by Linda Seed
“Mom?” Lucas, still in his pajamas, his bedhead sticking up comically, leaned into the room, one hand on the doorframe. “I need my permission slip today. The one for the field trip.”
“It’s on the bulletin board in the kitchen,” she told him.
“Okay. And, Mom? Can we get pizza tonight? We haven’t done it in a really long time, and last week you said—”
“I’ll think about it, Lucas. Okay, honey? Now, go get dressed.”
“But—”
“Go, please.” She turned her younger son around by the shoulders and gave him a gentle push out of the room.
Turning back to Michael, Breanna wondered what to do. Her instincts told her to insist that he get out of bed, get dressed, and have breakfast so he could go to school. But those same instincts also told her that he wasn’t doing this to be lazy or difficult. Her boy had a lot of things on his mind, and she didn’t want to dismiss that or make him think his feelings were unimportant.
She sat down on the side of his bed and resisted the urge to reach out and run her fingers through his hair the way she had when he was younger, before he began objecting to such small, mother-son intimacies.
“Is there anything going on, honey?” she said. “Besides your stomach, I mean?”
“No.” He scowled at her.
“Is this about the move? Because—”
He rolled his eyes at her. He never used to roll his eyes. “It’s not about anything, Mom. It’s about my stomach hurting, okay?”
“Okay.” She kept her tone mild. “But I still think you should go to school.”
His face scrunched up in an elaborate show of angst. “But why? School is stupid, and the stuff they teach us is dumb, and it’s a big waste of time, especially when I don’t need to go to college or get a job or anything.”
This last part was a surprise to her, and she found herself rocking back, her eyebrows raised. “Excuse me? What do you mean you don’t need to go to college or get a job?”
“Well … Grandma says I can work on the ranch if I want. Maybe even run it someday like Uncle Ryan.”
“Your uncle Ryan went to college,” she said quietly. “He studied ranch management so he could learn how to do what he does.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Get dressed.” She stood up and headed toward the door. “I want you to get ready for school, Michael. We’ll talk about all of this later.”
“But Mom …”
“Please don’t argue with me. You’d better hurry. We’re leaving in a half hour.”
She left the room and closed the door behind her, marveling at the many ways in which kids could make you doubt every choice you’d ever made as a parent.
* * *
Breanna got the boys dropped off at school without further incident, but when she got home, it was clear that the undercurrent of conflict hadn’t escaped Sandra.
“What kind of bug got into your son’s undershorts this morning?” Sandra asked as Breanna came into the kitchen. The older woman, who seemed to find an endless number of tasks to complete in her favorite room in the house, was scrubbing the counter grout with a toothbrush.
“I don’t know!” Breanna threw her purse onto the big kitchen table and tossed her hands up in despair. “First he said he was sick, then he said he hates school.”
Sandra chuckled as she attacked a particularly dingy patch of grout. “Why, if I had a dollar for every time one of you kids complained about school …”
“That wasn’t the thing that bothered me the most.” Breanna sank down into one of the hard-back chairs that surrounded the butcher block table. “He said he doesn’t need school because he doesn’t have to go to college or get a job. Says he can just work here.”
“Well, I suppose he can,” Sandra said. “But there’s a hell of a lot more to it than just fixing fences and shoveling manure.”
“I know that!” Breanna slumped down in her chair. “How is it that he doesn’t know that? How did I not teach him that?”
“Well …” Sandra paused in her work and propped a fist on her hip. “You’ve kept them out of the ranching, mostly.”
“They’re kids!” Breanna gestured with her hands helplessly. “And ranch work is hard, and dangerous, and …”
“Well, I guess I know all that.” Sandra came to sit at the table across from Breanna. “But maybe it’s time to let Michael give it a go, see what he’s getting himself into.”
Breanna considered that. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve always said I wanted to let them choose their own way, their own interests. Maybe I should let him try it.”
“Plus,” Sandra said, “that boy of yours has got a lot on his mind. I’ve always found the best way to quiet your mind is to get your hands and your body busy doing a hard day’s work.”
She knew what her mother said was true. Breanna herself had always taken solace in hard work, especially during the most difficult times—and after Brian died, times had gotten pretty damned difficult.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“You do that,” Sandra told her. “I’m not saying the boy needs to get out there today and start herding cattle and delivering calves”—she cackled at the thought—“but he needs something, some way to show himself he’s up to a challenge.”
“He needs a man,” Breanna said, thinking it over.
“Well, we got more than a few of those around here.” Sandra got up from her seat and went back to scrubbing the grout.
Breanna started to head out of the kitchen, but she paused on the way out to look at her mother. “Mom? Do you think I’ve babied them? Have I made things too easy for them?”
Sandra hesitated before answering, her mouth working. “Those boys lost their daddy. Nothing easy about that. If you babied them a little, kept them close when you maybe should have let them spread their wings a bit, well, I can’t say I blame you.”
She turned back to the grout, her back to Breanna, the subject closed.
