Rough Hands, Soft Lips

Chapter 1

CAL

Cal Nolen sat on the front porch of the log cabin he’d built himself and watched his son pretend to chop firewood in the dappled sunlight of their forest home.

Little Owen took the smallest branches and propped them on the chopping log.

Then he hit them with a dull hatchet Cal had given him as a toy.

It wasn’t sharp enough to cut through butter, but the four-year-old was giving it his all, imitating his father like kids often do.

Cal imagined he would have heard all the concerns of the local busybodies if he were still living in Summit Falls, a town where everyone knew everyone and neighbors were always knocking on each other’s doors.

Aren’t you worried about bacteria in the soil?

they’d ask, but it wouldn’t really be a question.

Summit Falls was the kind of idyllic town most people dreamed of moving to.

Cal Nolen had moved away instead, and he had zero regrets about the decision.

It wasn’t that he hated the town. His relationship with Summit Falls went sour four years ago when his son was born and his wife did not survive the birth.

Grieving and parenting at the same time proved almost impossible.

Every corner store reminded him of her, and the incessant questions from well-meaning townsfolk made it almost impossible to move on.

He wasn’t Cal Nolen to them anymore. He was that poor man who lost his wife and his military career in one catastrophic night.

But Cal didn’t like to focus on the past. He wanted to focus, instead, on the little blond boy using a dull hatchet to pretend to chop wood for their wood stove.

Cal was the best father he knew how to be under the circumstances, and Owen truly did seem happy. He was now carrying a little bundle of sticks toward Cal with a proud smile on his face. “Look, Dad!” he said. “I helped.”

“You sure did,” Cal said as his son approached.

“Add it to your pile.” He’d convinced the boy to keep separate woodpiles by pretending they were in a friendly competition.

The truth was that Owen’s collected sticks and twigs made great kindling, so Cal was happy to encourage him.

He was a good, hard-working kid, and Cal couldn’t imagine him being any better of a kid had he been raised in a more conventional way. “I think you’re winning,” he said.

“I am,” Owen said. Neither one of them had even talked about what winning meant, but there was never any question about who the winner would be.

“Should we try to catch some dinner this afternoon?” Cal tried to take his son fishing regularly.

Whether or not they caught anything didn’t really matter.

They’d have fish or they’d have some of the venison Cal always kept preserved in the freezer.

He had recently fitted the cabin with solar and a battery bank with enough juice to provide refrigeration and electric lights.

“After we feed Georgie,” Owen said, already heading for the garden.

Cal never had the heart to tell Owen that Georgie could feed herself just fine.

She was a wild rabbit that had made a home under their front porch.

When Owen first noticed her, he had named her George, assuming she was a male rabbit.

Then she had babies, so Georgina it was—Georgie for short.

Cal followed Owen to the garden and waited while the child picked a carrot to pull.

He chose one and ran to give it to Georgie, who always appreciated the gifts she was given. Cal noticed his son looked a bit flushed, but perhaps he was just excited.

Once the rabbit was gifted its lunch, the father and son team set out to catch their potential dinner.

Fishing with his son was always one of Cal’s favorite parts of each day.

It was what his own father would have called the highest of quality time.

They made conversation, and his son always had a thousand questions about the way the world worked. Today was no different.

“Does this river go both ways?” Owen asked, holding his pole while sitting on the stump he always used as a chair.

“Not in our lifetimes,” Cal answered.

“Why?”

“Water likes to go downhill.”

“Because it’s easier?” Owen surmised.

“Maybe.” Cal reeled in his line to recast it in what he thought would be a better spot.

“Going uphill is too hard for water,” Owen concluded.

Cal smiled. “I think it would need some help.”

“But fish can go uphill.”

“They can,” Cal agreed. “Some of them even prefer it.”

“Fish are pretty strong,” Owen concluded.

Cal chuckled. Owen had a great way of understanding the world, gathering information and coming to the most creative conclusions. A prouder father did not exist.

After nearly an hour of fishing, though, Owen grew abnormally quiet.

At first, Cal appreciated the quiet. It gave him an opportunity to listen to the wind in the trees and watch the slow progress of the river in front of them.

