much like his mother had looked at that age, that Matt could rarely see him without feeling the catch in his throat.
His smile faded and he recognized the sadness that felt like it would never go away.
How could a woman of twenty-seven die of breast cancer? A woman who had been the sole parent to her child? His sister, Marianne, had had the laughter and life sucked out of her until she was wasted, so wracked with pain it had been a mercy when she died.
He shook his head, trying to be free of the anger and sadness and bewilderment that mingled in him, and that he saw mirrored in his tiny nephew.
Until he’d put his younger sister in the ground, Matt had had a faith of sorts. Not a church-going kind of faith, but a kind of simple reverence for the miracle of a new foal, an awe at the hardiness of spring flowers, a kind of unstated belief that in the end good generally won.
Now, he felt like a man who had been through a war, not at all certain what he believed about anything anymore.
He went down on his haunches and held open his arms. Robbie catapulted into him, and he pretended to be knocked over. Under Mrs. Beatle’s disapproving eye, he and his nephew wrestled across the floor. He didn’t stop until Robbie was shouting with laughter.
“Are we going to see Robbie tomorrow, Mr. Donahue?” Mrs. Beatle asked tightly, when they had both picked themselves up off the floor.
Robbie’s hand tightened on his, and Matt looked down into those imploring eyes. Everyone said day care was good for his nephew. They said it wasn’t good for him to trail his uncle around the horse operation like a tiny shadow. They said he needed to socialize with kids his own age, that he needed to learn to count, and that did not include measuring horse rations. They said he should be watching Sesame Street, not the stallion on the mares, or the mares having foals. They said Robbie’s life needed to have structure.
So he could learn to pick up his kid promptly at five someday, Matt thought testily.
Besides, how could you inflict Mrs. Beatle on someone you loved two days in a row?
And he loved Robbie. In fact, the boy’s presence in his life had Matt discovering the oddest tender regions in a heart he had always foolishly assumed was as tough as the rest of him. He had never felt anything like the feeling that boy put in his heart. And maybe that was a little something worth believing in, when he could find nothing else.
His sister had told him the love would survive.
He clung to that some days, that one truth.
“Uh, no, Mrs. Beatle, he won’t be coming tomorrow.”
“Ms. Bettle,” Robbie corrected him in a loud whisper, and then beamed at him.
Ms. Bettle—what kind of fool would marry her after all—made a sucking sound with her lips. Ignoring her, Matt hoisted his nephew onto his shoulders, ducked under the doorway and went out into the bright May sunshine.
“Auntie, I’m hungry.”
Auntie. No amount of begging or pleading or ordering or demanding could change it. Robbie’s first attempts at Matt, had come out Auntie, and he stubbornly refused to budge on this issue. His uncle was Auntie, period. In a small town, it was like being a boy named Sue, a cross Matt bore better on some days than others.
The kid was always hungry. Matt tried to think what he had for groceries in that lonely house he and Robbie now shared.
Macaroni and cheese, but they’d had that last night. Wieners and beans, but they’d had that the night before. Taco chips and Cheez Whiz spread, but that didn’t count as real food for some reason. Somewhere in his limited inventory of kid information he knew he was supposed to be feeding Robbie at least some stuff that was green.
“You want to go for a hamburger?” At least that would have Walt’s big, fat homemade pickle on the side. Green.
Robbie nodded happily.
Maybe if Matt ordered a salad, too, even though neither of them would eat it, he wouldn’t feel so bloody guilty about his absolute failure in the nutritional health department.
He wondered if she knew anything about nutritional health, and was annoyed with himself for wondering.
He didn’t have to wonder for long. After he and Robbie had eaten, he went home, fed his own horses, then loaded a few bales, and returned to her place. She was sitting on her front step eating a bag of potato chips. Her furniture, and boxes, were stacked on the porch all around her.
He looked sternly at his nephew. “Stay here. I’ll only be a second.” The astonishing truth was he didn’t want Robbie calling him auntie in front of her. He got out of the truck.
She rose to greet him, slender, innately graceful. She wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans, which he really wished she hadn’t done. How could she be slender and curvy at the same damned time?
“Supper?” he guessed, a lame conversation opener, not that he wanted a conversation, despite the intriguing sight of her behind. He just wanted to dump his bales and go home.
After reading Robbie that book his nephew loved a couple of times, he could go to bed.
She gave him a look that told him her supper was none of his business, then offered grudgingly, “I’m trying to get the inside cleaned up before I put my stuff in.”
Robbie, obedient only when it was convenient, as always, finally managed to get himself out the passenger side of the truck. He came around and stood gazing at her. “I’m Robbie,” he announced, finally.
“Hi, Robbie,” she said, not moving on to any of that sentimental gushing that made Matt just cringe. Robbie wasn’t too fond of it either. “I’m Corrine. You can call me Corrie.”
“My nephew,” Matt said, and then as way of a hint to Robbie, “I’m his uncle.”
She gave him a sour look that said she had figured that out. If she was any pricklier, roses would be growing out of the top of her head.
“How old are you, Corrie?” Robbie asked, missing the prickliness apparently.
“Twenty-seven,” she said, without apology or giggling or even flinching.
Finally, something he liked about her, Matt thought, then realized how bloody tired he was. He’d been up since five-thirty, and suddenly he knew he was not up to this, to standing around making small talk with a woman who seemed to have grown less likable and more gorgeous since this afternoon.
Maybe because some of that honey-gold hair had fallen free from the ponytail. But the evening light had not softened the unfriendliness of her, though he reluctantly noticed she did not look so scared anymore. Just untouchable. And tired, like him.
“I’m five,” Robbie said, a conversation opener that had to be cut off quick.
Matt brought it back to business. “I brought you a couple of bales and a sack of oats for your donkey.”
Leave it at that, an inner voice advised him. Besides, she looked like she’d rather kill him than owe him anything. But he couldn’t. The welfare of the animal came before his desire not to get frost-burn from
