heart ached a little. “No, thanks,” the little boy said solemnly. “We had it for supper and, anyway, Mom makes it all the time.”
Garrett looked up at Julie, smiled slightly and turned his full attention back to Calvin. “Your mom’s a good cook,” he said.
Harry advanced and brushed up against Garrett, leaving white beagle hairs all over the leg of his jeans. Garrett chuckled and greeted Harry with a pat on the head and a quiet “Hey, dog.”
“Calvin,” Julie interceded, “we should get back to bed and leave Mr. McKettrick to enjoy his … breakfast.”
Garrett’s eyes, though weary, seemed to dance when he looked up at Julie. “‘Mr. McKettrick’?” he echoed. His gaze swung back to Calvin. “Do you call my brother Tate ‘Mr. McKettrick’?” he asked.
Calvin shook his head. “I call him Tate. He’s going to marry my aunt Libby on New Year’s Eve, and he’ll be my uncle after that.”
A nod from Garrett. “I guess he will. I will be, too, sort of. So maybe you ought to call me Garrett.”
The child beamed. “I’m Calvin,” he said, “and this is my dog, Harry.”
And he put out his little hand, much as Julie had done earlier.
They shook on the introduction, man and boy.
“Mighty glad to meet the both of you,” Garrett said.
CHAPTER TWO
THE COMBINATION OF A FIERCELY BLUE autumn sky, oak leaves turning to bright yellow in the trees edging the sundappled creek and the heart-piercing love she felt for her little boy made Julie ache over the bittersweet perfection of the present moment.
She turned the pink Cadillac onto the winding dirt road leading to the old Ruiz house, where Tate and Libby and Tate’s twin daughters were living, and glanced into the rearview mirror.
Calvin sat stoically in his car seat in back, staring out the window.
Since Julie had to be at work at Blue River High School a full hour before Calvin’s kindergarten class began, she’d been dropping him off at Libby’s on her way to town over the week they’d been staying on the Silver Spur. He adored his aunt, and Tate, and Tate’s girls, Audrey and Ava, who were two years older than Calvin and thus, in his opinion, sophisticated women of the world. Today, though, he was just too quiet.
“Everything okay, buddy?” Julie asked, tooting the Caddie’s horn in greeting as her sister Libby appeared on the front porch of the house she and Tate were renovating and started down the steps.
“I guess we’ll have to move back to town when the bugs are gone from our cottage and they take down the tent,” he said. “We won’t get to live in the country anymore.”
“That was always the plan,” Julie reminded her son gently. “That we’d go back to the cottage when it’s safe.” Recently, she’d considered offering to buy the small but charming house she’d been renting from month to month since Calvin was a baby and making it their permanent home. Thanks to a windfall, she had the means, but this morning the idea lacked its usual appeal.
Calvin suffered from intermittent asthma attacks, though he hadn’t had an incident for a long time. Suppose some vestige of the toxins used to eliminate termites lingered after the tenting process was finished, and damaged his health—or her own—in some insidious way?
While Julie was trying to shake off that semiparanoid idea, Libby started across the grassy lawn toward the car, grinning and waving one hand in welcome. She wore jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt and white sneakers, and she’d clipped her shiny light-brown hair up on top of her head.
A year older than Julie, Libby had always been strikingly pretty, but since she and Tate McKettrick, her onetime high school sweetheart, had rediscovered each other just that summer, she’d been downright beautiful. Libby glowed, incandescent with love and from being thoroughly loved in return.
Julie pushed the button to lower the back window on the other side of the car, smiling with genuine affection for her sister even as she felt a brief but poignant stab of stark jealousy.
What would it be like to be loved—no, cherished—by a full-grown, committed man like Tate? It was an experience Julie had long-since given up on, for herself, anyway. She was independent and capable, and of course she had no desire to be otherwise, but it would have been nice, once in a while, not to have to be strong every minute of every day and night, not to blaze all the trails and fight all the dragons.
Libby gave Julie a glance before she leaned through the back window to plant a smacking welcome kiss on Calvin’s forehead.
“‘Good morning, Aunt Libby,’” she coached cheerfully, when Calvin didn’t speak to her to right away.
“Good morning, Aunt Libby,” Calvin repeated, with a reluctant giggle.
“He’s a little moody this morning,” Julie said.
“I’m not moody,” Calvin argued, climbing out of the car to stand beside Libby on the gravel driveway, then reaching inside for his backpack. “I just want to live on a ranch, that’s all. I want to have my very own horse, like Audrey and Ava do. Is that too much to ask?”
Julie sighed. “Well, yeah, Calvin, it kind of is too much to ask.”
Calvin didn’t say anything more; he merely shook his head and, lugging his backpack, headed off toward the house, his small shoulders stooped.
“What was that all about?” Libby asked, moving around to Julie’s side of the car and bending to look in at her.
Julie genuinely didn’t have time for a long discussion, but she had always confided in Libby, and now it was virtually automatic, especially when she was upset.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have let you and Tate talk me into staying on the Silver Spur,” she fretted. “It’s only been a week, but Calvin’s already too used to living like a McKettrick—riding horses, swimming in that indoor pool, watching movies in a media room, for heaven’s sake. I can’t give him that kind of life, Libby. I’m not even sure I’d want to if I could. What if he’s getting spoiled?”
Libby raised an eyebrow. “Take a breath, Jules,” she said. “You’re dramatizing a little, don’t you think? Calvin is a good kid, and it would take a lot more than a week or two of high living at the ranch to spoil him. Both of you are under extra stress—Calvin just started kindergarten, and you’re back to teaching full-time, with your house under a tent because of termites—and then there’s the whole Gordon thing….” Libby stopped talking, reached through the window to squeeze Julie’s shoulder. “The point is—things will even out pretty soon. Just give it time.”
Julie worked up a smile, tapped at the face of her watch with one index finger. Easy for you to say, she thought, but what she said out loud was, “Gotta go.”
Libby nodded and stepped away from the car, raised a hand in farewell. She seemed reluctant to let Julie go, and a worried expression flickered in her blue eyes as she watched her back up, turn around and drive off.
Libby had done her little-girl best to