* * *
Considering her mother’s advice, that weekend Breanna asked her brother Liam to take Michael out on the ranch, put him to work, show him exactly what he was going to be doing if he decided to blow off school for a life of managing cattle.
While Lucas followed his normal Saturday morning routine—sleeping in and then eating cereal in front of the TV—Michael got up before dawn, dressed warmly against the morning chill, and went out with Liam, who’d stopped by the house to pick him up on his way out into the pastures.
The amount of complaining the boy had done suggested that maybe he wasn’t really aching for a life tending livestock.
“But, Mom, it’s Saturday,” Michael moaned as Liam waited for him to finish putting on his coat.
“The cattle need tending on Saturdays, too,” she pointed out, not unreasonably.
The plan wasn’t to keep him out all day—he wasn’t used to that kind of hard physical labor, and he’d likely collapse by midafternoon. Liam had proposed a half day, starting at seven a.m.—a scandalously late beginning to the workday, by Delaney standards—and ending at noon.
By the time Liam brought Michael back home at lunchtime, the boy looked dirty and tired, but much of the teen attitude seemed gone for the moment. Michael washed his hands at the kitchen sink and gratefully sat down to the hot lunch Breanna and Sandra had made for the family.
“So, how did it go?” Breanna asked as she sat down at the table in front of her plate.
Michael shrugged—possibly out of an angsty refusal to communicate with his mother, or possibly because his mouth was too full for him to talk.
“He did fine,” Liam said, glancing at the boy. “He’s got a lot to learn, but it wasn’t bad for a first day.”
“Uncle Liam let me bottle-feed a calf,” Michael said, when he was done chewing.
“That must have been fun,” Breanna said.
“I guess.” Michael shrugged, but without the resentment Breanna had been seeing so much of lately.
&n
bsp; Later, when lunch was over and Michael had gone upstairs to get cleaned up, Liam took Breanna aside as they both were clearing the lunch dishes from the table.
“He’s got a lot going on,” Liam told Breanna. He put a stack of plates in the sink.
“You mean he talked to you about it?” This was a surprise—Michael rarely talked about anything these days.
“A little.” Liam leaned his butt against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “We got to working and talking, and some stuff came out.”
“That’s the way it works,” Sandra said from where she stood at the kitchen island wrapping up some leftovers. “The boy can’t just look at you and tell you what’s on his mind. He’s got to be distracted by something else before the words start coming. You and Colin were both like that,” she told Liam. “Ryan, not so much—he could come right out with it. But he always was more the sensitive sort.” She tore a piece of aluminum foil off the roll and covered a bowl of beef stew.
“So, what did he say?” Breanna prompted Liam.
“He’s been having some trouble with some kids at school.”
“He’s being bullied?” Breanna’s voice broadcast her alarm.
“Not really.” Liam shrugged. “Nobody’s picking on him on purpose. It’s more kids being assholes just because they can’t help it.”
Sandra let out a snort at Liam’s comment.
“What kids? What happened?” Breanna asked.
“You know Joey Cosentino? That kid he went to the beach with a few weekends ago?”
“Yeah.”
Liam shrugged again. “Kid says Michael’s not his friend anymore. Joey started hanging around with this new group of friends, and Michael’s not in with that group, so …” He left the rest hanging.
“Well … shit,” Breanna said.
Sandra grunted. “Typical teenage bull manure. This one’s your friend, then he’s not. That one’s sweet as pie to your face, then bad-mouths you behind your back. Why, I wish I had a dollar for every time one of you kids went through that kind of crap when you were in school.”
“You do,” Breanna said.
Sandra considered that, said, “Hmph,” and went back to her work.
“But … why wouldn’t he talk to me about any of that?” Breanna said. “If it was bothering him …”
“Because you’re his mom,” Liam said.
“So? What’s that got to do with—”
“A guy wants to look tough in front of his mom,” Liam said.
Breanna started to say something, then stopped. She propped on hand on her hip. “Really?”
“Sure. A guy wants the woman in his life to think he can handle things. You’re the woman in his life.”
That had never occurred to Breanna before, but now that Liam had put it that way, it made a certain amount of sense. “Huh,” she said.
6
By the time Jake called saying he had a contract ready for Breanna to sign, she was struggling to be patient for the renovations to begin.
“Meet me at Cambria Coffee?” he suggested on the phone as she was running through her morning routine at the Whispering Pines. “I owe you one, anyway.”
“You owe me one what?” she said.
“A coffee. To replace the one Sam knocked out of your hand. A caramel latte, right?”
She blinked a couple of times in surprise. “You remembered that.”
“I’ll see you there at ten,” he said.
* * *
At ten a.m., Cambria Coffee was moderately busy, with three people waiting in line at the counter and a group of senior citizen bicyclists gathered around the outdoor tables, sipping coffee and reminiscing about the morning’s ride.
When Breanna got there, Jake was already sitting at one of the outdoor café tables with two cups of coffee in front of him.
He stood when she approached him, a gesture that struck Breanna as charmingly old-fashioned. He’d recently showered, and his hair was damp.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m glad you could make it.”
