Ty considered it a good day if he made it back into the house before dinnertime with Betsy. Prior to this summer, most days were good days, but with the arrival of Addie and Walsh and their five-thirty dinnertime, he couldn’t make any promises. Often he was still in the barn—filling his notebooks with notations and checkmarks, cleaning, preparing for the next day—while Betsy fixed the girls’ dinner, fed them, started their baths.
This evening, though, he wrapped up in the barn earlier than usual and entered the kitchen while Betsy was still stirring pasta on the stove. The girls were huddled on the den floor with a five-hundred-piece puzzle.
“Planning to keep them busy for a while?” He rested his hand on the small of her back and nodded in the girls’ direction.
“I don’t even know where they found that. They were running around chasing Etta, and the next thing I knew, puzzle pieces were all over the floor.”
“You remember the puzzle though, right?”
Betsy smiled and nodded. “I remember.”
When Ty and Betsy had first started dating, he brought a puzzle to her apartment one night. She’d been surprised, but he knew it’d be a way for them to talk, to get to know each other. He also knew it’d give him something else to concentrate on when all he wanted to do was tangle his fingers in her hair and kiss her all night. The puzzle was his attempt to be a gentleman.
“I had good intentions, you have to admit.” He stuck a spoon in the sauce simmering on the stove. “Are those capers? Think they’ll like it?”
Betsy shrugged. “I hope so. It’d keep me from having to make two dinners.”
Ty sat on one of the stools at the counter and stretched his legs out in front of him. He needed to run upstairs and shower, but it felt so good to just sit for a minute.
Betsy tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot and laid it on the spoon rest. “I may have some peas for you in the fall. If everything goes well.”
“You have Gran’s cast-iron skillet, don’t you? We could make cornbread to go with them.” His grandmother had made cornbread with almost every meal when Ty was young. And she’d served it on the same kitchen table he and Betsy used now.
Betsy wiped her hands on a dish towel, then sat on a stool next to him. “Maybe after all these years I’ll finally turn into the wife who’ll cook meat-and-three dinners.” She poked him in the chest. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“If I just wanted someone to make me meat-and-three meals, Ollie’s is right up the road. I’d be happy there.” He grabbed her finger and pulled her closer. “I have you for other reasons.”
“Oh, is that right?” She smiled and he relished the lightness on her face.
With her hand still in his, she shifted on her stool and turned toward the den where Addie and Walsh were still sprawled on the floor with puzzle pieces scattered everywhere. “The girls are happy here.”
Ty nodded. “They seem to be.”
“I think if we could pack Rosie up in a suitcase, Addie would take her everywhere. She’s crazy about that cow.”
Ty laughed. “I think you’re right.”
“And the hens, the swing, the creek. This is what childhood is supposed to be like—barefoot and dirty, going to bed exhausted.”
“That kind of describes our days too. Except the barefoot part for me.”
Betsy smiled. Other than the sauce simmering and the water boiling, the kitchen was silent. “Jenna’s looking for jobs, you know. She has it in her head that this place, Halcyon, is going to open all kinds of doors for her.”
“And you don’t think so?”
“I have no idea. She’s just pinning a lot of hopes on this retreat and what it can lead to as far as jobs. She said her mentor has his foot in the door at places all over the country.”
“Hmm,” Ty murmured. “I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if at the end of all this, she decides to shake things up.”
A squeal came from the den. “This is it!” Addie yelled, holding up a single puzzle piece. She handed it to Walsh, who dropped it and went back to rolling a small stuffed ball to Etta.
He smiled and turned back to Betsy, but she was looking down, oblivious to Addie’s elation, her brow creased in concentration.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We have good schools around here,” she said after a moment.
He straightened up in his seat.
“The elementary school. It’s good.”
“And?” he said slowly.
“Jenna hasn’t said when she’s coming back. And you said it yourself: she could go on from the retreat to something else.”
He willed himself to nod, his mind working to come up with the right words, and quick. “I was thinking more along the lines of her finding a new job—not that she’d stay gone. She has to come back for her kids. She knows that.”
“I know. I just . . .” She shrugged. “It’s already August. What do we do if school starts and she’s not here?”
“Betsy, I . . .” He stopped, pressed his lips together. “I think it’s a little early to be thinking about that. The kids have their own school and friends in Nashville. They’ll want to get back home.”
She gazed in the direction of the girls, but he feared that instead of seeing them, she looked past them, through them, to other possibilities, other dreams. Finally, she turned back to him. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It was a crazy idea.”
“Is it time to eat yet?” Addie yelled from the den.
Betsy swiveled her head to the girls, her face caught somewhere between disappointment and relief. “Yes, it is,” she said after the briefest pause. She hopped off the stool and touched Ty’s arm. “Iced tea or water?” she asked, her voice casual.
All through dinner, Ty’s mind whirled with
