but herself.
Still, the intimidatingly efficient Hester had forged on with her proposition. Both Hester and Jade’s mother had implied that it would be ungrateful of Jade to refuse the generous offer. So now here they were, being welcomed into Trevor’s home by his housekeeper less than two full days after Hester had extended the invitation on her son’s behalf. Jade couldn’t help wondering if Trevor was any more enthused about the situation than she was.
She and Trevor had been introduced for the first time only three years ago during a party at his parents’ house to celebrate Jade’s mother’s sixtieth birthday. Coincidentally in town for a class reunion, Trevor had dropped in to give his regards. Jade and Trevor had interacted on only a few occasions since, most recently when he’d accompanied his parents to Jade’s father’s funeral last year. Jade couldn’t claim to know Trevor well, but when she thought of him, she always recalled his impeccable manners and his charming, but unrevealing, smile. Despite his deeply ingrained courtesy, she’d had the sense that wherever he was at the time, he felt as though he should be somewhere else—a busy man with divided loyalties pulling him in many directions.
Having been wed to a man whose attention was always somewhere else, Jade recognized the type all too well. Stephen hadn’t been home much during their tragically shortened marriage, but when he was, she knew he’d been thinking of his responsibilities to the military. As much as he’d loved her and the kids, and she’d never had reason to doubt that he had loved them, he’d never seemed totally comfortable changing diapers or grilling burgers in the backyard or unclogging drains. The battlefield had called to him. She’d always wondered if he’d felt the pull of home when he was deployed or if a war zone was where he truly felt most himself.
She’d learned to be independent and almost completely self-sufficient during her somewhat unconventional but still happy marriage. She was chagrined to be in the position of having to accept Trevor’s help now, but she hadn’t had many other options. Finding a temporary place to rent for a family of four would have been difficult. She had to admit this was a convenient, if awkward, solution to her crisis.
With a resigned shake of her head, she motioned toward the stairs. “Everyone follow Mrs. Rayburn now.”
“Oh, y’all can just call me Mary Pat,” the housekeeper insisted with a musical chime of a laugh as she started up the stairs. “I’ve never cared much for formality, as Trevor would tell you.”
Reaching the second-floor landing, they faced a wall arranged with framed photographs of gorgeous landscapes, an intriguing mix of coastal and inland shots. Jade wondered if Trevor had taken them; she’d been told he was a talented photographer. If these photos were his, his talent hadn’t been exaggerated, she mused, studying an image of ocean spray blasting up from behind a boulder on which a heron posed with proudly spread wings. An aerial view of a wooded mountaintop was breathtaking both in theme and in the implied risk involved in taking the shot. Jade had heard Trevor’s mother bemoan her son’s proclivity for risky activities like riding fast motorcycles, mountain climbing and paragliding. As the widow of an adrenaline junkie, Jade didn’t fault Hester for wishing her son would pursue less risky hobbies.
“I like that one,” Bella whispered, pointing to a tableau of two brown horses standing nose to nose in a rolling green pasture as if sharing a secret from the photographer they side-eyed.
“I like it, too,” Jade said, smiling down at her youngest.
“There are three guest bedrooms up here and one downstairs, all with baths attached,” Mary Pat announced with a wave of a hand. “This door ahead of us leads into the bigger bedroom. I figured you’d want that one, Ms. Evans. The other two bedrooms are on either side of the hallway. Maybe the girls would like to share one and Caleb can have the third. Unless you’d prefer to use the downstairs guest suite, Ms. Evans?”
“No, we’ll all bunk up here, thank you. The girls will share. And please call me Jade. I’m not really the formal type, either.”
“Where does Ms. Hester’s son sleep?” Erin asked, peering into one of the open doors.
“Oh, his suite is downstairs,” Mary Pat replied. “He hardly ever comes up here, to be honest.”
“Then why does he have all these rooms?” Erin asked with typical blunt curiosity.
“He calls it an investment. But I think his mama talked him into buying the place,” Mary Pat added with a wink at Jade. “If you know her, you’re aware she’s a force to be reckoned with. Fine woman, but you don’t want to be getting on her bad side.”
Jade believed Mary Pat had just concisely summed up Hester’s personality. Jade’s mom insisted Hester was simply a well-intentioned meddler, but Jade had always been secretly intimidated by the woman. “Where do you sleep, Ms. Mary Pat?” Erin asked.
“Did you see that cottage off to one side of the property? Trevor had it built for me when my husband passed away three years ago. I was never blessed with children, and Trevor is like the son I always wanted. His mama is gracious enough to share him with me—probably because it takes both of us to keep him in line,” the housekeeper added with another of her musical laughs.
Jade was getting the distinct impression that while the likable Mary Pat adored her employer, she didn’t hesitate to speak her mind to or about him.
“There’s one other room up here y’all need to see.” Mary Pat turned to her left and walked to the end of the hallway. She opened a door and stepped back to invite them in with another wave of her expressive hands.
Jade heard the kids gasp in delight, and she sighed in surrender as she looked into a spacious rec room equipped with a large-screen TV with leather theater seating, a pool table and a foosball table. Tall, leather-covered stools drew up to a built-in bar on which rested a wooden bowl filled with assorted fruits. Two game tables sat in front of shelves stocked with books, games—both video and tabletop—and an impressive selection of movies. A smaller table had been tucked into a dormer nook, surrounded by inviting beanbag hassocks and topped with a nubbed baseplate for use with a big bin of brightly colored plastic building blocks.
Erin was already being drawn to the bookshelves while Caleb studied the video games. Bella, overwhelmed, clung to Jade’s hand, though she looked longingly at the blocks table. Considering this room and the pool in the backyard, Jade figured the kids were never going to want to leave this house for the more modest home she had purchased in a less-expensive neighborhood a few miles away. It was a nice place, but not like this one. No private pool. No extravagant entertainment room.
Still, she thought they’d be quite happy in their new house, once it was fire-damage free and habitable again, of course. The kids had examined and approved every inch of it before the purchase papers were signed. They’d miss their previous home and friends in Columbia, but Jade thought she’d prepared them well for their adventure here.
She’d been considering this move for more than a year, since her physician cousin had first approached her about taking a nursing job in a medical clinic in Shorty’s Landing. With all the children in school, Jade could put her nursing training to full use, having worked only part-time for Bella’s first six years. And frankly, it would be nice to start fresh in a new town with new acquaintances. As kind as everyone in her hometown had been to them after her husband’s death, there were times when it had become difficult for all of them to be always seen as the tragically bereaved survivors of a larger-than-life military hero.
“Mr. Farrell really never comes up here?” Caleb shook his head in disbelief. “If I had a room like this, I’d stay in it all the time.”
“This
