Chapter 17
CADE
A gurgle, a frightened shriek, and the whack of a heavy tool hitting something hard welcomed me inside the ranch house. Snowy from trekking through the herd to check hooves, I hurtled down the hallway toward the bathroom before I comprehended my own speed.
“Noelle?”
Skidding to a stop, I found Lily in a bouncer outside the bathroom, and Noelle standing within. She gripped a hammer in one hand, a pry bar in the other. Her chest heaved with giant, panting breaths.
“Noelle?”
“Is . . . that . . . a . . . rat?”
She pointed at the wall with the business end of the hammer, motioning to where she’d been pulling up linoleum. A fuzzy brown body vanished into a hole I thought I’d covered up. I hid a swear word.
“Ah, no. Not a rat. That was a squirrel. But at least it wasn’t a skunk, right?”
“A squirrel?”
“Yep. Thought I patched that hole, but Cody might have made a new one while framing the room. I can stuff it with steel wool and patch it again.”
“But what about the squirrel?”
I shrugged. “It’ll find its way out.”
Will it? her dubious expression seemed to ask. Her point was valid. A dead squirrel in the wall might smell foul. More than likely, it might dig its way into the basement and live there for a while, but that was a problem for another day.
Drywall dust powdered her freckled nose as she reconsidered the wall.
She’d pulled her hair away from her face in a wild knot that fell to pieces around her shoulders.
From the depths of Morgan’s closet, she’d pulled a pair of coveralls and wore them over a long-sleeved gray shirt. They drowned her.
I leaned against the doorway and sent a smile to Lily.
“Small rodents live in the walls sometimes, especially in the winter. This cold snap probably drove them inside. We’ll get everything patched up so it doesn’t happen again next winter, but we’ll have to deal with it for now.”
She paled.
“All winter?”
“Unfortunately.”
“How do we stop them?”
“Considering that the walls are made out of doors and patched together, at best? We fill the holes up as we find them.” I gestured to the roof. “But critters are probably up there, too. We’ll discover them as we work on it.”
“No, Cade. It must be right now. Soon. We can’t . . . we can’t have squirrels living in our walls! They make noise, right? Anyone could hear them if someone came to visit us?”
My head tilted, noting more than disgust in her expression. Her voice rotated into panic as she set the tools aside, swiped her hands on the jeans, and insisted again, “We can’t have squirrels in the walls, making noises!”
Who would come here? I thought, baffled. I held up both hands in a placating gesture.
“Sure. We won’t have squirrels in the walls, Noelle. We’ll get them out. The trick is steel wool. They can’t—”
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“The steel wool?” She waved a hand to the wall. “I’ll put it in right now. Do we unroll it, or something? How do I patch this up? How do we make sure they never come back?”
I was speechless. What had come over her? Thus far, Noelle had been calm and rational, if not tired. She walked around in a daze, though she seemed eager to concentrate on anything that would grab her attention.
“Noelle, what’s wrong?”
A moment of fire erupted in her eyes. Maybe I made my tone too inquiring, or not soft enough. But it was too late to take it back.
“There are squirrels in the wall, Cade! That seems pretty self-explanatory!”
Cora had panicked like this before, especially in the teenage years after she’d started her period and we were both trying to figure that mess out.
Like Cora then, I hoped Noelle needed someone firm.
Someone who did not panic while she flailed in the water and then regained her bearings. It worked for Cora.
I hoped it worked here.
As quickly as her emotions appeared, they smothered like a fire. Tears replaced the hysteria, and her green eyes swam. She stood there, chin high, shoulders back, tools in hand, a mess of drywall at her feet. Like some regal, destructive queen.
Then she broke.
The power stance crumbled. She sank to the ground, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes. The tools clattered to the concrete as she pressed her hands to her face and let the emotion out.
“Lily,” she whispered. “It’s because of Lily. We can’t have squirrels in the walls because . . . because . . .”
I sank into a crouch, but didn’t touch her.
“Because?”
“My sister . . .” her throat bobbed, “. . . she died in a rare rush of problems shortly after giving birth to Lily. That’s why I have Lily. My twin is . . . she’s gone.”
Horror crawled through me, cooling my blood like ice rivers. I knew that Lily was her niece, but had no idea the circumstances around it. Her twin sister had a baby and died? How did that happen these days? Didn’t they have child delivery down a little better?
