Chapter Eleven
The tent smelled like mildew and river mud, like canvas that’d lain folded inside a trunk for over a decade.
About a mile off the main road, in a clearing tucked between two pines that leaned together like drunks propping each other up, Jonah had done his best with what he had.
On the left side, the whole structure sagged where a cracked pole met a branch and a length of twine that served as his idea of a splint.
Every time the wind kicked up, the canvas billowed inward and popped back out.
Their parents had hailed this tent across the Atlantic, in the belly of a ship, packed beneath quilts and a sewing kit. It had survived the crossing and eleven years stuffed behind Jonah’s winter coat in a closet that reeked of boiled cabbage.
Now, it sheltered Grace Linton Foster in the Colorado dirt for what had to rank as the sorriest chapter of her life… including the rat.
Outside the tent flap, Jonah crouched over a ring of stones he’d built from the creek bed, coaxing a fire out of damp kindling. The creek burbled about twenty yards downhill. He’d chosen a decent enough spot. If decent had shrunk to mean not actively falling apart.
Against her chest, Miriam squirmed inside the sling.
All afternoon, the baby had fussed and grabbed at the bottle, refused it, then taken it and then spit half of it onto the one clean corner of Grace’s dress.
By the time Jonah got the fire going, Miriam had cried herself into a hiccupping half-sleep that jolted her awake every few minutes.
“Here.” Jonah ducked through the tent flap, holding a tin cup of creek water he’d heated over the fire. “Drink somethin’. You ain’t had a drop since we left.”
She took the cup and pressed it to her lip. The tin burned, and the water tasted like smoke and warm metal.
“There’s some jerky in my pack, too, if you want. Ain’t fresh, but it’ll fill a hole.”
“I ain’t hungry.”
“Gracie.”
“I said I ain’t hungry.”
So, he dropped cross-legged onto the ground next to her, and the tent swayed with his weight.
Outside, the fire crackled and threw orange light through the canvas in shapes that crawled the walls.
Up on the ridge, a coyote yipped, a second answered from the tree line, and those two voices calling back and forth across all that empty dark just about cracked Grace open.
Because, three hours ago, she’d stood in a kitchen with a stove, a mantel clock that ticked, the dresser drawer, and people filling the rooms with all the stupid ordinary sounds a house makes when it holds a family. Three hours and many miles ago.
Now she hunched in dirt while coyotes traded calls over her head.
She pulled her knees tighter and pressed her back against the tent pole, which shifted under her weight and sent the whole left wall sagging another inch. The cold had gotten into her boots during the walk and turned her toes stiff inside the leather.
In the sling, Miriam pressed her face into Grace’s collarbone, breathing damp heat through the cotton.
Through Logan’s shirt. The flannel Grace had thrown on over her nightdress when the shouting had started.
She hadn’t peeled it off all day because Miriam buried her nose in the collar every time she fussed.
It calmed her right down. Which meant Grace couldn’t strip it off without triggering another round of screaming.
So, she wore Logan Foster’s shirt while sitting in the dirt, hating Logan Foster.
If that don’t sum up this whole mess, I’ll eat my boot.
“You wanna talk about it?” Jonah stretched his legs out and crossed his boots at the ankle. “Or you wanna just sit there murderin’ that cup with your eyes all night?”
“I’m thinkin’.”
“You been thinkin’ for three miles straight. Your face’s been doin’ that thing.”
“What thing?”
“That thing where your jaw goes sideways, and your eyebrows pinch up, and you look just like Pa right before he’d tell Ma the rent came up short.”
Rather than dignify that, she shoved the cup into the dirt between two roots and pulled her knees to her chest. Beside her, Jonah tore a strip of jerky with his teeth.
“Can I hold her?” He nodded toward the baby. “My arms have been itchin’ to meet her proper since I come off that trail.”
She loosened the sling and eased Miriam into his arms, tucking the baby’s head into his elbow. In his arms, the baby worked her mouth in her sleep, sucking at air, chasing a bottle that lived inside whatever dreams babies dreamed.
