Mildred company for a few minutes,” Britt called to Renee. “I’ll be right back.”
The other three children piled into the house after them as Jake followed Britt through the kitchen to a dark hallway, then up the back stairs toward a long line of bedrooms.
“The bike’s cool, Mr. Marshack!” Matt reported from the bottom of the stairs. “The thumb-shifters are radical, and the brakes really work.” Then he seemed to notice the condition of Jake’s clothes. “What happened?”
“I was trying to help your mother with the goat,” Jake said. “I didn’t do very well.”
Matt frowned at Britt. “Yeah, I saw it. What’s it for, anyway? Renee says you’re gonna cook it.”
“No,” Britt called over her shoulder, stopping at the doorway to her bedroom. “I’m going to cook with the milk the goat gives us. I’m trying a new recipe for goat’s milk yogurt.”
“Oh.” The word contained very little enthusiasm.
“Are you staying for dinner, Mr. Marshack?” Christy asked, eyes wide and interested behind her glasses. She and David had followed them up the stairs.
A dinner invitation hadn’t been in Britt’s plans, but she quickly decided that since his present predicament had been precipitated by a sincere desire to help her, it would be only hospitable to ask him.
But before she could, David said coaxingly, “We’re having stew.” David always checked the stove when he came home from school.
“Salad, corn bread,” Britt added, “and cheesecake.”
Jake got the impression the children really wanted him to stay. Britt was less easy to read, but he thought he’d be foolish to let that stop him.
“I’d love to stay.”
The children cheered. Some strange emotion stabbed Jake in the chest.
Britt sent the children down to their after-school chores and led Jake into the bedroom. It was green and apricot, with a large window that looked out onto the pasture. Jake wondered if the furniture had come west on a covered wagon. The bed was a four-poster in a light wood with large cannonball-size finials. It had the patina that came from age and caring hands.
She pointed him to a bathroom at the far end of the room. “Shower’s in there. I’ll leave some of Jimmy’s things for you on the bed.” Her blue eyes did a quick, businesslike perusal of him from head to toe, one that made his pulse thrum. “They should fit...just fine.”
She stammered as she looked into his eyes and saw something there she couldn’t define but understood even so. It was related to the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat. The bedroom that had been practically like a convent for the past year, where she read and prayed and mulled over her problems, suddenly hummed with a curious power source. She wasn’t sure where it had come from or why it had sprung to life so suddenly, but she suspected that if she were to touch Jake at that moment, electricity would arc between them.
She sidled past him, between his muddy body and her pristine bedspread, to the door. “I’ll be in the kitchen when you’ve washed off the mud,” she said, then ran from the room as though something had chased her.
* * *
JAKE FOUND showering in Britt’s bathroom an unusual experience. The soap was scented, the shower curtain had green sea grass and pink seashells on it, and the bathroom counter held a modest lineup of cosmetics and colognes. It smelled like she did—vaguely floral and fresh.
On one level he felt uncomfortable because he didn’t want to dirty anything, and he feared in his present condition that was going to be impossible. But on another level, the femininity was curiously comforting.
His condo was all brown and beige and leather. His cream-colored bathroom had a functional shower stall and brown towels. His counter was bare, thanks to a three-sectioned, mirrored cabinet.
He showered quickly, washed his hair and buffed himself dry with a fragrant pink towel. He found a pair of jeans, a chambray shirt and a set of underwear on the foot of the bed. The jeans were a tad short, but fit well. The shirt was perfect. Apparently Jimmy Hansen had been pretty much his size.
The thought had no sooner formed than he was confronted with its confirmation. Sitting down on the bed to put on the slippers Britt had left on the carpet, he found himself eye to eye with a photograph of the man himself in his wedding clothes.
He was surprised to find himself feeling suddenly aggressive. Jimmy Hansen had been nice looking in an unremarkable sort of way, tall and broad and smiling. What showed through and made Jake look twice was what must have been a basic kindness. It was in his eyes, in the way he held the laughing woman in the bridal gown, in the way Britt looked at him with complete trust and open-hearted love.
He felt their unity like a jolt. No wonder Britt could look so bright one moment and so fragile the next. A love like that would be a beacon, but without someone to direct it to, it would be a powerful force to deal with day after day.
He went downstairs feeling unsettled.
He heard the shouting before he reached the kitchen door. “She is not!” a girl’s voice said adamantly. He guessed it was Christy’s.
“She is,” a boy’s voice said reasonably. David. “I heard her talking on the phone to Judy.”
By the time Jake reached the doorway, Christy, wooden spoon in hand, was waving threateningly at her younger brother, who was placing silverware in orderly precision around the table. “Mom would never sell the farm. She couldn’t. We’d have nowhere to live.”
A quick glance around the room showed Jake that Britt and Matt were missing. Matt was delivering papers, Jake knew, but where was his hostess?
Renee followed David with plates and stopped to ask in horror, “You mean...we’re gonna go away?”
“Of course not!” Christy said with conviction, moving back to the pot of stew. “David’s just being dumb.”
“Then how come Mom was crying?” David demanded.
“She wasn’t.”
“She was.”
As though in sympathy, even though the issue wasn’t clear, Renee began to cry. “I don’t want to go away,” she wept, confounding Jake by turning to him, arms raised, as he walked into the room.
Panic seized him. He was alone with three children, two of them fighting and one of them crying. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to tell himself this was no different from a sales meeting, and proceeded to take charge.
He picked up Renee and gently hushed her.
“I don’t want to go away!” she complained, taking his neck in a stranglehold and weeping into it.
“I’m sure nobody’s going away,” he said, one-handedly finishing the placement of plates the child had started. “There. What else do we need to do?”
“Salt and pepper and napkins,” Christy said, pointing to the caddy on the