“You ordered already.” She looked at the two cups on the table.
“One caramel latte.” He pushed one of the covered cups toward her. “Sorry about Sam.”
“That’s all right. He’s a sweetheart.” She took a sip of the coffee, which was hot and sweet and satisfying. “Thanks.”
The bicyclists were holding a fairly loud and raucous conversation, so Breanna and Jake went upstairs to a small seating area that was, at the moment, empty. They sat down across from each other at a tiny, battered table for two beside a window overlooking Main Street.
Once they were settled in, Jake pulled a sheaf of papers out of a leather messenger bag and placed them in front of Breanna on the table.
“This outlines the timeline for the project, as well as the budget and the payment schedule. The contract outlines what happens if either one of us fails to meet our end of it, what happens if I go over on time or budget, et cetera.” He pushed the papers toward her. “I have to tell you, the budget and timeline are my best estimate. It’s never exact, especially with an old property like this. Once we start opening up walls and really getting in there, there’s no telling what we’re going to find. But I’ve built wiggle room into both, to account for the unexpected.”
“The unexpected,” she repeated.
“Yeah. There’s always something unexpected.”
Breanna picked up the papers, looked at them, and set them down again.
“You’re going to want to take those home, read them carefully. Maybe even have a lawyer take a look,” Jake suggested.
“I’ll have my brother Colin look them over,” she said. “He’s a—”
“A lawyer. Yeah, I know.” Jake looked amused. “Everyone knows who Colin Delaney is. Everyone in my business in this state, anyway.”
“Ah.”
Breanna felt a frisson of nervous energy running through her spine, and she wasn’t sure whether it was because of the significant project she was about to take on, or because she was sitting across from Jake, very close to him, with him looking at her the way he was looking at her.
“It’s not that I don’t know how to read a contract on my own,” she said, just to be saying something. “But Colin’s the family expert on these things, and I—”
“Sure. I get it,” he said mildly. “Take it home. Take your time.”
The thing was, she didn’t want to take her time. She wanted the house to be finished, wanted her new home to be ready and waiting for her. She wanted the next phase of her life to begin. She was tired of waiting.
She picked up the papers and looked at Jake. “Do you have a pen?”
* * *
Once the contract was signed, there was still the caramel latte and the comfortable, quiet surroundings of the coffeehouse, and there was still Jake. She knew she should get going—should get to the Whispering Pines and let him do whatever it was he needed to do, especially since he’d be doing it for her.
But she was in a celebratory mood now that she’d taken one more step in the direction of her dream, and she didn’t really want to leave.
“Here’s to new beginnings,” she said, holding up her coffee cup for a toast.
“To new beginnings.” He lightly tapped his paper cup against hers.
“You’ve been in town, what, six or seven months?” Breanna observed. “You must be experiencing some new beginnings of your own.”
They talked about that for a while—about his divorce and his subsequent move to Cambria from Southern California.
“Of all the places you could have gone, why come here?” Cambria was unquestionably beautiful with its rugged coastline, its rolling green hills, its peace and quiet, its quaint historic architecture, and its small-town feel. But it would hardly be the first place most people would think about when planning a move.
Jake’s mouth curved into a half grin. “My ex and I came through here on our honeymoon, on a drive up the coast through Big Sur. I
’d never even heard of Cambria at the time, but … it charmed me. I thought that if I ever decided to get out of LA, I’d want to come here.”
Breanna smiled. “That’s what Cambria does. It charms people.”
“Probably not when you’ve been here your whole life, though, right?” He sipped his coffee. “I mean, you probably stop appreciating something when you don’t know anything else.”
She considered that. “No. You’d think so, but … it’s still magic. At least, it is for me. I’ve lived other places, but this? There’s nowhere else like this.”
“Huh. I thought you’d always lived here. Where else?”
She started ticking locations off on her fingers. “San Diego. Quantico. Washington, D.C. There was even a year in Germany.”
He squinted at her with interest. “You were military?”
“Not me. My husband.”
* * *
The word husband was like a quick shot of cold water in Jake’s face. She was married? How had he not known that? He’d Googled her and had never seen any reference to a husband. He’d known that he was attracted to her, of course. But he hadn’t realized how much until the word husband had come flying at him.
“You’re married?”
“Widowed,” she said, a hint of some ancient sadness showing in her eyes. “He was a Marine. I followed him around from base to base until he was deployed overseas. He didn’t come back.”
“God, that’s … I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” she said.
“I didn’t know.” He fidgeted with his cup, turning it clockwise on the table.
“Why would you?”
“Well … I Googled you. But now that I think of it, I only looked at the most recent entries. I guess I didn’t go back far enough.”
She looked down at the table, avoiding his gaze. “Brian died nine years ago. Still hurts like it was yesterday.”
“You kept your last name,” he said.
“I did.” She nodded. “It means something to be a Delaney, and I didn’t want to let go of that. The boys have his last name—Morgan—but I kept mine. He didn’t like that. We argued about it. And then …”
