Home with You

by Shirlee McCoy

  Blushed!

  Like a middle schooler with her first crush, a high school freshman dreaming of her first kiss. Like a woman who hadn’t been hurt a dozen times before and who didn’t know that she should never risk her heart.

  “Vintage looks good on anyone,” she responded.

  “I really doubt that poodle skirt would look good on me.”

  “Maybe you should try it, Uncle,” Twila said. “Lots of men wear skirts now. And in Ireland and Scotland, kilts are part of a long and rich cultural heritage.”

  She sounded like a voice-over for a documentary, and Rumer smiled, tension she hadn’t even realized she was feeling seeping out. “You know a lot of history, Twila. Good for you.”

  “Mom says that if we don’t know our history, we’re doomed to repeat it,” she replied, her dark eyes staring into Rumer’s, distracting her from the fact that Sullivan’s hand was still resting against her lower spine.

  “Your mother is a very wise woman,” she replied.

  “Was a very wise woman,” Heavenly cut in. “Now, she’s just a vegetable.”

  “Mom isn’t a vegetable,” Moisey yelled, darting toward her sister so quickly Rumer didn’t have time to catch her.

  Sullivan managed it, swooping in and lifting her away seconds before her polished boot met Heavenly’s shin.

  “Cool it, kiddo,” he said gently, still holding her as he unlocked the van and opened the back door. He set her on the threadbare carpet and looked into her face, one hand cupping her chin, one cupping her shoulder. “Do you think your mom would want you kicking and hitting people every time they said something you didn’t like?”

  “Heavenly says it doesn’t matter what Mom would want, since she’s going to die anyway.”

  “That’s a bold-faced lie. I never said anything like that,” Heavenly snapped, her face alabaster pale, her lips nearly white. She looked stricken and a little sick, and Rumer had absolutely no doubt she was telling the truth.

  “You called Mom a vegetable, and that’s the same thing.” Moisey’s voice broke and a single tear slid down her cheek.

  “Well, damn. If I’d known it was going to make you cry, I wouldn’t have said it.” To her credit, Heavenly actually looked contrite.

  “Language,” Sullivan said wearily, wiping the tear off Moisey’s cheek and kissing her forehead. “It’s going to be okay, Moisey.”

  “Not if Mommy doesn’t come home,” she wailed.

  “Is she going to?” Twila asked, her gaze on Rumer. She might be organized, she might be a great student, she might be smart, well-spoken, and polite, but there was a lot more to her than what she showed to the world. Rumer had seen little pieces of that—hints at just how savvy she was. Just how easily she could manipulate people when she wanted to.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  “Well, at least we know one adult in our lives tells the truth,” Heavenly huffed, stalking around to the other side of the van and yanking open the door. “Come on, dweebs. Standing around in the cold crying isn’t going to make your mother get better.”

  Your mother.

  As if Sunday weren’t hers, too, but her face and lips were still pale, her eyes deeply shadowed.

  She looked like a kid who’d been through too much, had finally come through it, and was suddenly going through more. If Rumer could have taken her in her arms and told her that things would get better, she would have. She knew Heavenly, though. She’d been Heavenly, so she let her strap Oya into her car seat and climb into the bucket seat next to it.

  The boys had already found their spots, and Twila plopped into the seat closest to the door. Moisey’s tears had stopped, and she was perched in her booster swinging her scrawny legs to her own rhythmic beat.

  Sullivan slid the door closed.

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  “Language,” she said.

  She meant it as a joke, a distraction from the heartbreak they’d witnessed.

  He didn’t smile.

  “I think at this point, those kids have heard it all.” He was still holding the sketch pad, and he pulled the pencil out from behind his ear and tucked it in between the pages. “This is just as hard as I thought it was going to be,” he said.

  “Taking care of the kids?”

  “Being a parent to them. Come on. We’d better get in the van and get on the road before all hell breaks loose again.” He walked her to her door and opened it, holding it until she was settled into the cloth seat.

