Chapter 7
The lunch box on the kitchen counter stares at me. I stare back at it.
We’ve been doing this the last couple minutes as the unfamiliar sound of a man getting ready for work filters through the house. Across the kitchen island from me, Emma wriggles in her seat, ignoring the breakfast in front of her.
“Sen-na, what are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m trying to decide if I should pack your daddy a lunch, since he starts his first day of work today.” I don’t want to overstep here, and I don’t want him to think I’m weird. It’s just that he’s also been hustling around all morning, helping me with chores despite having places to be, and making sure I have everything I could possibly need for a day with Emma alone.
If nothing else, the man is focused.
“Baby, eat your breakfast for Sienna, okay?” Guy says as he comes into the kitchen, pulling a long-sleeve button-up work shirt over the shirt he’s already wearing. On a morning this cold, I’m glad he’s layering.
“I’m not hungry.” As she gets out of her seat, Guy kneels down next to her so they are on the same level. He takes her hand when she starts to head toward Barley.
“Emma, you know how important it is for you to stay nice and strong. Sienna said you can spend the day here with her and Barley, which is going to be a lot more fun than going to work with me. But part of the deal is you have to eat for her and do what she says. Okay?”
She sighs as if greatly put upon, then gets back on her seat. Guy smooths a hand over her hair, dropping a kiss to the top of his daughter’s head.
“You sure you don’t mind?” he asks quietly, and I shake my head.
“Nope. We’re all about having a girls’ day over here.”
Guy seems unsettled, although it might also have something to do with starting at a new jobsite this morning. We’ve been up since five, which is normal for me, so he can be at work by seven. I see him stuff an off-brand protein bar into his lunch box along with a thermos of coffee. As he finishes gulping down what was left in his morning mug, I have a feeling those bulk, discount protein bars are part of the reason the man has next to no extra meat on his bones.
He pauses as if mentally calculating something, then adds a second bar into the lunch box. Two protein bars aren’t enough to keep a man his size going when working construction in the winter. He’ll be burning calories left and right. Guy’s been on a very tight budget for a while now, and I wonder how many times he didn’t add a second bar even though he needed it.
“I’ll be back to say goodbye,” he tells us, including me and my almost empty breakfast plate in his quick scan of the room. “I’m going to get the truck started.”
I finished my breakfast a few minutes ago, and I’ve been mostly staying out of Guy’s way. He’s the single parent in the room, and he’s the one who knows what needs to be done before he goes. There’s a few more bites of scrambled egg warming on the stove, and he finishes them off before heading outside. Even though I had him park his truck overnight in the detached garage, midwinter in Idaho is rough on an engine if it doesn’t get a chance to warm up. As he hustles across the drive toward the garage, I think about how he checked my breakfast plate too, as if making sure we both had enough before he took more. I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it.
As my new kind-of-fake husband, there are going to be a lot of changes in Guy Maple’s life. Having to take care of me is not one of them.
The lunch box on the counter continues to stare at me. Okay, I just can’t. My brain will not allow me to watch him leave with two of the worst-looking protein bars I have ever seen and not at least put up some kind of a fight. I’ve got about five minutes before he takes off, so I slap together a ham and cheese sandwich, think about it, then make a second. I’m taking a risk here, because maybe he just loves these rock-hard, off-brand protein bars. Maybe he’ll be ticked I interfered.
Then I think about the fact that he has eaten everything I’ve put in front of him and opt for forgiveness instead of permission.
“Can you make them into snowmen?” Emma asks suddenly. “Daddy makes my sandwiches into snowmen.”
“Why, yes, I can. Want to help me?”
The thing about sandwich cutouts is they leave a lot of waste trimmings and make the sandwich a lot smaller, so I sneak in a third. Guy’s going to have a three-snowperson family in his lunch. All he’ll be missing is a snowdog and a snowmule. I stick the sandwich trimmings into a plastic container and back in the fridge, then I stuff a baggie of carrot sticks and some cookies in the lunch box. Then I steal the protein bars back out. The lunch box is heavy enough with the thermos of coffee and the bottle of water he packed that I don’t know if he’ll notice the extra weight.
I hold up my finger to my lips and wink at Emma. She giggles as she watches me quickly hide the loaf of bread and return to my place at the island, drinking my coffee.
