“I’m not going anywhere, Dad. You can count on me. I’m just telling you now because I know you’re expecting me to apply to UT, and I think it would be a waste of money.”
The cow beside them let out a deep, mournful groan and Jack turned his back to his son. “As I said before, this isn’t a good time.”
“Can I help?” Gage asked, stroking the cow’s big head. She blinked at him with soulful brown eyes, and he recalled all the blue ribbons they’d won together. Chestnut was his cow, just as his brothers’ favorite cows were theirs. “Do you want me to call Doc Jacobs?”
His father turned back and searched his son’s eyes. “No, Gage . . . actually, I think if I’m going to learn to get along without you, I may as well get started.”
“Dad, it’s not like that. I want to help.”
“It is like that, Gage. You just told me you don’t want to be tied down. You don’t want to have to get up early all your life . . . so you and I may as well get used to this new arrangement.”
Gage bit his lip and felt tears sting his eyes. “Fine, Dad, if that’s the way you want it.”
“It’s not the way I want it. It’s the way you want it.”
The boy shook his head and walked to the door, but before he left, he turned. “I told Mom you wouldn’t understand.” He slid open the door, pulled up his collar, and walked back to the house.
An hour later, from the bedroom he’d shared all his life with his older brother, who was now away in college, he heard the kitchen door slam and wheels spin on gravel. He got up from his desk and pulled back the curtain. All the lights were on in the yard and the barn doors were flung wide open. His mom was hurrying across the yard with an armful of towels, and Doc Jacobs was climbing out of his truck. Then he saw his sixteen-year-old brother Matt appear in the doorway, motioning for them to hurry. Gage’s heart pounded—he wanted to help. He wanted to know Chestnut was okay, but the words his father had said were repeatedly playing through his mind, and his feet felt cemented to the floor. Finally, he let go of the curtain, turned up the lonesome country song on the radio, and picked up his drawing pencil.
3
“SHEESH, AUNT MAEVE, IF I WERE MARY, I’D TELL COLIN TO GO JUMP IN a lake! He’s such a pain in the as . . . butt!” Ten-year-old Harper Samuelson shook her head as she rearranged the fleece blanket draped over their legs. “Mary is trying to help him, but he’s so damn . . . I mean dang ungrateful.”
Maeve laughed at her niece’s honest unadulterated interpretation of the characters in the book they were reading. Ever since Maeve’s older sister, Macey—who’d endured more than her share of miscarriages over the last several years—and her sister’s husband, Ben, had adopted the little girl, Maeve had felt as if she’d found a kindred spirit. She had offered to “niece-sit,” because Harper found the term babysit insulting, anytime her sister and brother-in-law wanted to go out. Macey, seeing the growing alliance between her sister and new daughter—who had spent most of her young life being shuttled from one foster home to another and, due to a heart condition, ended up needing a new heart—and wanting Harper to have as many positive role models in her life as possible, had latched onto the idea. Date night had quickly become a weekly event that Maeve and Harper looked forward to as much as Macey and Ben. They’d even started their own book club, The Pepperoni Pizza and Root Beer Book Club, but instead of reading books and getting together to discuss them—as other book clubs did—they read their selection together, discussed it as they went along, and when they finished, watched the movie. The first two books they’d read were the classics To Kill a Mockingbird and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both of which featured young strong-willed female protagonists with whom Harper had fallen in love. And even though most people tend to like the books more than their movie adaptations, Harper and Maeve agreed that the movies made from these two books were perfect.
“What about Mary?” Maeve asked. “She wasn’t much better. She acted like a spoiled brat when she first came to Misselthwaite Manor.”
Harper nodded thoughtfully, gently stroking the furrowed dreaming brow of the golden retriever lying beside her. “She did, but she had an excuse. I mean she was an orphan, and no one loved her. She was just defending herself.”
Maeve nodded, wondering if Harper could see how much the life of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s spunky protagonist paralleled her own. Both ten years old. Both orphaned. Both had a sassy attitude. And both were making great strides toward becoming the amazing young women they were meant to be.
“I love Dickon,” Harper added, taking a sip of root beer. “He reminds me of Sam.”
“Does he now?” Maeve teased.
“Not like that,” Harper said, rolling her eyes.
“Not like what?” Maeve asked, feigning innocence.
“Not like a boyfriend, duh. Sam is a lot like Dickon.”
“How so?” Maeve asked, surprised that Harper drew a parallel between the young male character who loved animals and Sam Finch—the sweet boy and classmate with whom she’d become fast friends—before she saw herself in the audacious Mary Lennox.
“Well, you know how Soot and Captain and the little robin all love Dickon and trust him?” She looked up at Maeve. “Sam’s like that. His mom, Sage, takes care of wild baby birds and animals that have lost their parents, so he is always around them. Last year, when we were in Mrs. Holland’s class, and
