Small-Town Moms (7 page)

It wasn't until he was measuring his second window that he realized he would be reminded of Lilly every day from now on. Every wall would remind him of her. If she chose to leave anyway, that would be a whole lot of reminders of what he was missing.

It was too late though. Before Lilly, he had tried to protect himself by not being involved with people. But once he opened his heart to his niece, there was no going back.

The same was true with Maegan. Even though he had feelings for her, she would likely be leaving once she met Joe and assured herself that Lilly would be well-cared for by him. Oh, she'd be polite when she left. He'd say he'd miss her. And she'd say they should keep in touch and he might even get a Christmas card from her. But his heart would never be the same. It wasn't just his house that would be changed forever; it would be him. He wasn't sure his solitude would be enough for him anymore.

I
t took three days for the paint to be delivered to the store in Miles City so it wasn't until Friday that Clint and Maegan started taking the lids off the cans in the upstairs of his house and flexing their brushes. The days had been blessedly dry so they could leave the windows at half-mast without worrying about rain. Still, even with the fresh air, the smell of paint was everywhere.

They had decided to start in Lilly's room.

“What's that?” Maegan said as she wrinkled her nose and pointed to something Clint had pushed out from under the bed as he swept.

He couldn't believe she could smell anything with the open cans of paint around, but then he looked closer at what he'd found. Maybe she couldn't exactly smell it, but she was anticipating the odor.

“I think it's one of Joe's old socks,” Clint admitted as he squatted to take a better look. Surely he'd at least cleaned the room before he assigned it to Lilly. Although, come to think of it, he'd been calving when Joe brought the girl here and he was busy out in the barns. He knew he'd given her a set of clean sheets for
the bed and he meant to go in and wash the windows and sort out the closet. He wasn't so sure he'd found time to do either though, since he'd had to mend that section of fence and then he'd moved the cattle to the pasture closer to the barn.

He shook his head. He had no excuse; he'd have to pay more attention to things from now on. He looked around. The only new thing Lilly had in her room was that teddy bear Maegan had given her. The girl had it propped up on a shelf beside Joe's collection of old junk. The poor bear was missing all of its beads and sparkles, but it didn't look any worse than some of the things Joe had left there a decade or two ago.

Then Clint noticed that Lilly had her porcelain dolls lined up on the shelf, too, with their pastel swirling skirts held out as though they were frozen in an everlasting ballroom dance. They were delicate and, now that he thought about it, those dolls were an odd match with Lilly. She didn't seem the frilly sort and he'd never seen her even try to dance.

He glanced over and saw Maegan open the flaps on a box so she could fill it with the things from the shelf. They didn't want to get paint on any of it. He saw her reach for one of the dolls. “Where'd she get these?”

Clint shook his head. “The last I saw those dolls, she had them packed away in her suitcase. I don't know anything about them really.”

Maegan brushed some dust off the closest one. “It'd be nice to have a pretty shelf just for them.” Then she looked up. “Are you saying she brought these with her?”

Clint nodded. “I thought maybe she'd won them at a fair someplace.”

The dolls were about four inches high and he hadn't noticed until now that they all had a bit of lavender in their dresses. It might just be on the sash or the bonnet, but the color was there on all of them. No wonder that was the color she'd chosen for her room.

“Keeping them in one piece when she was moving around to all those foster homes would have been difficult,” Maegan muttered as she stared at them thoughtfully. “They must have been important to her.”

“What did you lose?” Clint asked softly. The sadness on her face told him some precious things had been broken or even taken from her.

Maegan looked at him and smiled. “I never felt I was like the other kids, not even the other ones in foster care. They didn't have a family. But I did—my sisters. It's just they were taken from me and no one would help me get them back.”

“I would have helped,” he said without thinking.

She blinked and he could see the tears in her eyes. “I know.”

They were silent for a moment and Maegan turned her face away from him as though she didn't want him to see her tears.

Finally, Clint cleared his throat. He didn't want her to be uneasy around him. “I have a bit of wood in the barn that would make a nice shelf for Lilly,” he said. “I can make it up in a few hours. Of course, the varnish will take longer, but it'll look a lot better than that shelf Joe had when he was a kid.”