  “I don’t think Minnie will be happy if I slam this in the door,” he said, lifting the hem of her skirt and tucking it up near her thigh.

  It should have been nothing—just a kind gesture between two people who were getting to know each other.

  It was nothing, but she felt the warmth of his knuckles as they grazed her thigh and the quick rush of heat that flooded her.

  God!

  What was wrong with her?

  She wasn’t a teenager with a glamorized idea of love and relationships. She’d had her first kiss before she turned twelve, her first real relationship when she was sixteen. She’d been with guys who’d treated her well and ones who’d been bastards. She’d been in plenty of relationships with all different kinds of men. She’d heard all the pretty words and the trite phrases, the promises and the excuses for breaking them. She sure as heck wasn’t a woman whose head could be turned by a handsome face or charming manners.

  So why the heck couldn’t she stop reacting to Sullivan?

  Why did every accidental touch feel like the beginning of something wonderful?

  And, why was she still here? Still working for the Bradshaws? Still tempting herself to get more involved than she should? Not just with him. With the kids and with Sunday.

  She could already feel it happening. She was getting drawn into the drama and the heartbreak, because that’s the way she was. She felt too deeply and loved too much. Jake had told her that repeatedly, and it hadn’t been a compliment. It had been his way of making her understand that her expectations were too high, that her needs were too many, that her clinginess was annoying.

  She frowned.

  She didn’t give a crap what Jake had said, but there’d been some truth to his words. If she had a fatal flaw, an Achilles’ heel, it was her need to make connections, to find commonality, to belong. A therapist friend had once told her it stemmed from her childhood. That she’d felt rejected by her mother and that had caused her to feel unloved and unlovable. She’d been searching for validation ever since then, trying to prove to herself that she was worthy of all the things her mother had denied her. It was a neat theory that tied all her romantic problems into a tidy little package, but Rumer wasn’t a child anymore. She’d stopped looking for validation more than a decade ago. She didn’t need love to feel fulfilled and she’d stopped wanting it right around the time she’d realized Jake was cheating.

  “It’s the Truehart blood,” she muttered. “It’s tainted.”

  “What’s that?” Sullivan said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Just talking to myself,” she replied.

  “Do you do that often?”

  “Only when I’m trying to work out a problem.”

  “What problem?” he asked.

  You was on the tip of her tongue.

  She refrained from saying it. “You said Sunday was out of the ICU, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, I guess that means all the kids can see her at once.” She went off on that tangent, because there was no way in heck she was going to admit the truth.

  “That’s my understanding.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “That’s the problem you were trying to work out?”

  “One of them.”

  “Want to talk about the others?”

  “No.”

  “I want to talk about mine,” Moisey piped up from the back, her voice clear and high and sweet.

  “Should we let her?” Sullivan murmured.


  “According to every child psychology class I’ve ever taken, children should be encouraged to share their feelings and their problems,” she replied.

  “Do you think your professors had kids like Moisey in their lives? Because I’d say that if they did, they might not have said that.”

  She laughed. “I think Moisey might be one of a kind.”

  “My problem is one of a kind, too, and I still want to talk about it,” Moisey nearly shouted.

  “Shhhh,” Heavenly chided. “Oya is trying to sleep.”

  “If I’m quiet, they won’t be able to hear, and what I have to say is of utmost importance,” she whispered loudly.

  “Utmost?” Rumer asked, her lips twitching with amusement.

  “She’s been watching documentaries with me when she can’t sleep,” Sullivan explained. “Lots of British history and people saying things like ‘utmost importance.’”

  “She is a little sponge, that’s for sure.” She’d noticed it from the beginning. Moisey had a good imagination and a quick mind. As great an asset as that was, it could also be a challenge. Kids like her needed their minds and their bodies occupied. Rumer had been trying. God knew she had—all kinds of outside activities. No matter how cold, how wet, how muddy, she’d pick the kids up from school and take them on walks, point out things on the farm that needed doing, and then put them to work doing it.

