in him by his unstable father. Jason was a great dad when he was clean, but his relapses turned their lives upside down. Things had gotten worse since Jason’s death from a drug overdose. In a child’s mind, a terrible father was better than a dead father.
“Please ignore him,” she said, motioning for Shane to come near her.
Wiping the dust from his face, Shane sputtered as he walked in her direction. “He just threw dirt in my face.”
“Maybe you should have waited for my response before stepping in. Right now, he is so deep in his animal instincts that he can’t be rational or reasoned with. As I said, you should go now. I’m going to sit here and wait this out.”
It was exhausting enough having to deal with Dylan’s fit. But having to once again justify her actions made Leah even wearier. She’d hoped that coming out to this isolated ranch with her sisters, who also understood how to handle Dylan, would allow her to get a break from the judgment of everyone around her.
To help Shane see her resolve, Leah sat on a nearby rock. But instead of doing as she asked, Shane came and sat next to her.
So much for getting a break.
* * *
The last thing Shane needed was to get involved with a single mother desperately in need of a daddy figure for her children. Been there, done that and even had a World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug to show for it. But when Gina had ridden out of town on the back of a Harley with a guy who promised more excitement than he could, she’d taken Natalie, and there hadn’t been a single thing to do about it. Unless a man legally adopted a child, he had no rights to the kid in the future.
And yet, there was something about Leah and the pain written on her face that drew him. She might not want him here, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
When Helen was alive, she’d told him about her ex-husband, the Colonel, and how her biggest regret in divorcing him had been leaving his three daughters behind. She’d loved them like her own, but she’d been given no visitation rights. However, she’d continued to pray for the girls every single day. When Gina left, Helen had been his rock. She’d told him about her love for the girls, and while he had been comforted by the fact that he wasn’t alone in his pain, he also wasn’t ready to befriend a beautiful woman with two kids he’d never have any right to.
Except he’d promised Helen he’d look out for the girls. Only they weren’t girls now but grown women, and keeping his promise wasn’t looking as easy as it had been to make it. Still, Helen had been there for him in his darkest days. In many ways, she’d been like a mother to him. He owed it to her to be there for the girls she’d been unable to love the way she’d have liked.
Dylan continued to scream and flail in the dirt. Shane had moved Squirt to a safer spot where the little boy wouldn’t be tempted by him and Squirt wouldn’t be spooked. Leah said she had everything under control. But, from Shane’s perspective, this was a mess. How could she let her son act like this?
Worse, he couldn’t believe she’d gotten into this mess in the first place. Though he was in no position to judge, it seemed like poor parenting to leave your children alone like she had. He’d often watched Natalie for Gina because otherwise Gina would have left Natalie alone. Once again, he wondered exactly how much his promise to Helen was going to cost him.
He glanced over at Leah, trying to gauge her reaction. She sat there, acting like she didn’t have a care in the world, picking several of the long blades of grass that had gone far too long without cutting. She was twisting them into some kind of shape.
“What are you making?” he asked.
A soft smile crossed her face. “I was trying to remember how to make the little grass baskets Helen had taught us to make when we were small. I thought it would be fun to teach the boys.”
She held it up, then frowned slightly. “I’m missing a step. I wonder if I can look it up online to find the answer.”
“I’ve never done anything like that,” Shane said. “All I know how to do with grass is make a whistle.”
He picked a few blades, then demonstrated.
At the sound, Leah smiled. “Oh, that’s wonderful. You’ll have to show me how to do it. The boys will think it’s so fun.”
At her words, Dylan paused and looked over at them. Leah shot Shane a look.
“Show me,” she said, her eyes darting to Dylan before she shook her head at Shane. She seemed to be signaling him to continue ignoring Dylan.
Even though it didn’t seem right to not acknowledge the boy’s silence, Shane did as she asked. Leah picked some grass of her own and tried copying his motion, but all she accomplished was contorting her face and sending the grass flying through the air.
Dylan giggled.
Leah didn’t look at him and instead tried again.
As she had in her previous attempt, she failed.
“You need to roll your tongue slightly,” Shane said. “I can’t tell if you’re doing it or not, but when my dad taught me how to whistle, that’s what he told me to do.”
Once more, Leah took some grass and tried to make it whistle.
Dylan got up and came over to them. “You’re doing it wrong. Let me show you.”
He tried taking the grass out of her hand, but she shook her head. “I’m done. Let’s go inside and have some lunch.”
For a moment, Dylan looked like he was going to argue, but then he nodded. “I’m hungry.”
“All right then.”
Leah got up and brushed the dirt from her pants. She smiled at Shane. “As you can see, everything is okay now. We’re going to go inside and eat. You should take your horse home.”
Once again, she was dismissing him. And it still didn’t feel right.
“We should talk about what just happened,” he said. Talking wasn’t his strong suit, but the situation had been intense. He’d come by to be neighborly and had ended up in the middle of a family crisis.
Dylan had already started for the house. She turned and gave Shane the kind of stern look he imagined she used on her sons.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I have everything perfectly in hand. You don’t need to feel obligated to look out for my children or me. We’ll be fine.”
The resignation in her voice told him that there was a lot more to her story then he knew. Sure, he knew the little Helen had told him over the years. But she hadn’t been in contact with the girls enough to have details beyond the newspaper clippings of marriage and death announcements she collected. There were also a couple of articles about a man being found dead of a drug overdose, the death of a little girl, and one about a fatal car accident. The bare bones, not enough to know anything other than these women had been through a lot recently. Leah’s husband had died weeks before Helen passed. Was that why her parenting seemed so chaotic?
Maybe sticking around to see what he could do to help wouldn’t hurt.
“We’re
