But she did get nosy. She walked him through each of the last four orders, asking odd questions. How he chose parts. How he filled out the complicated order form on the company’s website. How he wrote things down—when he wrote things down, which wasn’t often—in Manny’s logbooks.
He was watching an idea formulate in her head. An idea about him, which both fascinated and annoyed him. “What do you need next?” she asked.
Wyatt sat back in his chair. “Another week and the Carousel Committee off my back.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What part do you need next?”
He walked to the volumes she’d just organized, surprisingly pleased at how easy it was to pick the correct catalog from the orderly shelves. “Maybe this is better than piles on the bench.”
A smirk and a raised eyebrow greeted his pronouncement. “Imagine that.”
Rather than reach for a snappy comeback, he thumbed through the pages until he found the belts he needed to replace on the carousel’s main mechanism. “These, in two different sizes.”
“Is there an order form blank anywhere? A paper one?”
“I use the online one,” he replied. “And I hate the thing.”
Marilyn looked at the website listed on the cover of the catalog, pulled it up on Manny’s computer and, in less than a minute, had a blank order form spitting out of the printer on the shelves behind them. “Let’s try paper for this time. Humor me.”
Wyatt found it wasn’t hard at all to humor Marilyn Sofitel.
Chapter Six
Marilyn sat at the small desk in her room late that night, staring at a copy of the order form she’d filled out with Wyatt that morning. She’d been staring at it for the last thirty minutes now that the girls were in bed. Pondering what to do about what she thought she saw on the page.
Was her intuition right? She was no expert, certainly.
Still, it seemed clear enough to her based on what she knew: Wyatt Walker was likely dyslexic.
It explained a lot. Why he hated paperwork. Why organizational tasks confounded him. How easily—and successfully—he relied on charming other people into doing detail tasks for him. How machines came easily to him but words didn’t. Why he couldn’t see the point in Manny’s rather clever logging system.
His handwriting was terrible, but that wasn’t an indicator in itself. She knew lots of people with ghastly handwriting. He was a bad speller, too, but then again so was Landon. And these days a computer’s spell-check could cover a host of those types of errors.
No, it was the numbers that offered the strongest clues. Mostly because he had the same challenges with them that Margie did. It took him several tries to get the parts numbers copied down correctly, and he didn’t seem to be able to see the errors in the sequences when he made them. He could look at an engine and see what was wrong with it in minutes, but couldn’t do the same on anything involving letters and numbers.
When she casually asked him what was the last book he’d read for pleasure, he looked like the words reading and pleasure didn’t belong in the same sentence.
The more he talked about how much he hated the detailed paperwork now hoisted on his shoulders while running the garage, the more his complaints echoed Margie’s about similar school tasks. The frustration. The bafflement over something that seemed so easy to everyone else.
I’m no expert, she told herself again as she ran her hands over the backward five on one of the earlier versions of the form Wyatt had tossed in the garbage with a growl. I’m not sure I can help him.
She’d had the same overwhelmed feeling when Margie’s kindergarten teacher in Denver had gently raised a similar concern. “You don’t have to be the only one to help her,” the wise woman had said. “But you may be the only one who can point her toward help.” The fact that Wander Canyon Community Church had a specialized dyslexic tutoring program had been a key factor in her deciding to move herself and the girls back home before they started first grade.
Wyatt wouldn’t listen to her about something like this, would he? The man barely accepted her help in terms of office organization. His ego seemed far too large to make room for something like a learning disability. He’d see it as a defect. A weakness. Margie’s own thinking about her abilities was just beginning to formulate. She couldn’t risk his reaction tainting how Margie felt about herself just as she was getting ready to start a new school.
And yet there was the easy connection between them. A fast and startling friendship. She genuinely liked him, despite—or maybe even because of—how everyone else wrote him off as bad news.
Marilyn peered at the paper again, the conviction that she was staring at the source of his defiant personality rising up with the clarity of truth. He’d been brave enough to share his problem with her. Would she be brave enough to pose the explanation? More important, an explanation that had a solution?
Is it possible God put her in his path so that her experience with Margie gave her the eyes to see his situation?
“Mom?”
Margie’s pouting face appeared in the light of her doorway. Hair mussed, pajamas in disarray, her precious stuffed yellow chick, Clara, hugged close. Marilyn swiveled in her chair and held her arms open. “What’s up, sweetie?”
Margie tumbled into her lap and snuggled in tight. Marilyn gave her a moment to soften against her before kissing the top of her sweet head and asking again, “Why are you out of bed?”
Margie looked up at her with worried eyes. “The school’s so big.”
Wander Canyon Elementary wasn’t a big school by her standards, but Marilyn supposed it must look enormous when compared with the cozy private kindergarten the girls had attended in Denver. As an introduction of sorts, she’d driven the girls by the school this afternoon, stopping to play on the playground while it was empty for the summer. The girls had acted excited this afternoon. Or was it just Maddie’s excitement overshadowing Margie’s hidden worries?
She brushed the hair out of Margie’s eyes. “Big can be fun, too. But it can feel scary at first. And you won’t be alone. Maddie will be there with you.”
