Chapter 13
CADE
“Let it go, boys,” I commanded hours later, probably around midnight. “It’s good enough. We have the outer hole sealed; the rest will wait for tomorrow.”
Cody swiped his forearm across his forehead. Wyatt frowned at the wall. Bits of dust and cobwebs filled his hair. He shoved a hand through it, clearing the debris, and shook his head.
I shared his disbelief. The already exorbitant list of repairs had just tripled, but I could barely consider that.
I shooed them out. They trudged into the kitchen, and conversation picked up.
Noelle was still awake. I thought I had heard her puttering out there, but I’d been too absorbed in these strange revelations to focus on it.
Now, I could hear the knuckleheads’ voices, but not her replies.
Outside, the storm whipped around. Wyatt and Cody would use shovels to clear a path to the barn as they returned to their rooms, which would help them have less to do in the morning, particularly if it iced over. The only sensible idea left was to get some sleep and figure the rest out later.
Then I smelled the food.
Yeast, butter, and a hint of magic crept into the hallway. I turned into the kitchen in time to see Wyatt shove an entire dinner roll in his mouth. Was that butter gleaming off the golden top and sides? My hungry stomach groaned. It smelled divine.
Noelle shot me a bright smile. Wyatt and Cody didn’t seem to have noticed the redness or swelling in her eyes, but I didn’t miss it. I wouldn’t bring it up around them, either. Not that it was my business.
Was it?
Wasn’t it?
The definition of my relationship to Noelle seemed to blur with each passing day.
Acquaintance, but friend. Friend, but like family because I’d inherited her ancestral ranch.
Not to mention landlord, because she lived on my property now, and friend again because .
. . well . . . who wouldn’t want to be friends with a woman like Noelle?
“What smells so delicious?” I asked.
Cody attempted a reply, but couldn’t speak around the half-masticated dough in his mouth. I glared at him.
Noelle spoke for him. “Dinner rolls.”
She held up a basket that, I guessed, had once been brimming with them. Wyatt helped himself to another one. His tenth, probably, knowing what I did of his endless hunger cycle.
“My grandma’s recipe. Supposedly passed down through all generations of my family, since the flood.”
I snorted at her wry humor, particularly after such a peculiar evening. I cracked the buttery top open and revealed a steaming interior ready to be devoured. My stomach protested when I did not shovel it in my mouth like a cartoon character.
“Thank you. I hope you didn’t stay up just for this?”
“Not only for this,” she replied lightly, and I wondered if whatever else haunted her was also connected to her poorly hidden tear streaks. She had mentioned Lily being her sister’s baby, but nothing more. I wondered if whatever she’d cried over had something to do with that situation.
Wyatt swallowed loudly, thanked Noelle for the delicious second dinner, and gave into her encouragement to take one for the road. He took five, with one in his teeth. Cody trudged behind him, a roll in each hand and one in his mouth. They demolished almost the whole stack. I called to their backs.
“Shovel out as you go!”
They slammed the door in reply. How they’d shovel with fistfuls of food, I had no idea, but they could be inventive.
Noelle bustled at the sink, the comforting clink of dishes and smell of soap in the air.
I lowered into a chair, polished off the buttery piece of heaven, and stared at the pouring snow as I considered the bathroom discovery.
I must have existed in the stupor for longer than I realized, because her hand touched my shoulder.
“Cade?”
“Hmm?”
“Everything okay?”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Fine,” I said quickly, then added, “but . . . confounding.”
Noelle lowered into the seat across from mine, leaned back, stretched her legs out, set her hands in her hoodie pocket. A slight, reddish tint heightened the color on her cheeks. She peeked out from under a hoodie she’d pulled over her head.
“I’m a good listener.”
“We’ve tripled our workload.”
She listened without interruption while I clipped through a brief and haphazard explanation of the hole, the animal, the access to outside, and the door-walls that would stymy any old rancher.
When I finished, she did the last thing I expected.
She burst out laughing.
Hand over her mouth, eyes squeezed shut, her belly laugh rolled into the room until it felt like Christmas had arrived early. The snow ceased to exist, the smell of fresh bread wafted away, and all I knew in that moment was Noelle and the delight she brought into a horrible situation.
Eyes streaming from the hilarity, she swiped them free with the back of her hand.
“That’s amazing.”
At a loss for words, I could only run my tongue over my teeth. Amazing wasn’t what I’d say, but the Cowboy Code prevented me from stating the words I felt.
Noelle pulled herself together, but the amusement didn’t leave her eyes.
“I imagine this is frustrating and quite unexpected for you, Cade, but it will be fun to work through together. We’ll just . . . add it to our list, I guess.”
A cry from the other room interrupted her courage-giving speech. I wasn’t afraid of the renovations and changes. I was irritated, but I didn’t want to break her moment of hilarity.
She stood slowly.
