boys around. Dangerous tools and stuff,” Mari explained.
“Oh, let him,” Sara suggested gently. “Like as not, they could use some help. There’s always something another pair of hands can do, even if it’s just fetch and carry. How else is a boy supposed to learn how to do something, if not by watching and learning?”
“Please, Mom?” Zachary begged. “I won’t touch anything. Please? There’s nothing to do in here. I can’t watch a DVD or play a video game. What am I s’posed to do?”
Mari felt her cheeks grow warm. “I’m sorry, Sara,” she apologized, meeting her hostess’s gaze. “I explained to him about electricity, that you didn’t watch television or listen to the radio, but—”
“But it’s all new to him,” Ellie finished for her.
“So spending time with James’s crew might be the best place for him.” Sara added a pat of butter to the top of her pancake. “Unless he wants to help me and Jerushah wash clothes.” She raised her eyebrows at him.
The look on Zachary’s face made it clear he wasn’t interested in doing laundry. He turned to his mother. “Please, Mom?”
“If you’re certain you won’t be a nuisance,” she said, relenting. She met her son’s gaze. “Promise me that you’ll stay back out of the men’s way?”
“I will, Mom. Honest.” He got to his feet, picked up his plate and carried it to the sink.
“Put what you didn’t eat into that pail for the chickens.” Sara pointed to a stainless-steel container with a lid sitting just inside the utility room. “Nothing goes to waste here.”
“Chickens eat eggs?” Zachary asked. “Yuck. Cannibals.”
“Chickens eat most anything,” Hiram said. “Even boys if they sit still long enough.”
Zachary glanced at him, curious and suspicious at the same time. “Would they?”
“Ne, Zachary,” Sara assured him with a chuckle. “My chickens would not eat you. I think you are probably too tough to chew.”
Zachary laughed, realizing that Hiram had been teasing him, and made a dash for the back door.
“Get your heavy hooded sweatshirt,” Mari called after him, making a mental note that she needed to ask Sara where she could buy a decent used coat for him.
“I’m not cold.”
“Your hoodie,” Mari insisted, rising as she glanced at the clock on the wall. If she wanted to be outside waiting for the van when it came up the lane, she needed to get ready to go. “I don’t want you catching cold. Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll register you for school.”
“Not this week,” Zachary protested. “We just got here. I don’t want to start a new school in the middle of the week.” He stood in the doorway and scowled at her.
“It isn’t your decision,” Mari reminded him quietly. “I’m the mother.” She closed her eyes for a second, suddenly remembering with a sinking feeling that she’d never made arrangements to have his records forwarded. She’d intended to call, but then in all the commotion of packing to leave, it had slipped her mind. She wondered if there would be a phone she could use in the butcher shop. Surely there would be. But what if her new boss didn’t want employees using his phone? A lot of places she had worked didn’t allow personal calls.
“We’re not staying here that long,” Zachary said. “So there’s no sense in me starting school anywhere.” He headed for the back door again. “I’m just going to stay here and build stuff with the men until we go back to Wisconsin.” Seconds later, the back door slammed with a bang.
“I apologize for Zachary’s behavior,” Mari said to Sara and the others at the table. “He’s never like this. Honestly.” She exhaled, resting one hand on her hip. “At least not often. Excuse me.” She turned to follow him.
“Grab a coat on your way, Mari,” Sara ordered. “Plenty in the laundry room. If he’s going to catch his death, there’s no need for you to, as well.”
A minute later Mari opened the back door and was hit with a blast of cold air. This might not be Wisconsin, but it was still January and bitter. She was glad she’d taken Sara’s advice and taken a barn coat from the assorted outer garments hanging on the wall. She’d also gotten one for Zachary; it would be big on him, but at least it would be warm. There was no way she was going to let him outside in just jeans and a flannel shirt.
Mari crossed the porch and then went down the steps to the sidewalk that ran around the house. She followed it to the new construction, a two-story addition, and caught sight of her son at once. He was standing near a pile of new lumber watching as two men eased a new window into place on the ground floor. “Zachary!” she called.
He turned and hurried across the barnyard. Either he hadn’t heard her in the wind or he was pretending he hadn’t heard her. She exhaled, debating whether or not to go after him. She didn’t have time for this this morning. How was it that children picked the worst times to misbehave?
She was still debating when James came walking toward her.
Suddenly she felt flustered, standing there in the yard with a boy’s coat in her hand. “My son...” She lifted the coat and then lowered it. “He’s staying here today while I work. Sara’s going to keep an eye on him. She said it was okay if he came outside to see what your crew was doing.”
“But he forgot his coat.” James’s kind eyes were now twinkling, as if he and Mari were sharing some sort of private joke between them.
She felt herself relax a little. “Actually, his coat is in Wisconsin.” She exhaled. “Long story.”
James glanced in the direction Zachary had just gone. “What’s his name?” He slipped a hammer back into his leather tool belt and smiled at her reassuringly.
She hugged the barn coat against her chest. “Zachary.”
James nodded. “Eight or nine?”
“Nine.”
“Hard age. Changes are tough for boys. But he’ll be fine. He just needs time and patience to adjust.”
James’s accurate perception of the situation surprised her. “He’s a good kid, really,” she said. “It’s just...a lot for him. For both of us,” she amended. “Moving and all.”
“And you need him to show more maturity than he’s doing right now.”
“You must be a father.” She looked at him and smiled, then felt awkward. James had no beard. If he had no beard, he was unmarried. If he didn’t have a wife, he shouldn’t have a child, and she’d just inferred that—
“Nephews,” he explained, smoothly ignoring her mistake. “Four of them.”
“Nephews,” she echoed. “Then you know how boys can be.”
He rested a broad hand on his tool belt. “Sometimes boys can try a mother.” James stood there for a minute, then said, “Would it be okay if I talked to him?