Guy hustles back in, then sighs as he sees his daughter hasn’t eaten anything more yet. “Emma, baby, please finish your breakfast.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll do something fun after she’s done.”
“What are we doing?” Emma perks up.
“I’ll tell you after breakfast.” I wink at her again as I offer Guy his heavy Carhartt jacket.
“I was going to leave it here for her,” he tells me, sounding worried.
“When we go outside, I’ll put my spare work jacket over hers. It’s the same kind, and it’ll fit her better.”
Guy gives me an appreciative nod, then he shrugs his jacket on. He gives his daughter a hug and a kiss on the top of her head but hesitates when he looks at me. I tell Barley to stay, and I head to the door with a tall Montana boy at my heels.
I don’t know why I walk Guy out to his truck, except I just sort of…want to.
The snow crunches beneath our feet as we head to the workshop on the other side of the drive. The sliding door is open, and the truck lights are turned down low so they don’t blind us. A soft rumble of a truck engine on this concrete floor is familiar to me in a way that hits hard. The feeling of walking next to someone in the morning hits deeper.
Guy pauses at the front of the truck, then turns to me. “I’ll be back by four thirty probably,” he says. “But if you need anything, I’ll have my phone on me.”
“I’ll text if I run into any questions or problems.”
“And her meals—”
“I’ll log them and what she drinks. And not a drop more today than the water bottle you have in the fridge. And I won’t forget the binders when she eats. I’ll log that she had her medication too.”
“She has a lot of stomach issues. Don’t be surprised if it’s a fight to get her to eat, but she needs the energy. And if she starts to look puffy…”
“I’ll call you right away.”
He hesitates, glancing at the house again, and I’m not offended. Emma’s a very sick little girl, and it only makes sense that it’s hard for him to leave her with me, a virtual stranger. I’ve kept my hands tucked into my pockets because I didn’t wear a jacket out here. I’m used to the cold, but I’m less used to worried fathers hovering at their truck doors. I step closer and offer him my chilled fingers, squeezing gently as I soften my voice.
“Guy, I promise if Emma so much as sneezes wrong, I’m going to panic and drive to the jobsite. Trust me, the last thing you need to worry about is me not calling you if there’s something you need to know. I’ll follow your directions to the letter and text you immediately if anything unexpected comes up. I promise to keep you so informed, it’ll be annoying every time my face pops up on your phone.”
A sweet smile shifts his features from worried father to far-too-handsome pretend-husband-man-fellow. “I’m not sure that’s possible. By the way, you look really nice this morning, Sienna.”
Confused, I look down at what I’m wearing. Work jeans, check, tennis shoes that will later be changed for muck boots, double check. Boring brown extra-warm sweatshirt. Check check check.
Warm fingertips brush my cheek, asking silently for me to look back upward.
“You really don’t see it, do you?” Guy’s expression has softened, and I’m trying really hard not to read too much into it when he smiles again. His arm goes around my waist in the briefest of hugs, and then he steps away. “Have a good day, Sienna.”
I’m sure I just imagine it when he gives me a little wink.
***
“You said we’re doing something fun,” Emma reminds me after she’s finished enough of her breakfast that I can feel comfortable calling it good.
“We are going to make Christmas stockings for the animals.”
I don’t know why that pops up in my mind, but I used to love decorating stockings for the animals when I was little. It seems like the kind of thing she might enjoy. Plus, if I get a decorating station set up in the barn, I can clean stalls, scrub water buckets, and work on fixing the barn roof while keeping an eye on Emma.
“For all of them?” she asks, and I nod.
“Yep, for all of them. But let’s just make one for all the cows. They don’t mind sharing.”
I log how much she ate and drank in her rainbow sparkle–colored tablet, then I take a picture of the info on the off chance I didn’t do something right. Text of the day number one: sending Guy a screenshot of her breakfast. Then I take a picture of Emma making a silly face from behind her chair, and I send that too. Guy’s probably in town by now, but I get an immediate reply of a heart on the first picture, and then a picture comes in of him parked in town, still in his truck and making a silly face just like Emma’s, only from behind his coffee tumbler. She giggles when I show her the pic.
Thank goodness for Emma’s art supplies, because if it were just my stuff, we’d be making Christmas stockings out of my old socks and a dried-out Sharpie. Emma’s got everything we need, including enough felt to make a barn full of Christmas stockings.