“Lord, she’s little.” Jonah dropped his voice to a hush. “Ain’t hardly bigger’n a Sunday roast.”
“Don’t compare the baby to meat, Jonah.”
“I’m just sayin’. She fits in one arm. One arm, Gracie. You could tuck her in a saddlebag.” He lifted Miriam’s fist to his face and bumped it against his chin. “Hey there, little bit. I’m your Uncle Jonah. I’m the handsome one in the family, in case you’re wonderin’.”
“Jonah.”
“What? I’m introducin’ myself. Man’s gotta make a first impression.” He tickled Miriam under the chin, and the baby scrunched her toes inside the blanket. “See that? She likes me already. We’re gonna be fast friends, me and this one.”
“Sure.”
He cocked his head. “She’s got your nose.”
“She ain’t mine by blood.”
“Don’t look that way from where I’m sittin’. You two got the same frown.”
Right on cue, Miriam scrunched up her face and wrinkled her nose into a pucker that matched the expression Grace caught in the mirror on bad mornings. Across from her, Jonah grinned widely enough to flash the gap where he’d lost a tooth two years back.
“She’s a keeper, this one.” He rocked her slowly. “I imagine you done good by her.”
Grace clenched her jaw and swallowed hard.
Because she had. She had done good by this baby. By the whole household. By the man who’d stood in his own yard that morning and reminded her, with every word fitted and joined like a fencepost, exactly where she ranked.
You fit where we agreed you’d fit.
A cook and a baby-minder, interchangeable with any other dependable woman who answered a newspaper advertisement. After the roses, lullabies, mornings on the porch, and the look he’d given her when she’d named the baby.
After all of it. She was still just the hired help.
“Tell you what,” Jonah settled Miriam against his chest. “First thing tomorrow, I’m gonna march right back up to that ranch and give your husband a piece of my mind. A real barn-burner of a speech. Got it half-wrote already.”
“Please don’t.”
“Too late. I’m openin’ with a joke, loosenin’ him up, then hittin’ him with the emotional gut-punch. Maybe I’ll throw in a Bible verse. Really lay it on thick.”
“Jonah.”
“I’m serious, Gracie. The man don’t know what he’s got. Somebody oughta tell him ‘fore he loses it for good.”
She turned her face toward the tent flap.
“He’s an idiot, you know.”
Grace glanced back at him.
Over in his corner, Jonah rocked the baby, casual as you please, like he’d just remarked on the weather.
“Your husband. The big fella with the iron jaw who rearranged my face this mornin’. Dumber’n a box of rocks.”
“He ain’t dumb.”
“Oh, I know he ain’t dumb in the regular sense. Man runs a tight outfit, I could tell that much before he got me in a headlock. But he’s dumb in the way men get dumb when they’re too stiff-necked to know what they got ‘til it’s walkin’ down the road away from ’em.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start makin’ this into what it ain’t.” She shoved the cup further into the dirt. “It’s a business arrangement. That’s what it’s been from the first night.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh-huh, nothin’. He laid out the terms, and I shook on ’em.”
“Gracie.”
“The man needed a housekeeper. I needed a roof. That’s the whole of it.”
“Grace Marie Linton.”
She bristled at the sound of her full name. He only pulled the whole thing when he aimed to pin her, and it got under her skin every time.
“You are sittin’ in a tent in the woods wearin’ the man’s shirt with a baby on your chest, and you just walked out on the best situation you ever had because he hurt your feelin’s.
” Jonah leaned forward. “Now, I love you more’n my own skin, darlin’, but don’t sit there and tell me this is just business. ”
Outside the tent, the fire popped. A log shifted and sent sparks curling past the flap, orange flecks that spun upward and burned out against the black.
“You like him.”
“I do not.”
“Nah, you do. You like him a whole lot, and it’s eatin’ you alive ‘cause you didn’t plan on it. You planned on a roof and three squares and a clean floor, and instead you went and got yourself tangled up in the man.”
