she wouldn’t be moving away from High Plains this fall after all.
Two days later
“So what are we going to do, Lily?” Alyssa pressed her mouth close to her aunt’s cell phone, hoping Aunt Josie hadn’t noticed that Alyssa was missing from the classroom in the church. If Aunt Josie knew she was using her cell phone, and why, she would be mad. “If you’re not allowed to come to the after-school program anymore, how is my aunt and your dad going to fall in love like we planned?”
“We need to make a pact.”
“Is that a sin?”
“No, silly.” Lily laughed. “It’s a promise that you and I are going to make to make sure that my dad and your aunt fall in love.”
“Like a pact. A matchmaking pact.”
“Yeah. A pact.”
“But we have to hurry because my aunt still says we’re going to move away. And if we move, they’re never going to fall in love.” Alyssa looked back over her shoulder, but no one was in the hallway. “So we’re going to make a pact and make a plan.”
“Right. And this is what we’ll do.”
Alyssa listened carefully and as Lily told her the plan, she started to smile. This might work. And if it did, she would have a dad again.
And Lily would get another mom.
Chapter One
October 5th
“Lily. Time for school,” Silas called up the stairs, waiting for a response from his daughter.
He heard a thump, then the sound of feet hurrying down the hallway. What in the world was that kid doing? Curious, he took a step up the stairs just as his cell phone rang.
He pulled it off his hip and flipped it open. A modern-day gunslinger, he thought with a touch of irony as he said hello.
“Silas. Orville Cummins here. Not the best news. I’ve got to delay shipping that lumber to you.”
“What do you mean? I ordered it back in June for delivery this month.”
“Yeah. That was before that tornado took your town apart couple months back. I tried to get what I could, but Garrison has been buying up what he can for his lumberyard the last while. You could try to get some from him.”
Silas rubbed his forehead. “He’s only selling it for reconstruction or building new homes.”
“If you can wait two weeks, I’ll get you what you need from Manhattan.”
“I guess that’ll have to do.”
As he was talking, Lily came downstairs, dragging her backpack behind her, a brightly colored gift bag swinging from her other hand.
While he talked he wiped a spot of toothpaste from the corner of Lily’s mouth, then patted her on the head.
“Thanks again, Orville. I gotta run.” He snapped the phone shut and slipped it into his belt holster. “Did you really brush your teeth this morning or only rinse with toothpaste again?”
“I brushed.”
Silas frowned at her ponytail, hanging askew from the back of her head.
Kelly would have put their daughter’s copper-colored hair into tight, fat braids, finished off with ribbons.
But Kelly wasn’t here and his clumsy fingers couldn’t recreate the intricate twists that had come so easily to his wife’s slender fingers. So Lily did her own hair. Today it looked as if she hadn’t even brushed it.
“We gotta get going.” He glanced at the festive bag she was carrying. “What you got there?”
Lily gave him a secretive smile. “You’ll find out.”
“Okay. Secrets. Very intriguing.”
The drive into town was quiet. Silas was lost in his thoughts, the only sound in the truck the ticking of gravel on the undercarriage and the nasally twang of the announcer from the early-morning stock market report on the radio. He had a lot to do in the next few weeks and the time was slipping through his fingers.
“Dad, can we have a puppy?” Lily’s voice broke into the quiet.
“A puppy?” Where in the world had that come from? “I’ve got enough trouble keeping you groomed and fed.” He tossed Lily a grin, just to show he was kidding.
“But a puppy would keep me company. When you’re busy.”
“I’m not that busy, honey.”
“You’re outside all the time and when you’re not, you’re on the computer. And I hate watching television.”
That sent a shot of guilt through him. Kelly had hated television, too, and had limited how much Lily watched. But television kept Lily occupied and out of his hair while he worked.
“Why can’t I go to the after-school program instead? With my friend Alyssa?” Lily clutched the shiny bag that Silas suspected held a present for that same friend.
“Because, honey” was all he would say.
He couldn’t explain to her the sheer terror he had felt when he’d seen the funnel cloud touch down in High Plains, knowing she was there instead of on the farm where she’d have been safe.
A thousand images of Lily hurt, or worse, had sliced through his head on that panicked trip into town. He’d even been tempted to pray.
Which was foolishness, of course. God hadn’t heard the countless prayers he and Lily had sent up for Kelly during her battle with cancer. When he and his sobbing daughter had stood by her graveside, Silas had promised himself he wouldn’t waste God’s time anymore.
“I miss seeing Ms. Josie,” Lily put in, still campaigning.
“Miss Cane let you and Alyssa take off after the tornado. She’s not responsible.”
That Lily had been found safe was no thanks to Miss Cane, who had let her and her friend slip out in the first place.
Lily sighed again. “I hate sitting by myself at home, Daddy.”
More guilt piled onto his shoulders.
“It was Alyssa’s idea to sneak out when we had that tornado, you know.”
“Which is another reason you shouldn’t be hanging around with Alyssa.” This conversation was well-tilled ground. But his daughter was persistent and each time approached it from another angle as if hoping to unearth some new argument to convince him.
“But she’s my twin friend. And she has a really pretty aunt.”
Silas wasn’t about to dispute the pretty-aunt part of her statement. Josie Cane was the kind of woman
