”
She wasn’t sure if the man was asking her a question or suggesting she needed to ask that question of herself.
He went back to the eggs, gave them a stir. “What’s she making, a teeny tiny hat?”
“Paper crane,” Emma said, watching her child’s fingers manipulate the square of newsprint. “There’s a Japanese legend that says if you make a thousand of them, you can ask for one wish. I bet Ruth has made at least a thousand by now.”
“That right?” He flipped the eggs over. The toast popped up. He got out a plate, slung a tea towel over his shoulder and asked, “So, what would you wish for, Ruth?”
“Crease.” Ruth did not look up.
“Crease,” Emma whispered, at last focusing every ounce of her attention and every emotion in her heart on her child.
Crease. It was the perfect word for the sound of Ruth’s crescent-moon thumbnail sliding down the length of the folded piece of paper. The perfect word for the crisp edge left in that thumbnail’s path. The perfect word for Emma’s heart when she laid eyes on her child—folded in two, pressed down, forced into opposing segments, each cut off from the other but still whole, still Emma.
On one side there was all that she wanted for her child, all that any mother wants and hopes and dreams for her child. Opposing that, the hard reality the world had dealt them.
“Wing!” Ruth proudly held up the half-finished bit of origami.
“Wing,” Hank echoed in a tone that seemed in awe and yet not lacking concern. He set the plate of food down in front of Emma. “It’s not fancy but…”
“It’s all I need,” she murmured, looking up into his eyes. “Thanks.”
He shooed the dogs away from the table with a snap and a gesture. Emma wondered what this man couldn’t do with those strong, capable hands that had held imaginary tea, cooked her meal, lifted her up in a moment of weakness.
He folded those hands in prayer.
Emma bowed her head.
“Thank You, Lord, for the bounty of life,” he began softly. “Thank You for all that we have to eat, all that we have to share, all that we have to hope and for the gift of Your grace, Amen.”
“Amen,” Emma murmured.
He took the seat next to her, angled his shoulders back and folded his arms. “So, what’s the deal with your daughter?”
She didn’t know if he was asking why she had brought Ruth to Gall Rive or if he was curious about her medical diagnosis and story. But he was the first person she had ever met who had had the insight, courage and kindness to sit down and ask outright, so she told him the things that she had tucked deep in her heart. “Ruth can’t say her whole alphabet. She still struggles to use a fork or a knife. When she dresses herself she usually tries, at least once, to force her head through an armhole.”
He leaned forward, listening intently.
“When she does her hair, she usually rats it into little blond puff balls more than actually comb it. If the tangles aren’t too bad, she puts a sparkly clip on them and looks up, smiling, for approval.” Emma smiled, but it did not last long as she added, “If she gets angry about it, she pulls the clip out, and some of her hair with it.”
“A lot of little kids—”
“She’s eight years old.”
“Eight?” He looked at Ruth, his head tipped. “Am I wrong in thinking she’s small for her age?”
“She was a preemie.” Emma looked at her daughter. Her heart filled with love and yet she still felt the twinge of hope and fear of all the nights she’d spent by the child’s crib in the infant ICU, praying, singing to her softly, making plans for a nursery, a relationship, a life that she knew might never be realized. “I came to work at the hospital on the night she was born, took one look at four-hour-old Ruth with her oxygen tubes and terrified teenage birth mom who knew she couldn’t possibly take care of a special-needs child and I knew I was looking at my baby.”
Hank tipped his head to the right. He seemed to be making a study of Ruth but there was, in his expression, a gentleness and depth that he had never shown as a younger man.
That look warmed Emma’s heart and yet made her uneasy at the same time. Rather than trying to sort out those conflicting emotions Emma took a bite and savored the simple goodness of her meal. “Mmm. There’s nothing like farm-fresh eggs, eaten in a familiar kitchen, cooked by someone who…”
Someone who…cares about you? Someone you share a history with? Someone who let you walk away and never once tried to come after you, never tried to make amends? She stirred the eggs on the plate again, unable to finish that sentence.
He strummed his fingers on the tabletop, giving her time to conclude, then finally asked, “So you adopted as a single mother?”
“Eight years ago.” She nodded, glad for the distraction. “Aunt Sammie or Claire never told you?”
“I never talk to Claire about personal things. As for your aunt? I never asked.” He laid his hands, palm up, on the table and lowered his gaze to them. “That first year after you’d gone when you didn’t come back, not even for the holidays, I told Sammie Jo I didn’t want to hear about you again. Not ever. I guess she got the message. And right or wrong, I just felt—”
“Bended.” Ruth pressed down a pointed tip on the paper then moved to the final stage. “Pull, pull, pulled. Careful, it can still be broken.”