Noelle sniffed. She hadn’t moved her hands, and I didn’t dare budge from my position.
“Naomi told me that she wanted me to have Lily if anything happened to her, and I agreed. But she didn’t write it down; it was a verbal request. She .
. . ah . . . had a lot of issues before she became pregnant.
Alcohol, mostly. She had a lot of partners and a wild lifestyle.
It was a miracle that Lily came out so healthy and complete.
I was fully expecting to help Naomi deal with a child handicapped by fetal alcohol syndrome or . . .”
She stopped, drew in a breath, and said, “Sorry, I’m rambling. The point is this: she died shortly after giving birth.”
“How soon after?”
Noelle held up two fingers. I glimpsed a hint of one eye behind them.
“Two days.”
I kept my expression even, although it felt like the ground jolted from beneath me.
So much made sense in light of this information.
Her occasional weepiness that she attempted to hide.
The lost sense of shuffling around the house, seeking purpose and clarity.
Her utter uncertainty around parenting. This wasn’t something she had planned on.
It landed on her lap after losing her twin.
“She developed postpartum cardiomyopathy—heart failure. She was lucid the first few hours after and then went downhill. She asked me to take Lily if things went bad, and then . . .” she shook her head, “it’s like everything slid away. Out of control. She went into the ICU, and we lost her.”
Noelle laughed, a short, breathy thing that held no amusement. Nothing but bald anger and pain.
“So I became Lily’s guardian. I immediately filed for temporary guardianship, but the father’s parents came into the picture.
Sarah and Thomas Miller. They want Lily, and they’re willing to fight for her.
My parents are unsupportive. They don’t think I can raise Lily and hold down a job, and they think it’s a mistake for me to try.
Since they have a habit of cutting people out of their life whom they don’t agree with, I have been so cut off.
For now,” she added, and her dark undertone spoke to other things she didn’t mention.
There was definite bitterness there. Waves of disbelief continued to flow, but I kept them in check and waited.
Noelle dropped both hands. Her eyes were red. She had probably been crying before I returned. Tears scudded down her cheeks as she reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, typed in a passcode, and handed it to me.
“Here’s a history of text messages between Sarah and myself, before I came to Wyoming.
At first, they came over to visit Lily daily, which I allowed.
They stayed longer and longer. Eventually, based on rude, snide, and angry comments, I felt I couldn’t trust them around Lily as much as they insisted.
And I needed . . . out. So I came here.”
I accepted her phone, scanning the screen, while she buried her face in her hands again. A string of text messages showed increasing demands from Sarah Miller.
Sarah: We would like to see Lily as soon as possible. We’re concerned for her welfare. Can you please work with us to create a schedule?
Noelle: Yes, of course. You’re welcome over daily between 2:00 and 5:00.
Pictures of Lily—with a date stamp beneath each—followed the update.
Sarah: Forgive us, Noelle, but pictures aren’t what we asked for.
We’re always delighted to see Lily, of course, but pictures can’t replace our granddaughter in our lives.
We would love to discuss adopting her. Her mother is gone, and we are stable.
We have a four-bedroom house and two adults to dote on her, in addition to her father.
Noelle: I am happy for you to come and see her, but I will not relinquish temporary guardianship. My sister was clear in her desires.
Sarah: Desires that, funnily enough, no one heard but you.
Increasingly aggressive messages from Sarah continued until Noelle simply stopped responding. They become borderline threatening, but not quite. Nothing that would sound overtly hostile in a court of law, but painted a clear picture.
No wonder Noelle left.
I processed the back-and-forth, read through them twice, and passed the phone to Noelle again. She studied me closely, and I hoped I kept a poker face on.
“Sarah doesn’t strike me as all that compassionate of a person,” I muttered, thoroughly irritated.
“Well, her instincts aren’t entirely wrong,” Noelle admitted, using her wrist to wipe her cheeks. Emotions aside, there was a sense of offloading, maybe relief, as she spoke. This ugly secret was hard to carry around, I wagered, and now it was out.
As before, I picked it up, ready to take it on. She didn’t have to be alone because she had me on her side now. No, us. Cora, Hawk, Cody, Wyatt. Anyone I could bring to her table, I would.
With Noelle, the responsibility felt like no burden.
Just inevitability.
“What do you mean, her instincts aren’t entirely wrong?” I asked, registering that she might have insulted herself.
Noelle shoved her hands into her hair, gripped it, and stared at the floor.