After I make a sock-shaped cardboard pattern, she helps me trace the pattern onto the felt with my Sharpie. Emma makes a big production of asking Barley what decorations the horse, mule, and donkeys prefer while I cut the socks out for her. I stifle my giggle when she tells me the cattle don’t like Christmas, not even Jerkface, so she doesn’t want to make them a stocking. Clearly they aren’t as fun as the other animals right now, but I’m guessing she’ll change her mind after she sees her first cute little calf in springtime.
When she’s done decorating the stockings, I’ll superglue them at the seams, but there’s a lot of work waiting for me today. I get Emma dressed in her warmest-looking clothes, and the three of us and our art supplies head off to the barn.
I’m not ashamed to admit that hanging out with Emma is the most fun I’ve had in a really long time.
I nab the portable heater from the garage and take it over to the barn with us. Portable heaters in barns are dangerous, because all it takes is forgetting to turn one off just once, and you have a barn fire. My animals have thick, warm winter coats, and I’ve got a stack of horse blankets if it drops too cold. Before Emma, I never used a portable heater in my barn except for the absolute coldest days, but I have a feeling I’ll be using it a lot more. If she likes spending the day with me, I’m going to need to think of better ways to make the barn more Emma-friendly.
I lay down an unused horse blanket on a few bales of hay in the barn, making a comfortable workstation for Emma. The heater goes on top of an overturned bucket so it’s at a good height for her and far away enough from the hay so I won’t be watching it every other second to make sure it didn’t get knocked over into the haystack.
Barley sticks to Emma like glue, following her around anytime she moves and sitting beside her on the hay bale, so close she’s leaning on him half the time. Barley watches her with liquid brown eyes as she throws herself into decorating with the kind of enthusiasm I haven’t felt in a long time.
“Sen-na?” The sound of my name pulls my attention over to where Emma is decorating Legs’s stocking. “How will Santa know where to find us?”
She doesn’t sound worried, but she’s such a carbon copy of her father. There’s this tiny expression change that gives her away. It’s in the way they tighten their mouths, although easier to see with Guy and his stronger jaw.
“Did your daddy send in a change of address form to the post office when you and he moved here?”
Emma tilts her head, thinking about it. “I’ll ask him later.”
That works.
“Or you could ask him now,” she adds.
I smile despite myself, then sneak a glance over at the little girl. She giggles when she sees me looking, and I playfully sigh and pull out my phone. I can already tell Emma’s got my number. Telling her no is going to be beyond hard, and especially when it’s Santa related.
I dictate a text message to Guy so she knows what I’m saying. “Emma wants to know if you put in a change of address at the post office so Santa can find you.”
I wait, and then three little dots begin to move on my phone, indicating he’s texting me back. I show her my phone and read Guy’s reply out loud to her.
“He says, ‘Oops. Tell Em I’ll swing by after work and fast-track it so Santa doesn’t get mad at me.’”
At her expression of alarm, I ruffle the knitted hat on her head, and I dictate a second text. “No worries. Just send me your previous info, and I’ll do it over lunch.”
There’s more than enough work around the barn where I can keep an eye on Emma, so I switch to replacing a board Legs kicked and split in his stall. Emma is deep in her decorating, and I move on to digging out the hard-packed snow around the stall runout doors connecting the barn stalls to the horse pen. I had barely been able to slide them open after the animals had their morning grain. Legs wanders over to see what I’m doing, and Emma giggles when she sees the tall mule lipping at the collar of my jacket.
“Sen-na, why doesn’t Legs live inside with us like Barley?”
I pause, then look at him. “Legs? Why don’t you live inside with us?”
I love how Emma laughs when Legs snorts and wanders away. I swear the mule knew exactly what he was doing when he started shaking his head as if horrified at the very idea.
About an hour later, I get another text from Guy. It’s a picture of his lunch box, opened to the stack of sandwiches.
When a good day gets better , he sends, including a smiley heart emoji and a drooling emoji.
The man emoji’d me. Twice. Oh dear, things seem to be getting serious.
“Sen-na, did Daddy say something funny?”
“Hmm? Oh, he just thanked us for the lunch. Why?”
“’Cause you’re smiling.”