“You said a mouthful, kid.” He seemed transfixed by Ruth’s fingers working over the tiny piece of paper. “She does this a lot, huh?”
She nodded. “She can’t dress or feed herself without help. But this she can do. Folding and unfolding, creasing, pressing flat, turning, lining up, tucking in then opening up. You show her how to do it once, and…”
Ruth opened her hands to reveal her creation, an understatedly elegant origami bird. “Crane!”
“Very pretty.” Hank held his hand out toward the girl.
“Too-oo much.” She dropped the crane into his open palm.
“That about sums us up, I guess. Very pretty but too-oo much.” Emma tried to smile.
Hank put his hand on her arm.
“Static encephalotrophy.” She said the diagnosis out loud then followed up with, “Brain damage that won’t get worse…or better. Same diagnosis as cerebral palsy, only Ruth’s is less physical and more learning- and behavior-based.”
“So you have to learn to work with what you have,” he surmised.
“Not exactly the Newberry way, is it?” She bit into her toast and tore a corner off.
He sat back in his chair and chuckled. “No, I’d say the Newberry way is—”
“Who belongs to that SUV out there with the Georgia tags?” The front door went banging against the wall as Samantha Jo Newberry’s rasping voice rang through both stories, each of the five bedrooms, down the hallways and most definitely into the big, open kitchen. “If it’s a birder, I’m here to help. If it’s my baby Emma come home at last, I’m here in the doorway with my arms open wondering how long I have to wait before I hobble in there, hunt you down and hug the stuffin’ out of you!”
Chapter Three
“Great-aunt Sammie!” The chair legs complained against the old floor as Ruth pushed it away from the table. It almost tipped backward.
“Whoa!” Hank caught it with one hand.
Emma darted her hand out to help her daughter. Her hand landed firmly on top of Hank’s.
Ruth scrambled down off the tilted chair unaware of either of them. “Great-aunt Sammie. Great-aunt Sammie! It’s me! It’s your pretty-great favorite kid, Ruthie!”
Emma watched her daughter lope away to greet Sammie Jo. Emma should have jumped up with equal enthusiasm and done the same, but she couldn’t seem to move. All the importance of her rash rush to return home settled over her. Hank, Ruth, her aunt, her sister, Gall Rive, the past, the future she had come here to contemplate and everything they carried with them settled like a mantle onto her shoulders.
Hank’s dogs followed Ruth, their tags jingling rhythmically.
Emma returned her attention to Hank. She realized she had closed her hand over his, her grip tightening.
Hank did not shy away or even flinch at her touch. He met her gaze, his eyes kind but unrevealing as he asked a “safe” question. “Pretty-great kid?”
“The last time Sammie Jo came to visit us in Atlanta, we explained that she was Ruth’s great-aunt, to which Ruth let it be known she was a pretty-great kid herself.” A combination of love and recognition resounded from the foyer, with Sammie Jo laughing, dogs snuffing, their tags jangling and Ruth demanding to know where they kept the cake around this place. Emma managed an amenable smile. “It stuck.”
“I can see why. The kid has a point.” Hank settled Ruth’s chair’s legs onto the floor but did not withdraw his hand from beneath hers. “They are both pretty great.”
Had she heard right? Hank Corsaut admitting he wasn’t totally put off by a kid?
“Cake. Pink cake. Mom doesn’t know where it is. My dog-friend’s daddy doesn’t know, either.” Ruth’s voice echoed a bit through the high-ceilinged house. “Come get it for me.”
Emma sighed and shut her eyes. It was all too much to process given her state of mind and the state of her life.
“You want cake? Then cake you shall have!” Sammie Jo’s own voice rang out with a regal tone. “If I don’t have any, we shall make one. Hang what the doctors say about diet and restricting cholesterol.”
“Great, yes.” Emma pulled back her shoulders and slipped her hand away from Hank’s. She stood. “But she’s also a very big responsibility.”
“You talking about your daughter or your aunt Sammie Jo?” Hank grinned at her.
That grin gave her just the boost she needed to deal with the double trouble of her two most childlike and demanding relatives. She turned and headed toward the foyer, compelled to make one thing perfectly clear as she did. “Sammie Jo is my sister Claire’s responsibility.”
He stood up so quickly it made the table wobble and strode behind Emma, adding, “Except when Claire is busy.”
“Which is, like, all the time, to hear her tell it,” Emma chimed in, winding her way through the cluttered living room toward the front door where she could hear Ruth, Sammie Jo and the pair of dogs scuffling around.
“Which is, like, all the time,” Hank affirmed, keeping up with every sidestep and curve in the path Emma was blazing. “When Claire is busy, your aunt, and by extension, this sanctuary, has become my responsibility. Of course now that you’re here—”