“I know.” But her tone spoke that Maddie’s presence might be part of her worries. New social situations came easily to Maddie. School came easily to Maddie. It didn’t take much to guess that Margie was worried she wouldn’t measure up to her sister.
“There are so many ways to be smart in this world. Did you know that?”
Margie didn’t answer, just settled her head on Marilyn’s shoulder.
“Maddie’s good at numbers, but who’s good at puzzles?”
She gently poked Margie’s nose until she giggled just a bit and said, “Me.”
“And Grandma can make great waffles, but who knows what to do in the garden?”
“Gramps.”
She tightened her arms around the child. “God makes us each different. Our job is to figure out what He’s made us good at and do it.”
“It’s not numbers, and that’s what school is, isn’t it?”
Marilyn couldn’t escape how powerfully her daughter’s words echoed Wyatt’s frustration. Margie’s challenges had been identified early, and she was already learning ways to address them.
Based on what she’d seen, Marilyn doubted the same could be said for Wyatt. What would years of such things going unrecognized—or worse yet, treated as a lack of intellect—do to a man’s soul?
The answer came loud and clear. It would make him defiant. An outlier. A rebel. A Wyatt.
“Life is made up of so much more than numbers and letters. You’re going to discover all kinds of wonderful things at that school. And it might be scary at first—” she angled her face until she could catch Margie’s gaze “—but I promise you that in no time at all it will feel fun and exciting.”
“Promise?”
Marilyn had chosen Wander Canyon E
lementary especially for the strength of their specialized learning programs for kids like Margie. Backed up by extra tutoring at the church, her daughter would be given everything she needed to succeed. “Promise.”
A thought occurred to Margie, and she straightened in Marilyn’s lap. “Is the merry-go-round a puzzle?”
She didn’t quite follow the child’s thinking. “I don’t know. How so?”
“Fixing it. It’d be like a puzzle, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, then I hope Mr. Wyatt is good at puzzles. I want to ride the rooster.”
Marilyn thought about the intensity that came over Wyatt’s eyes when he stared at an engine. She saw just metal and tubes and gears, but she could see how he saw the whole mechanism and how it worked together. “I think he is. Cars are like big puzzles, so why not carousels?” After a pause, she dared to add, “Do you know I think Mr. Wyatt thinks numbers fight him just like you do?”
It was funny—and rather telling—that Margie described her inability to grasp letter and number concepts as their fighting her. It certainly fit the way Wyatt looked at the order forms and logs. The man appeared to be locked in battle.
Margie didn’t seem to think this possible. “But he’s a grown-up.”
“There are lots of grown-ups who have the same fights with letters and numbers you do. It hasn’t stopped any of them, and it won’t stop you, either.” In fact, she knew the physical education teacher at Wander Canyon Elementary was dyslexic. She’d hoped to find several other adults and older children to serve as models and mentors for Margie.
“So it didn’t stop him?”
The question caught Marilyn up short. It probably had stopped Wyatt in more ways than he knew. More ways than it ought to. In that moment, she knew the next conversation she’d need to have with Wyatt Walker.
She’d just have to pray that the charming mechanic wouldn’t put up as much of a fight as Margie’s numbers.
* * *
Some days Wyatt wasn’t sure why he ever said yes to these dinners.
Actually, he did know. Turns out Dad’s new wife, Pauline, could be as stubborn as his father. He could turn down a hundred invitations, and she’d never stop asking. They’d been married for six months, and every single Thursday she found a reason to ask him for dinner.
Most weeks he found reasons to be elsewhere. Every once in a while he’d cave in and accept, hoping to gain a good meal and sideswipe the digs and jabs that inevitably came with it. Tonight had been long and tiresome.
He kept his eyes on the potatoes while Dad droned on about some pesky detail about the herd. Wyatt actually liked the Scottish Highland cattle they raised. The unusual breed had been one of his best ideas. One of the few implemented, in fact. He’d always been proud of that.
But it stopped there. He wasn’t a rancher, and never had been. Why did Dad think pounding him with ranch details would somehow change that? Chaz was doing a great job of running Wander Canyon Ranch. It didn’t bother Wyatt at all that the ranch didn’t need him. He liked it that way. He preferred it that way.
Only Dad still couldn’t quite see it. In fact, Dad and Chaz had spent the whole dinner talking about new tactics in vaccination schedules as if the whole thing was fascinating. It wasn’t. Not to him.
“Don’t you think, Wyatt?”
Wyatt did what he always did. He gave Dad a look and said, “You already know I have no opinion on the subject.”
Dad’s response was what it always was: what Wyatt had come to call The Supremely Disappointed Exhale. Honestly, if there was one sound that summed up his relationship with his father, it was the sound of Hank Walker pushing out a breath while he glared at Wyatt with that edge in his eyes. He should be immune by now, should have built up a resistance worthy of a bovine vaccine, but there was always just enough of an edge in that look to cut a bit. Over and over.
And people wondered why he moved off the ranch?
“Any luck with the carousel?” Pauline asked in an attempt to keep the peace.
It was the last thing he wanted to discuss. “Not yet.”
Dad cut into his pork chop. “Been three weeks.”