Hmm, maybe I am. After Emma finishes with the stockings, I tell her we’ll glue them tonight inside the house, where the glue will set up better.
I’m not used to coming back inside during the brightest, warmest hours of the day, but Emma’s lunchtime is at noon, and I dutifully give her the lunch Guy has ready for her in the fridge.
She picks at her lunch just like she did for breakfast, and this time, she doesn’t eat as much. A text to Guy gives me a thumbs-up that she’s eaten enough, and I record it just as promised. Emma looks tired, and Guy has it written down on the “Emma Sheet” that twelve thirty to two is her nap time. She promises me she always naps with her headphones on and her show on her tablet when her daddy is working, so I go along with it. If it’s not what Guy wants, he can talk to Emma tonight.
I’m very aware I’m not a permanent presence in her life, and the last thing I want to do is overstep.
Emma wants me to watch the show she’s picked—a cute holiday cartoon with Rudolph and a little kid Santa—so I settle in against her headboard and listen through my own earbuds while Barley stares at me coldly for taking his place. Since she’s out within a couple minutes, I give up my seat to the dog and sneak out of the room. Which means I have an hour and a half to stop and think about this situation I’m in right now.
The blanket Guy used to sleep on the couch is neatly folded, with his pillow smoothed and lying on top of it. I don’t know if he’s just a very tidy person or if it’s the same courtesy one would have when staying as a guest in someone’s house. I had noticed his suitcase tucked in the corner of Emma’s room, just as neatly set out of the way.
For such a big cabin, there’s zero actual space for him.
The stacks of plastic storage tubs in my office are just…overwhelming, but I finally have a reason to try to clear them out some. My parents’ things are in these tubs, and back when Dad was more himself, he told me to go through them, keep what I want, and get rid of the rest.
I’m not ready, not anywhere close, but I can work on moving the tubs up the stairs and over to my room. I work quietly, hoping Emma’s headphones keep her from waking up. It’s hard work, especially trying to tiptoe on squeaky wooden stairs, but I make a solid enough dent in the project to feel like at some point, Guy will have a bit of privacy.
I flop down in my office chair, so lost in thought about my new roommates, I nearly jump out of my skin when the landline phone rings loudly right next to me.
It’s still set at a higher volume ring from back when my dad was here and had a hard time hearing the phone. I grab it without checking the caller ID, wincing because I’m afraid the noise may have just woken up Emma.
“This is Sienna,” I say, craning my head to see through the study door, just in case little feet appear at the top of the staircase.
“We need to talk.”
And that’s why you always check the caller ID. I grimace, feeling the tension in the back of my neck ratchet up.
“Hello to you too, Micah.”
There’s something about the people you’ve known your entire life. The people who’ve known you their entire lives. There’s no hiding from them, not in a town this size. There’s no pretending everything is fine. And when you spent all of high school, all of college, and another ten years of marriage with a person, even if you hate it, they know you. You know them.
And you can tell when they are furious.
“Our insurance company sent over something to me.”
Ahh, yep. Since Micah is the insurance plan administrator now instead of me, I suppose the insurance company would send over notice of my change in status. Well, I suppose it’s one way for him to find out.
“I’m assuming this is some kind of mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake, Micah,” I tell him, closing my eyes to brace myself.
The moment of silence from the other side of the phone is like the calm before the storm. No matter how he reacts, I will not engage. What I choose to do with my life is my business. I don’t owe him any explanations.
“You got married the day after our divorce finalized?”
“Sen-na?” a sleepy voice says from the study doorway. She looks confused and a little uncertain, and she hasn’t had as much of a nap as Guy said she needed. “I’m thirsty.”
“Okay, baby, I’m coming. Micah, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now. Goodbye.”
I can’t fight with Micah and double-check Emma is getting a safe amount of liquid at the same time. He starts to say something else, but I hang up the phone.
I text Guy to confirm the amount of water Emma is allowed, and he replies back immediately, so I don’t have to be stressed about an upset, thirsty Emma. Barley presses his nose against my hand as I put Emma back in bed to finish her nap, and I realize the fury in Micah’s voice still has me a little shaken. So this time I finish watching Emma’s show even after she falls asleep, and when she’s napped long enough, I put a smile on my face and focus on my afternoon with her. Emma knowing she has a safe, comfortable place to live is more important than my ex rattling me.
