He headed downstairs and she paused before entering the girls’ room. Jenna’s words ran through her head. “Connections all over the country. Potential. Who knows where this will take me?”
She knocked softly and sat on the bed. The girls were on the floor, their towels drooping as they worked to get dressed.
“Can you help me?” Walsh fumbled with the feet of her pajamas. Betsy leaned over and gathered the material so Walsh could fit her feet inside. Once her legs were in place, Walsh grabbed the pajamas and pulled them up. “I can do it myself.” She pulled the zipper over her pale belly and up to her neck.
Next to her, Addie yanked her shirt over her head, then jabbed her fist around trying to find the armhole, her face pink and determined. “There,” she said when her hand slipped through.
After brushing their hair, Betsy folded back the sheets on the bed and helped the girls climb in. When they settled, she looked at them, right in their eyes. “I owe you both an apology.”
Walsh held a Beatrix Potter book in her hands, flipping the pages back and forth, but Addie stared back at Betsy. “For what?”
“I lost my temper earlier in the bathroom and I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” Addie lowered her eyes and fiddled with the edge of the knitted blanket.
“What are you sorry for?” Betsy asked. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m sorry about the soap.”
Betsy smiled and cupped her hand on Addie’s cheek. “The soap doesn’t matter at all. Next time I’ll wash you however you want, in whatever order you want. Deal?”
Addie grinned. “Deal.”
“Will you read us this book?” Walsh held out The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.
“Sure.” Betsy leaned back against the pillows and opened the book. Before she could read a word, the girls rearranged themselves, the weight of their heads resting against her chest, their legs warm next to hers. Finally, they settled and were still. “We’re ready,” Addie said.
As their breath came and went, their chests rising and falling, something in Betsy shifted, like tectonic plates bumping and sliding into each other, forever changing the landscape above. Instead of moving them off her, instead of pushing away both the pleasure and the pain, Betsy let herself relax. Rested. Pretended, for one selfish moment, that they were hers.
twenty-five
Ty
A few days later, in the stillness of a hot afternoon, Addie and Walsh appeared in the barn. By now, Ty knew the girls’ schedule well enough to know they should have been napping. Instead, Walsh tromped around the barn, saying hi to the cows and trying to feed them anything she found on the floor, while Addie just stood and watched.
Holding Walsh back from feeding a handful of straw to number 051, he glanced up to the house where Betsy stood on the porch steps. He pointed to the girls and held his hands palms up.
Okay? she mouthed, then gave a thumbs-up sign.
Before he could call back that they weren’t exactly okay, that the girls would just be a distraction—to both him and the cows—she waved and retreated into the house.
Ty took off his cap, brushed his hand through his hair, and settled it back on his head. “Okay, I guess y’all are with me. Stay where I can see you. Got it?”
The girls nodded.
“And you know if you’re out here during milking time, I’m going to put you to work.”
Walsh’s eyes lit up, but Addie looked unsure. “Work how?” She watched Carlos hook a cow up to the milking machine. “Does that hurt them?”
“Nope. It’s very gentle. Almost the same as milking them by hand.”
He walked the girls to the end of the line where the last ten cows were waiting for their second milking of the day. He handed Walsh a brush and showed her how to brush along the length of the cow’s side and avoid the tail. She got to work, taking her job seriously.
“Where’s my brush?” Addie asked.
“You’re not brushing. You’re milking.” Addie’s blue eyes grew wide and Ty laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not hard.” He grabbed two buckets off a set of hooks on the wall, turned one over next to number 073, and set the other one underneath the cow. He patted the overturned bucket and Addie sat down.
He’d chosen this particular cow because her milk supply was low. If it was high, the cow would be too uncomfortable to put up with the slow release of hand milking.
“Watch my hands.” He grasped an udder and used his thumb and forefinger to pull down, drawing the milk out. It sprayed into the bucket, startling Addie. She jumped back. “It’s okay, that’s how it comes out. You try.”
“I don’t know.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “I don’t think I can.”
“Sure you can. Just try.”
She took a deep breath and gingerly pulled on the udder, but nothing happened. Ty rearranged her hand and fingers and she tried again. This time a steady white stream shot into the bucket and Addie gasped. “I did it!”
While Walsh brushed and Addie milked, Ty went along the line and hooked the rest of the cows up to the machines. When he finished, he sat on a bench along the wall just behind Addie and took it all in: the old barn that had been worked by men before him—better men, stronger men. The cows that put food on his table, a roof over his home with Betsy. Carlos and Walker at the other end of the barn, waiting by the door to the pasture, ready to herd the cows out at the right time. And Addie and Walsh, happily absorbed in their own “work.”
He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been aware that he’d be the next Franklin man to work the farm. His grandfather had made it official when Ty was fifteen, but he’d known long before then that his future would be tied to Franklin Dairy. His father had chosen