“I think it’s time for Lily to eat, and then I’m going to head to bed, too. I’m pretty tired and a little . . . off. I don’t know. Let me know if I can do anything to help in the meantime, Cade.”
She stopped, set a hand on my shoulder, and added, “And thanks for working so hard to figure that out.”
Like a ghost, she departed.
A tinny cry woke me around four that morning.
I stumbled off the couch, narrowly avoided smacking myself on the corner of the coffee table, and hurried into the hallway. Only half awake, I realized that the cry was Lily. She wasn’t sleeping with Noelle in the master bedroom, but one of the side rooms.
Noelle’s lumpy form lay on her bed, the shadows fitting the curves and contours of her hips and shoulders. Normally, she woke up whenever Lily made a sound, but she didn’t look any kind of ready to rouse.
Should I wake her?
Let her sleep? We hadn’t encountered this situation before.
Noelle always bounced to life at the slightest rustle from Lily.
The pronounced bags under her eyes before she made it to bed held me back, because Lily had been very fussy.
She didn’t eat well at her midnight feeding, and it took over an hour for Noelle to rock her to sleep.
Recalling the struggle, I turned into Lily’s room and picked her up.
Whatever Noelle and I were, she trusted me.
It was too dark for a baby to see me, I imagined, so when I mimicked the bounce-swing motion I’d watched Noelle execute, Lily calmed right down. She was a hot little bundle. When I pressed my palm to her forehead, it brightened with heat.
A fever.
Oh, crud.
What business did a minuscule baby have with a fever?
Great.
What to do?
Cora had been a little baby when I was still a kid.
I remember Mom having her sometime around my eighth or ninth birthday.
That was the same time when Mom’s mind began to unravel.
When the hallucinations set in, she stopped feeding us because the voices told her to purify us so the demons wouldn’t suck out our souls.
I remembered figuring out diapers and bottles by watching Mom, because Cora would cry through the night if I didn’t tend to her, and Mom often left at night.
But this wasn’t my child.
When I crept into Noelle’s room to ask what she wanted me to do, she let out a ragged breath.
“Noelle?” I whispered. It sounded like a rifle crack, reminding me of overnight campouts in the winter, when the sap would freeze and branches issued sounds like gunshots.
“Noelle?”
She didn’t stir. On a hunch, I slipped to her side, set a hand on her forehead. She radiated heat, too. The back of my hand pressed to her wrist, then her cheek. No wonder her earlier coloring had been a little off. She stirred, mumbling something, and swatted me away.
Feverish.
In fact, worse than Lily.
Lily remained quiet and glassy-eyed when I shuffled into the kitchen, snapped on the light under the oven hood.
The glow allowed just enough illumination to set eyes on the medicine bottles.
Noelle brought infant medication with her, as well as regular over-the-counter options for adults.
Good thing, too. Morgan rarely took pills.
Finding the medication I desired, I twisted the lid open and spilled a few into my hand. When I returned to Noelle’s side with a glass of water, three pills, and Lily in my arms, Noelle stirred groggily awake.
“Noelle? Hey, you awake? You have a fever.” I sat on the edge of the bed, Lily in the crook of my left arm. “Here. Take this medicine. It’ll help bring the fever down and you’ll rest better.”
She obeyed and chugged the water, then collapsed to her pillow with a moan and chattering teeth.
As I stood to leave, Noelle gasped upright.
“Lily!”
“I got her.” I set a hand on her hot cheek. “She’s fine. Get some sleep.”
Noelle slumped to the bed with a wince, shiver, mumble. I tossed an extra blanket at her feet before returning to the hall.
Lily issued another cry as we re-entered her makeshift room, but I soothed her by bouncing her, somehow locating her pacifier in the dark. That seemed to settle her enough to close her eyes.
The shadows clarified a little more. Somewhere in this mess, Morgan had a rocking chair. Or was that in the basement? A chill entered the room from the window, just like the living room. The fire had probably petered out, and the cold set in.
With Lily being so little, I wasn’t sure how much medication to give her. So I crept down the hallway, settled on the recliner, and began to rock. Within minutes, Lily’s sucking motions slowed, her lips relaxed. Out of the darkest night, I could barely see her profile and the loose pacifier.
It ached a bit, regarding her. Feeling her weight in my arms. She wasn’t mine, and how readily I realized that.
Yet, I’d do anything for her. I couldn’t imagine a child that I wouldn’t defend with my life, but Lily was a child I’d also give every minute of every day to. She had special written all over her.
Like Noelle, there was something inherently good in these bones.
Wind gusted by, blowing ice crystals into the windows with gentle tap-tap-taps. I didn’t want to look outside to see the temperature, comprehend how much snow had arrived, or how many pipes had frozen.
We had a sick baby, a sick mama, and freezing winter weather settling in at the same time. Not to mention a house made of a random assortment of materials, and two knuckleheads that, despite all my best efforts, still managed to be just this side of complete neanderthal.
Somehow, I didn’t mind one bit.
It was good to have a family.