  And, still Moisey’s high-powered brain was working overtime, keeping her up at night, waking her when she finally fell asleep. She had a million questions. Not just about her mother but about life: How did the robins know that spring was coming? Why did the sky look blue some mornings and purple others? Why did Tommy Fletcher say that family could only be blood relatives? And, was it okay to punch him in the nose for it?

  The questions went on and on and on. As fast as Rumer and Sullivan answered one, another pressing question was there.

  Smart as a whip and extremely likable. That’s how Moisey’s teacher described her.

  They’d also called her precocious. Teacher code, Rumer knew, for a handful.

  “Hello?!” Moisey called again. “Does no one care about my problem?”

  “I care,” Rumer replied, shifting in her seat so that she could face the little girl. “What do you want to discuss?”

  “It’s cloudy.” She waved toward the horizon and the steel-gray sky.

  “Are you afraid it’s going to rain?”

  “I’m afraid the moon will be hidden.”

  Uh-oh. Here they went. Her newest obsession.

  “Moisey,” Sullivan said as he shoved the key in the ignition and started the van. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “You talked,” she corrected.

  “We talked, and you agreed that the moon wasn’t going to help your mother get better. How about we don’t stir this pot anymore? Especially not in front of your siblings. They’re impressionable, and they might start believing something that isn’t true.”

  Moisey’s chin jutted out and her eyes flashed, but she didn’t say a word.

  In Rumer’s estimation that was way worse than her throwing a raging fit. When she was quiet, she was plotting. When she plotted, things happened. Like poor Tommy who’d ended up with his pants glued to his chair. Or Bessie who’d been forced into a straw hat, a bow tie strung around her nonexistent hog neck.

  “Okay, Moisey?” Sullivan prodded.

  “Yeah. Whatever,” Moisey said, sounding almost exactly like her oldest sister.

  Then, she turned and stared out the side window, shut off and silent and as unanimated as Rumer had ever seen her.

  “Honey,” Rumer said. “Who told you the moon would help your mother wake up?” She’d asked the question before, and she’d gotten some cockamamie story about a fairy flying in the window at night and whispering the secret in Moisey’s ear.

  “I already told you,” Moisey said, crossing her arms over her chest, fierce in her determination to keep the secret.

  “How about you tell me again?”

  “A fairy—”

  “How about you tell me the truth?” She cut her off, and Moisey looked straight into her eyes. She was still the little girl that Rumer had almost run over, her arms skinny, her bones tiny, but she looked wizened and old, her cheekbones gaunt, her eyes haunted.

  “I dreamed it,” she said, and Rumer knew it was the absolute truth.

  “Dreams aren’t real,” Twila said, reaching for Moisey’s hand. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid, and this dream is real. I know it is. The moon will come out and shine right on her face, and Mommy will wake up. Just like I saw.” She spoke earnestly, her attention on her sister.

  Their fingers were twined together, their heads bent close—smooth black hair and shiny afro touching as they whispered secrets to each other. They’d painted their nails. Rumer hadn’t noticed that—pink and sparkly. There were dabs of it on Moisey’s fingers and tiny lines of it on Twila’s wrist, and the connection between them, the fondness and love and affection, was as real as the dark clouds, the bumpy driveway, the day that was just turning dark with evening.

  “Whatever happens,” she murmured as she turned around, “they have to stay together.”

  “I know,” Sullivan said simply.

  That was it.

  No explanation of how he planned to make that happen or who would be responsible for taking on the six siblings. Someone would have to. Even if Sunday woke, even if she was able to return home, it could be years before she was able to care for her children alone.

  “I guess you and your brothers have worked that out,” she said, because she couldn’t leave it alone. Just like always, she had to stick her nose in deeper than was necessary, get herself more involved than she needed to.

  “We’re going to discuss things this weekend.” He pulled onto the main road, the van coughing black exhaust from its muffler. She could see it in the side mirror, puffing out in a cloud behind them.