Still. Too many conversations like today have happened with Micah, and I wish I had never taken the call. Some triggers are just more hardwired than others.
I keep a close eye for signs Emma’s too cold or getting weary, but she seems to be happy as a clam to stay with me as I work. Maybe it’s from growing up being on jobsites with her father, but she’s very good at picking a place to play and not leaving the spot.
She especially likes riding on the ATV with me when I go to check on the cattle.
I’m going to need to ride the fence line soon and check for any downed poles or loose wire, but there’s a big difference between hanging out with me on an ATV and riding horseback up and down the mountains in winter. That task is just going to have to wait for the weekend when Guy’s off work.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind if I said I couldn’t watch Emma that he’d take her to work without blinking twice. But the truth is I like having company. Unlike Legs and Barley, when I talk to Emma, she talks right back.
My phone chirps at me as we get back to the barn.
“‘Leaving the site, need anything from town?’” I read out loud because Emma had seen her father’s photo pop up on my screen.
It’s been a really long time since someone asked me that. It’s been even longer since I felt a little thrill of anticipation that comes with someone being on their way home.
“Take it down a notch, Naples,” I murmur to myself.
“Sen-na, aren’t you a Maple now, like us?” Emma asks me.
Clearly, one can’t get anything by these sharp ears, not even a mutter at my own very confused libido. “Yep, that’s right.”
I reply to his text with a no thank you , hesitate, then add a smiley face. I can’t remember the last time I smiley faced a man, but it probably stopped around the time I stopped shaving my legs before a Friday night because my television streaming service and carton of ice cream couldn’t have cared less how hairy I was.
We are starting the evening feeding when the sound of a vehicle coming up the drive makes Barley’s head come up. He doesn’t bark the way he usually does, and I glance out the barn door to see Guy’s truck.
“You don’t know him yet. You do realize this, right?”
Barley thumps his tail once to acknowledge my comment, but then he turns his head back to Emma, muzzle on his paws and staring up at her with big brown eyes.
“I think Barley loves you, Emma.”
“Aww. I love him. So much.” When she hugs him around the fluffy neck, Barley starts licking her neck and ear, which only causes Emma to dissolve into giggles.
“Is this where the party is?” I hear Guy say as he pokes his head into the barn.
This is a lot dirtier version of the man who left this morning, and whatever he was doing in between emojis, it must have been hard. But Guy seems full of energy as he goes straight for his daughter.
“There’s my girl.” Guy sweeps her up into a huge hug. “I missed you today, baby.”
She doesn’t return the sentiment apparently, because Emma launches into a babbling account of all the things we’ve done today, what she liked, what she thought was silly, and what she liked despite it being silly.
“It looks like I missed out on all the fun,” Guy says with a chuckle. “Hey, Sienna. Thanks for watching Em today.”
“She was great company.” I smile at him in greeting, and there’s this awkward moment when I’m not sure if I should hug him or not. If he was just a friend, I’d hug him, or if we were dating, I’d hug him. But this whole married-with-zero-chance-to-get-to-know-each-other situation has kind of warped the normal rules. Still, I don’t want Guy to feel like I don’t care he came back.
“I put some coffee on when you texted you were on your way,” I say instead, because nothing says “sorry I have no social skills” like caffeine.
“That sounds great. Want a cup?”
“No, thanks. I don’t drink caffeine after noon.” Trust me, I want to, but sleep comes hard enough as it is these days.
“Coffee first, then put me to work,” he tells me, and I almost take him up on it. But after a first day at a new job, the last thing I’d want to do is jump headfirst into more hard labor.
“We’re almost done if you want to grab a shower.”
Guy hesitates, then he nods and leans over, ruffling Barley’s ears before giving my dog a pat.
When he leaves, Emma gives me an interesting look. “Daddy looks at you funny.”
“Maybe your daddy thinks I’m funny-looking,” I tell her, making a silly face. Emma squeals with childish laughter, and yes, it’s a little high-pitched, but I love hearing her laugh. We chase each other around the barn until finally Legs kicks his stall door in protest.
“Oops, guess we better get to work. Old man grumpy pants over there isn’t happy with us.” He probably just knocked loose the new board I put up, but I don’t mind.
And as I start to feed the horses, I have to admit that maybe, just maybe, I look at Guy funny too.