She picked up a queenlike version. “I had a Princess Barbie a long time ago. But then my mom died and I had to move and I lost Princess.” Becky rocked the doll, humming a little tune. The child gave her the sweetest smile she’d ever seen.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“M-M-Michaela.”
Becky acted as if she heard stuttering all the time. “Pretty name.”
The kid’s smile showed two missing front teeth. “M-M-Mommy n’ me are g-g-gonna check the b-b-bees. Wanna c-c-come?”
Bees? Becky looked around. “There’s a hive somewhere?”
“Uh-huh. Mom s-s-sells the honey.”
“Ohhh. You mean, she has those white bee boxes?”
Sunshine dipped into the girl’s eyes, making them as gold as honey. “I can…ask…Mom…if you…can…come see them.”
“Hey, that’d be cool.”
The door behind them opened. “Michaela?” A skinny woman in jeans and blue t-shirt looked down at them.
The child scrambled up to grab the woman’s hand. “Mom, this is B-B-Becky. She’s our n-n-neighbor.” She pointed. “Over there.”
Becky got to her feet. “I didn’t mean to trespass, ma’am.”
“You didn’t.” The woman had a soft voice. Her hand stroked her daughter’s curly pigtails and for a second Becky remembered her own mother’s fingers sifting through her hair in the same way.
“B-B-Becky likes Princess best, j-j-just l-l-like me.”
“Slow down, button.”
Becky smiled. “I get nervous meeting new people, too.”
The alertness in the woman’s face eased. “I’m Addie Malloy.”
“I’m Becky Dalton.”
Ms. Malloy’s eyebrows crashed. “You’re Skip Dalton’s daughter?”
“Yes.” Was that bad? “Do you know him?”
The woman stared at her for so long Becky shuffled her feet. Then Ms. Malloy looked toward their house and her eyes got really cold. “Yeah,” she said. “I know Mr. Dalton.”
Oh, man. Their neighbor didn’t like her dad. Why? She started to back away. Had she heard about her past? Becky wondered. No, her dad would never tell. “I should go. My dad’s probably wondering where I am. It was really nice meeting you. ’Bye, Mick.”
“It’s Michaela.” Frost hung in the woman’s voice. “She doesn’t like Mick.”
“Oops.” Becky couldn’t stop a nervous giggle. “Sorry.” Leaving the pair standing on the sunny stoop, she hurried down the path among the trees.
Sheesh. Wasn’t that always the way? A cute kid with a mean mother…Poor girl. Becky knew what it was like to live with a parent who wasn’t kind or friendly. Yet, Ms. Malloy had seemed kind, patting the girl’s hair. But maybe that was for show. Maybe she was why Michaela stuttered. Maybe the girl was dying for friends, but Ms. Malloy didn’t want people hanging around. Becky peeked over her shoulder.
The steps were empty.
She broke into a run.
Skip put his shoulder into the shove that slid his sleigh bed into place. He wanted the bed facing the windows across the hardwood. That way, first thing every morning he’d look straight into the stand of evergreens circling his property. Almost done with arranging the bedroom furniture, he heard the front door open.
“Dad?”
Dad. A shiver darted through Skip. He still had a hard time accepting how easily his daughter had taken to him. Twelve years she’d been under someone else’s care. His own flesh and blood. What an idiot he’d been to allow such a precious commodity to be handed over to strangers. What had he been thinking to listen to his father’s rants about one-in-a-million chances and how Skip needed to stop feeling sorry for something that wasn’t his fault?
Except it had been his fault. He’d been nineteen, Addie only seventeen when he’d gotten her pregnant that Christmas. Much as he hated the truth, he had forfeited his child for a mere chance. He could push the blame onto his father until the cows came home, but the fact was, at the end of the day, he’d made the choice.
If he could erase the past, if he could just begin again, give Becky a new childhood, one with him and possibly Addie…
All the ifs in the world won’t change a damn thing, Skip.
“Dad?” She thundered up the stairs.
“In here, Bean,” he called. He started the nickname within days of seeing her for the first time, a tall, gangly girl with his dark hair and long, narrow feet.
She flung around the doorjamb, her cheeks flushed. “I met the neighbors across the road. Ms. Malloy and her girl, Michaela.”
Ah, hell. Skip crossed the room. “Becky, next time let me know before you leave the property, okay?”
“Why? Is there something wrong with them?” She cut a glance toward the window.
“No.” Only thirteen years of abandonment by him. “We live in the country and I’d rather you didn’t go somewhere without telling me.” He tried to soften his anxiety with a smile. “It’ll keep me from worrying.”
“Jesse never cared where I went.”
Jesse Farmer, her adopted dad. “I’m not Jesse, honey.” He brushed the too-long bangs from her eyes. “Look, I’m still learning the family thing, so bear with me, okay? If I’m a little paranoid it just means I need to know you’re okay.” That no one is hurting you anymore.
With a shrug she wandered to his clothing boxes stacked near the closet’s open door. Peering inside, she said, “I don’t think we’ll be friends with them anyway.”
“No?”
“Ms. Malloy isn’t…very friendly.”
“In what way?” Had Addie slammed the door in Becky’s face?
Another shrug. “She seems…uptight. Maybe it’s because her daughter stutters and stuff.”
He’d heard about Addie having another child, one from the man she divorced seven months ago.
“How do you know she stutters?”
“She was sitting on their front step when I went over, and we were chatting about her dolls when the mom came outside.”
“Oh.”
Becky looked over her shoulder. “The little girl’s really cute—and shy. And she has these big brown eyes. I think her mom is overprotective because of the
