stars!” Hap declared, sliding a piece of pan-grilled steak onto his plate. “Will you look at that.” He shot a grin at Cara, displaying a fine set of dentures. “Haven’t had a piece of cooked meat I could put a fork in since our Charlotte up and married.”
Over the course of the meal, Cara began to have doubts about her cooking, mostly because of this Charlotte of whom they spoke so glowingly. Charlotte, it seemed, was nothing less than a chef. They spoke of “good old country cooking” and such things as dumplings, chitlings and black-eyed peas.
“Speaking of black-eyed peas,” Hap said, “good thing we’re not superstitious.”
“Why is that?” Cara asked idly, pushing Ace’s hand away as he grabbed for steak and offering him a piece of carrot instead.
Holt braced both forearms against the tabletop and stared at her. “You grew up in Oklahoma and you haven’t heard of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s for good luck?”
Cara dropped her gaze back to her son and tried not to tense, hoping the question would simply pass.
“Would that be New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day?” Hap interjected. “Never was sure myself.”
Relieved, she poked a green bean into Ace’s babbling mouth with her fingers.
Holt stabbed potatoes with his fork, saying, “Well, if you want them for tradition’s sake, I’m pretty sure there’s a bag in the freezer, and since we don’t believe in luck anyway, we might as well have them tomorrow as tonight, you ask me.”
“You don’t believe in luck?” Cara heard herself ask.
Holt looked up, eyeballing her as if she’d just beamed in from another galaxy. “As Christians, ma’am, we believe that God is in control of our lives, not random luck.”
“Oh. I—I see.” Except, of course, she didn’t. God could not have been in control of her life or it would not have turned out like this.
Hap winked at Cara. “For tradition’s sake, then. I like my black-eyed peas. Reckon if you stuck around you could rustle up a mess for us, young lady?”
Cara blinked. “Oh, I, um…”
“If you can cook beans, you can cook peas,” Holt put in impatiently. “Just throw in a ham bone and make some corn bread.”
“Now, Holt,” Hap scolded mildly, “if it was that easy, we’d be doing it our own selves, wouldn’t we? ’Sides, maybe she and the boy will be spending the holiday with family. Did you ever think of that?”
“Is that right?” Holt asked her. “You have folks around these parts?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Hap said, shaking his head. “But if you got no family around, what brung you here? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”
Cara opened her mouth, but Holt supplied the information before she had a chance to speak.
“Cara’s a widow,” he announced. “Looking for more cheerful surroundings.”
Hap sat back in his chair, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Now, that’s a grief that I know too well.” He looked Cara in the eye. “Both my wife and my son have passed from this world. You must have some family somewhere, though. They no comfort to you?”
“My parents are both gone,” she said, which was technically the truth.
“No brothers or sisters?” Holt asked, sprawling back in his chair, which seemed too small to hold him.
She had the lie ready, but somehow it just wouldn’t slide off her tongue. Besides, what harm could there be in at least admitting to Eddie? No doubt he was trying to track her down as they spoke, but the Jeffords wouldn’t know that.
“A brother,” she said, “but we’re not close.” Cara smoothed Ace’s pale hair lovingly. “It’s just us two really.”
Hap shook his head. “It’s a powerful sorrow when a father leaves a young family behind.”
“Yes.” Cara laid her cheek against the top of her son’s head. “Ace was five weeks old when it happened.”
Holt reached out a long arm and laid his fork in his plate. “Mind if I ask how your husband died?”
While she felt the shock that always came with the truth, she carefully masked her emotions. “He fell.”
The two men traded looks, and Holt sat up straight again, looking uncomfortable now, his gaze going to Ace as he once more picked up his fork. “That’s how my father died, too. He fell off an oil derrick trying to fix a pulley.”
Cara took it that Holt’s father and Hap’s son were one in the same. “They say he didn’t suffer,” she offered softly, swallowing hard.
Both Holt and Hap nodded at that. Apparently they’d been told the same thing.
“What’d your man fall from?” Hap asked.
“A highway overpass. He stopped to help a stranded motorist and somehow fell over the railing. No one’s certain just how it happened,” she said, still puzzled, “and the funny thing is, it wasn’t like Addison to stop and help a stranger. Not like him at all.”
Hap laid a gnarled hand upon her arm. “There are mysteries to which none are privy, and greater mysteries revealed to all. We must trust God with the first and thank Him for the last.” Hap looked at Holt.
Cara sensed a certain reluctance in Holt, but she knew the moment had come to discuss business.
“The job requires long hours,” he said. “It pays a salary on the first and the fifteenth.” Holt glanced at his grandfather. “Plus room and board.”
The figure he named didn’t amount to much pay, but she wouldn’t have to worry about food and shelter. “What about Ace? I need to keep him with me. If it’s just housekeeping work, I know I could manage. He won’t be any trouble to anyone.”
“Well, there’s housekeeping and then there’s housekeeping,” Holt said, and for the next fifteen minutes he detailed all that she would be expected to do.
It seemed overwhelming: beds to be made, laundry to be done, floors, bathrooms, draperies, dusting, sanitizing, even kitchens in some of the rooms. Every room. Every day. That did not include meal preparation or registering guests from time to time. But it did include Ace.
“We could give it a try,” Hap said. “If the work and the boy together prove too much for you, we’ll figure something out. It’s not like you’d be on your own around here.”
“Except for Saturday nights,” Holt put in. “I take Granddad out for dinner on Saturday nights.”
“Every other,” Hap corrected, with another of those teasing winks at Cara. “Me and Charlotte, we always took turns with those Saturday nights. All you’d have to do is hang around here and watch the front desk.”
That