  “That will be good timing,” she said, hanging onto the door as the van bounced over a rut. “The kids and I will leave for the homestead around five.”

  “In the morning?” Heavenly asked, because of course, she was listening. They all were.

  “We start chores at six. You’ll want to eat before then, so we’ll make pancakes and sausage first.”

  “Yum!” Milo said. “Did you hear that, Henry? Pancakes and sausage!”

  “Stop talking to your stupid rock,” Heavenly snapped.

  “He’s not stupid,” Maddox replied, a hint of warning in his voice.

  Rumer expected Heavenly to step right into that.

  She was prepared to intervene and cut off the argument before it grew into a war.

  “I didn’t say he was stupid. I said his rock was.”

  “My rock isn’t stupid,” Milo asserted.

  “Okay. Fine. It’s not stupid. It’s deaf, though, so it can’t hear a word you’re saying.” Heavenly’s voice had taken on the gentle tone she used with Oya. A surprise since she usually either growled or snapped her responses to the boys.

  “Rocks don’t need ears, Heavenly,” Milo said, and then he went on a long-winded explanation of the way his pet could absorb noise.

  Rumer listened with half an ear, her brain spinning off into other directions.

  She was worried about what they’d find at the hospital, worried that Sunday was as unresponsive as doctors had led Sullivan to believe. She was worried about the kids’ reaction to seeing their mother with nothing but stubble for hair, the wound from her surgery clearly visible.

  “Whatever you’re worrying about, don’t,” Sullivan said so quietly she almost didn’t hear.

  “Who says I’m worrying?”

  “You’re biting your lip,” he responded. “And you’re gouging holes in your palms.”

  He touched her hand, and she realized he was right. That she’d clenched her fists so tightly, her nails had dug holes in her palms.

  She forced
herself to relax, to unclench her fingers and let her hands lie lax in her lap.

  He lifted one of them, his eyes on the road, his left hand on the steering wheel, his right thumb rubbing at the purplish marks.

  And, God!

  Every muscle in her body relaxed, every bit of worry fled from her head. She wasn’t thinking about Sunday, about the kids, about the hospital visit or the future. She was thinking about the heat that was pulsing through her, the longing that made her want to curve her fingers through his, let their joined hands rest on the seat between them. Linked for however long it took to get to the hospital. When he set her hand down again, she told herself she was relieved.

  Because, she should be, she wanted to be.

  But, of course, she wasn’t.

  Which sucked, because she might be tired and frazzled, she might spend half of every day wondering what she’d gotten herself into, but she loved working with the Bradshaw kids.

  There.

  She’d said it.

  She loved working with them. She loved listening to Moisey’s crazy theories and Twila’s spouted facts. She loved seeing glimpses of a sweeter and kinder version of Heavenly. She loved watching Milo take care of his pet rock and listening to Maddox defend his brother’s odd choices. She loved taking long walks with Oya strapped into a carrier on her back.

  She didn’t want to have to give it all up because she loved being around Sullivan.

  Which she did.

  She could admit that.

  She loved listening to him talk about his research project, she loved seeing him with Moisey, watching the way his calm approach always soothed the little girl’s tears. She loved the gentle way he responded to the kids’ crazy antics.

  She loved how he tried, because a lot of people would have already called it quits.

  But, she wasn’t going to love him.

  Ever.

  Period. End of discussion.

  “So there,” she muttered.

  “More problems?” Sullivan asked, glancing her way, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, that damn dimple flashing in his cheek.

  “Already solved,” she replied, and she meant it.

  She did.

  * * *

  The hospital visit wasn’t the chaotic nightmare Sullivan had been preparing for. Sunday looked . . . good. Peach-fuzz hair covering her scalp, the staples partially hidden by pillows someone had piled behind her head. She’d been breathing on her own since the day after surgery. The heart monitor had been removed, the machines rolled away. She was attached to nothing but an IV pole and a pulse oximeter that measured her oxygen level and pulse rate.