Wyatt put down his fork. “I’m well aware, Dad.”
Yvonne rose to his defense. “It’s one of a kind. It’s not as if there’s a manual you can consult or anything, is there?”
“No,” Wyatt agreed, leveling a look at Dad. “There isn’t. And all the parts have to come from Albany.” In the wrong size, he added silently.
“A motor’s a motor, isn’t it?” Dad scoffed.
“I don’t know, Dad, is it?” Wyatt shot back, unable to help himself from rising to Dad’s bait. “Are cows cows?”
Cattle was the more correct term, of course, but Wyatt was never above using the word cow just because it bothered his father.
“How is Manny?” Pauline cut in loudly, changing the subject. “Peggy healing up well?”
“She’s having some trouble,” Wyatt offered. “I think he’ll be out for a while longer.” That was convenient, as it gave him a ready excuse to keep his apartment above the garage and sidestep the issue of his ever moving back onto the ranch. Dad hadn’t asked yet, but he would.
He didn’t yet know the answer to what came next for him, even though he knew both Dad and Chaz were bothered by his lack of a plan. He’d never been one to need firm plans like they did. Like the ranch required. No amount of explaining had ever been able to make them understand how the ranch held no interest, no passion for him. Chaz had come to a baffled acceptance, but Dad still looked at him as if it was some sort of defect.
“So,” Yvonne offered, clearly fishing for a safer topic of conversation. “You’ve got a nice young woman helping you with Manny’s bookkeeping?”
Safer topic indeed. Was there some way he could fake a garage emergency right about now?
Dad looked up from his meal. “What? Who?”
“Mari Ralton,” Chaz added. “Well, it’s Marilyn something else now.”
Surprise arched Dad’s bushy gray eyebrows. “Ed and Katie’s girl is helping you with bookkeeping?” He made it sound like the most unlikely thing ever to happen in Wander Canyon.
“I helped her figure out a maintenance schedule for her car now that her husband passed away. She’s returning the favor by helping me handle all the annoying paperwork piling up at the garage.” That was true, mostly.
“She has the most adorable twin daughters,” Yvonne said with a grin. “They called Wyatt ‘the Carousel Man.’”
Chaz’s snort of laughter made Wyatt want to kick his stepbrother in the shins under the table like he did when they were kids. “How do they know you?” Chaz asked.
“I gave them red tickets when the carousel was broken and they couldn’t ride.”
Dad rolled his eyes. He’d always hated the red tickets, saying they were a cheap copout. “You better get that fixed up soon, son, or you’ll be buying cupcakes for every kid in the county.”
“I’m working on it, Dad.” Why did everyone assume he was slacking on that job? Why didn’t anyone realize it was the parts delays that were making repairs take so long?
“How come Marilyn is helping you?” Pauline asked.
“Because she’s nice,” Wyatt shot back, thinking it a better reply than “Because I need it.”
“Because she’s pretty, maybe?” Chaz teased. “You always could talk anyone into anything. I remember the time...”
“Can we not go there?” Wyatt cut Chaz off.
Pauline actually giggled. “Good story?”
Chaz nodded. Yvonne raised an eyebrow. Dad smirked and whispered, “Tell you later,” to Pauline.
And they wonder why I left? Wyatt grumbled silently as he ground his teeth. Why on earth would someone as smart as Mari come back to the Canyon if she had any kind of choice?
“Nothing sadder than a young widow,” Pauline said with a sigh.
That look came over Dad’s face again. “If you’re blessed, you find love again.” He picked up Pauline’s hand and kissed the back of her palm. He was happy for Dad, he really was, but sometimes the new mushy version was a bit hard to take. He was worse than Chaz, and that was saying something. These dinners surely made this confirmed bachelor feel like a fifth wheel.
“You don’t suppose...” Chaz didn’t finish the sentence, but simply smirked at Wyatt with his hand over his heart.
Wyatt threw down his napkin. “She’s a widow with two kids,” he declared as if that settled everything. Because it did. He didn’t think he had a type, but if he did, a single mom of twins was as far from it as humanly possible.
Chaz turned toward Dad. “I grew up in a blended family, and it turned out okay...eventually.”
That was it. To call the wild tangle that had been this family over the past two years okay was the understatement of the year. “Can we please not go there?” Wyatt nearly shouted. He pushed back from the table. “I think I have somewhere to be.”
“But I brought chocolate cake,” Yvonne said.
Wyatt really liked Yvonne’s chocolate cake. Still, there wasn’t a cake in the whole world good enough to keep him at this table for another minute. “I’ll buy myself a whole cake on Monday.”
“When you pick up those cupcakes for Maddie and Margie?”
Wyatt winced. He’d asked Yvonne to make up a pair of pink-and-purple-frosted cupcakes to give the girls to keep them occupied because they were coming with Marilyn while she helped him with the last of the paperwork Monday. Now he’d never live this down. Nothing anyone ever did stayed private in this tiny, nosy little town. Wander’s always watching.
One thing had just become crystal clear: he’d better start figuring out his future before he became the Carousel Man for good.
Their Wander Canyon Wish Page 6