They lived in paradise, as far as Cal was concerned, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

But after a while, the quiet began to worry him. He looked over to see that his son’s cheeks were even more flushed than they had been before, and the boy looked tired, though it was nowhere near his bedtime and he’d already had his afternoon nap. “You feeling OK, chief?” Cal asked.

Owen nodded, but he did not answer verbally, which gave Cal all the answer he needed.

“Come here for a minute.” Cal gestured for Owen, who walked over to his father and waited while Cal examined him, pressing the back of a hand to his little forehead. “You’re burning up,” Cal said. “Let’s head in.”

Despite obviously not feeling his best, Owen pulled a pout at the suggestion.

Cal knew the boy was never going to willingly stop doing anything he loved, no matter how badly he felt.

So, he packed up the tackle box and fishing poles and put Owen on his shoulders.

And they walked together back to the cabin, Owen resting his head on the top of Cal’s.

Back at the cabin, Cal sat Owen at their dining table and pulled out a thermometer.

“Hold it under your tongue,” he said. “Let’s see how long you can do it.

I bet you can’t hold it for all four minutes.

” Owen never could resist a challenge. So, whenever Cal needed to convince his son to do something, he’d turn it into a game. The boy held up four fingers.

“That’s right,” Cal said. “Four.” While Owen held his fingers up, Cal counted down.

“Three,” he said after a minute had passed, and Owen put a finger down.

It was a math lesson as well as a temperature check.

The interaction made Cal feel good about his ability to homeschool, which he had every intention of doing, starting next year.

“Two.” Cal pulled out medication to reduce the fever he knew the boy was going to have.

“And one.” He pulled out the thermometer and held it under the light.

“Yep. You’ve got a bit of a fever. You know what that means. Straight to bed.”

“But I’m hungry,” Owen whined. That was a good sign. At least he had an appetite.

“I’ll make you some chicken soup.”

Cal made his son soup and tucked him into bed, combing through Owen’s nearly white hair with his large fingers.

Owen’s grandmother would have called him a towhead, had she gotten the chance to meet him.

Sometimes, Cal managed to convince himself that she was still around, watching over the boy along with Owen’s mother.

“Your mother and grandmother are both angels now,” he had told Owen one day.

“They look after us.” Of course, that had resulted in a flurry of questions Cal was only half prepared to answer, but he never minded taking the time.

Educating his son was one of his greatest pleasures in life.

“You’ll be all right after a good night’s sleep,” he said, more to convince himself than anything.

Cal slept fitfully that night, getting up at least once an hour to check on Owen. He told himself everything was going to be OK. Kids got fevers all the time. They just needed lots of water and rest. There was no need to panic. It would only worry the boy.

In the morning, Owen didn’t hold down his breakfast, and Cal gave him more over-the-counter medicine to reduce his fever.

He sat by his son’s bed and read him all his favorite stories.

He played a memory card game Owen was fond of with some ancient, yellowing cards he himself had played with as a boy.

Before lunch, Owen said, “We have to feed Georgie.”

“Georgie can take care of herself,” Cal assured him.

“No, she likes her carrots. She needs them. She’s a single mom.”

That got Cal to laugh a little. “OK, chief. I’ll get her a carrot. You stay in bed and rest. Georgie needs you to get better.”

He went to the garden and chose a carrot.

Cal had no doubt the rabbit could handle its own business, but when he made a promise to his son, he always, always kept it.

It didn’t matter that the boy was so young he would probably forget a lie his father told him by the time he was a teenager.

Cal believed trust was something that grew under the surface of a relationship.

If he lied to Owen, then Owen might grow to doubt his father, even if he didn’t exactly know why.

No, trust from the very start was too important to risk a lie, even a small one.

Cal brought the carrot inside and washed it, only so Owen could see he was doing the chore. The rabbit, of course, wouldn’t care either way. She frequently stole produce from the garden without bothering to wash it at all. He chuckled at the thought of a rabbit washing its own vegetables.

“Does Georgie want it cut into small bites?” he asked Owen. But the boy had fallen asleep.