“Jonah, I swear on Ma’s grave...”
“What?” He raised both eyebrows. “You’ll hit me? Go on, then. Take a swing. But it won’t change what’s plain as the nose on that baby’s face.”
Miriam gurgled in her sleep.
Grace pressed her forehead to her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.
Behind her lids, the dark filled up with Logan.
How he’d knelt in the dirt beside her, pulling weeds without being asked.
Cradled Miriam that first time, so carefully, like the baby might shatter if he breathed wrong.
Dropped his voice low on the porch that night.
Spoke her name. Grace. Just the one word, and the sound of it had lodged behind her ribs and dug in deeper every day since.
“It don’t matter.” She lifted her head. “A man who sees you as staff don’t change his mind on account of roses and flower beds. He told me where I fit. I heard him clear.”
With a grunt, Jonah shifted the baby to his other arm and worked the kink out of his neck. “You know what I think?”
“I know you’re gonna tell me whether I want to hear it or not.”
“I think the man’s runnin’ scared. Same as you. And when two people runnin’ scared get close enough to, well, to feel anythin’ worth feelin’, they start swingin’ at each other ‘stead of at whatever spooked ’em in the first place.”
“What, are you wise now?”
“Been wise my whole life, Gracie. You just don’t listen.”
She started to laugh and choked on it. Just a breath that shook at the edges.
Gently, Jonah handed Miriam back, supporting the head the whole way, and Grace tucked the baby into the sling. Through the flannel, the baby’s weight pressed into her ribs and warmed the whole front of her.
“Get some sleep.” Jonah unbuckled his rucksack and pulled out a wool blanket as old as the tent. “I’ll mind the fire.”
“On the ground?”
“On the ground. Like adventurers.”
“Adventurers got bedrolls, Jonah.”
“We got us a blanket and the whole dang sky full of stars. That’s more’n plenty for one night.” He spread the blanket along the flattest stretch of the tent floor and bunched the rucksack into a pillow. “Come on, now. Lie down.”
So she did.
She shifted onto her side, dodging the stems and rocks that claimed every inch of ground, and ended up wedged between a knob of root under her shoulder blade and a divot that cradled her hip at the wrong angle.
Back in New York, she’d slept on a cot thin enough to count the slats through the mattress, and even that ranked as luxury next to raw Colorado dirt.
The blanket scratched her cheek. Through the wool, a cold draft snaked along the ground and found the gap between her boots and the hem of her skirt, prickling up both shins.
In the sling, Miriam sighed and tucked both fists under her chin. Grace counted each breath against her collarbone the way she’d counted them every night for three weeks.
Jonah stepped outside.
Grace lay awake.
Above her, the tent canvas rippled in the breeze. Through the open flap, coals pulsed from orange to gray and back.
She closed her eyes and strained for the tick of the mantel clock.
Miles up the road, in a kitchen she’d scrubbed twice over, that clock ticked right now. Without her. Every second landing on the next in a chain that ran all night, and she’d gotten used to falling asleep inside that rhythm the way a person did to rain.
And Logan.
She didn’t want to think about Logan, but there he was anyway, taking up space in her head the way he took up space in every room he walked into.
He’d looked her in the eye and told her she was welcome to leave.
Like she was seasonal help. Like the weeks of washing his clothes and singing his baby to sleep and pulling weeds from his dead mother’s garden hadn’t woven her into anything that mattered.
Grace pressed her nose against the baby’s hair and breathed in, cinching tighter around the ache lodged behind her breastbone. She lay in the tent her parents had carried across an ocean, reaching toward the house on the hill with every inch of herself.
To the roses coming back along the porch railing. Rafe’s chair creaking at the head of the table. The kitchen, gold with lamplight at supper. Mason tipping his face back in laughter while Thomas scribbled poems he’d deny writing if you caught him at it.
To Logan, most of all.