to celebrate wins.
“Hi, Mrs. Jenkins. How’ve you been?”
Maude flashed a huge, pink-lipsticked grin and held him out with her arms to give him a long once-over. “I’ve been fine, kid, just fine. But never mind. How the hell have you been?” She embraced him again and patted him on the back.
The woman was strong as an ox. The team had always teased her that she would make an excellent linebacker, and Maude, bless her, had never once taken offense, but rather accepted the comment as it was meant coming from clueless male teenagers—a compliment. Those pats would have knocked the wind out of a smaller man, but Ryan held his own at six-foot-two.
“Just fine, Mrs. Jenkins. Just fine,” he said, careful not to say too much.
Ryan and his father had discussed the sale of the Peach Leaf Pioneer Museum for months before they’d coordinated that morning’s face-to-face meeting with the owner and director. The museum—a centerpiece of Peach Leaf and a gold mine of West Texas history—would itself become a thing of the past in the near future, as Ryan’s architecture firm partnered with his dad’s construction company to build a cancer treatment hospital in its place. He knew and respected Mrs. Wallace’s reasons for selling her land, but the town was understandably upset about the coming change.
Arrangements were already being made for every artifact, along with the buildings, to be preserved. The university in Austin would take all of the smaller pieces, while the old settlement homes, dating back to the 1800s, were to be transferred to a similar museum just outside of Dallas.
It bothered him a little to know that the old houses wouldn’t be in their original location, but Mrs. Wallace had revealed that they were in desperate need of repair and preservation work. Her family had lovingly allowed visitors to trample through them for years, and the wear and tear had begun to take its toll. Ryan’s father, for all his faults, had worked hard to find a highly recommended specialist to handle the work, and the buildings would be well cared for at their new locale.
It was for the best.
But the town wasn’t likely to see it that way. He knew that it was only a matter of time before word got out that the museum as they’d known it would be gone, replaced by a new, very modern cancer-treatment hospital, and it wasn’t going to be pretty once word hit. The locals would see the benefit of a medical facility: plenty of much-needed new jobs, advanced health care nearby and so on...but they wouldn’t be pleased that the hospital would cost a piece of their heritage.
Ryan stopped that train of thought; it shouldn’t bother him. After all, Peach Leaf wasn’t his home anymore, and after he designed the buildings, the rest was his father’s problem. Ryan planned to be long gone by the time the news hit the fan.
Mrs. Jenkins chatted with him for a good half hour before finally releasing him from her grip to grab his arm and drag him over to the bar. She planted him on a stool and set to work, and before long the most decadent meal he’d had in ages was spread out in front of him like a king’s feast. He took a bite of a home-style fry and savored it before tucking into his chicken and munching with contentment while Maude chattered away about the locals.
It was early in the evening, and his only companions were Mrs. Jenkins and a few people he didn’t recognize, so if the President of the United States himself had walked in from the kitchen a moment later, it wouldn’t have surprised Ryan more than who actually did.
* * *
If there was one thing worse than getting laid off from a job you loved, it was having to ask for an old job back that you, well...didn’t.
It wasn’t that working for the Jenkinses fresh out of high school was bad; it just wasn’t what Katie had wanted to do for the rest of her life. Maude and Jimmy were wonderful employers who’d treated her the absolute best for the two years she’d worked for them, but even they had been glad when Katie had accepted the offer at the museum—they had known it would make her happy, and told her they were glad for her each time she dropped by for a Coke in the years since.
Katie lost herself for a moment, letting reality slip away briefly as she thought about how she would care for the little one growing inside of her, alone, without her work at the Peach Leaf Pioneer Museum...work she loved so much. Each morning, as most people sat down at their desks following long commutes, read their emails and planned for days full of business meetings in over-air-conditioned conference rooms, Katie was busy donning petticoats and pinning her thick, shoulder-length hair up in late-nineteenth-century Gibson Girl fashion. She couldn’t imagine ever enjoying another job as much. She loved teaching kids about her hometown’s history, demonstrating how her ancestors wove clothing, constructed rope and baked bread, and showing adult visitors how to slow down, to take a step back in time and relearn the quiet pleasure of hard work and fruitful hands...
Three months ago, a couple of weeks after her excited pregnancy announcement, her now-ex-fiancé, Bradley, had informed her that he wasn’t cut out to be a father, that he had no interest in building a family with her. Katie had been devastated...and livid. Sure, they hadn’t discussed children beyond a few casual comments here and there, and yes, the pregnancy was unplanned, but she hadn’t expected Bradley’s reaction to be so extreme. He had never expressed a serious interest in fatherhood that she could recall, but neither had he ever specifically stated that he didn’t want kids. They’d only been together for a year, and Katie always figured they would have time to discuss their hopes and dreams before planning a family. But birth control wasn’t guaranteed to work and the baby was a surprise...to Katie, an incredible, lovely surprise.
Bradley hadn’t shared her sentiment and had even made suggestions about how she should handle things that made her skin crawl. She’d made a big mistake in believing that Bradley was a better man than he’d turned out to be...but keeping their baby was not a mistake. Her sudden singleness and the pain of giving up the two-bedroom apartment she and Bradley had shared because it just didn’t feel like home without him was a lot to carry on just her own shoulders. Plus that morning’s news that in a few weeks, when the museum shut down, she would no longer have a salaried job with benefits for herself and her child. Despite all of that, and all of the other emotions churning around in her heart, Katie hadn’t felt afraid.
Until now.
She had a supportive family who would stand by her every step of the way. Her parents were as open-armed as they’d always been, and she knew they would be an amazing source of support when the baby came, but Katie didn’t want to lean too heavily on them. She wanted to be able to care for her child on her own. And her close friend June had welcomed Katie into the small but lovely cottage they’d shared ever since.
After Bradley had left, she’d pulled herself together and vowed to be the best mom she possibly could—plus some—to make up for the baby’s absent father. For a short time, everything had been okay.
But that was before the job she loved, the career she’d built over the past five years, was threatened.
Just that morning, Katie’s boss had informed her of the museum’s sale to an unknown buyer, and its subsequent pending demise. The artifacts and a few of the antique buildings would be preserved elsewhere, but the museum itself, and all of the jobs it took to run it, would be eliminated. Evidently, the Peach Leaf Historical Society simply didn’t have the budget to outbid the vast property’s potential buyer, and a state-of-the-art hospital was to replace the museum.
Peach Leaf was a small town with more people than work, so of course Katie could see the benefit of so many potential jobs...but what about the town’s history? Its culture? What about the joy the museum brought to the community through its annual fall and