“I think she'd like that,” Maegan said as she turned back to him.

His heart swelled a little just seeing that she was happier now. The shadows of her past would grow less
over the years, he knew, because his had faded with God's help.

They just stood there and smiled at each other for a bit. The two of them had been doing that a lot lately. He figured she was more comfortable with him because they were on the same side now. He didn't want to examine his feelings too closely though. He was afraid his emotions went deeper than being allies or recognizing someone was on the same spiritual path as he was. He felt like a man on a precipice who was afraid to look over the edge for fear there was nothing but emptiness on the other side. He'd lived alone for so long, he wasn't sure a woman like Maegan would want to live with him now.

Still, he couldn't help but notice how cute she was with that red bandana wrapped around her head, her blond hair peeking out. Gradually, he realized the pink T-shirt and faded blue jeans she wore didn't look like any of the other clothes he'd seen her wear. And she'd been with him every day since Lilly announced she wanted to live with her father.

“You were thinking ahead. Packing paint clothes when you came,” he said.

He was secretly glad that she didn't always look like an attorney. He was a rancher and there was nothing fancy about him.

“The clothes—oh, they belong to Doris June, Mrs. Hargrove's daughter,” Maegan admitted. “I'm afraid I didn't bring much in the way of clothes so I'm borrowing some.”

“Well, they look real good on you.”

“Thanks.”

Clint thought she sounded surprised so he continued. “In fact, everything looks good on you. Very good.”

He noticed her cheeks got rosy and he grinned. She didn't look at him though as she walked over and shook out the old blanket that had served as a bedspread. It was a khaki wool blanket left over from when his father was in the army. As family heirlooms went, this was the primary one for the Parkers. He wasn't sure he'd ever told Lilly that though. She probably just thought it was something from the rag bag.

“Lilly's going to like the comforter you bought her,” Maegan said.

“I hope so. It was the only lavender one I could find and you know how she is about that color.”

Maegan nodded ruefully. “Who would have thought she'd spend hours going over the color chart making sure she picked just the right shade?” Then she paused. “That's a good sign, isn't it? She wouldn't take that much time if she had already made a final and forever decision and knew she was going to leave, would she?”

“I don't know. I've asked myself all those questions, too,” Clint said. “Worrying about it isn't going to make her stay though. We just need to keep working away.”

“And praying,” Maegan added softly.

“Yes, and praying,” Clint agreed as he reached for his paintbrush. They all needed to talk to God about this. It was a good feeling to have someone by his side to pray with.

By the time they had to leave and meet Lilly, the walls of the girl's bedroom were light lavender. The door frames and the closet panels were deep lavender. White net curtains were ready to hang in the windows
and Maegan had washed the new white sheets and made the bed with the pansy-flowered comforter.

“She's never going to leave this room,” Maegan declared as she fluffed up the pillows on the bed. She couldn't remember when she'd felt so satisfied at the end of a job. She had already figured out that one of the reasons she was so determined to see Lilly happy was that she wanted to make up for some of the distress in her own childhood.

Still, that didn't make her longing wrong. She'd been meeting with Mrs. Hargrove every day to read the Bible and pray. One thing she'd learned was that God wanted her happiness. So, no, it wasn't wrong to want to be an involved aunt in Lilly's life. Or to ask God to bless her niece. And that niece's uncle.

“I'm never going to want to leave this room, either,” Clint said as he folded up the metal stool he'd brought in to hang the curtain rods. “It makes the rest of the house look worn out.”

“Well, we've got more paint.” They had a can of yellow for the kitchen and an off-white one for the living room. Somewhere amidst the cans was even a peach color for the bathroom.

“Where's the paint for your room?” Maegan asked. She'd meant to ask earlier, but they'd gotten into a different discussion.

“Oh, Lilly's never in there,” Clint said, dismissing the question as he picked up the stool and headed for the door.

“But—” Maegan protested. “You are and what if Lilly doesn't—”

Clint turned to look at her and she let her words trail
off. She couldn't remind him that Lilly might not stay, that he might be living alone in this house. Besides, that wasn't really the point. “You deserve a nice room, too.”

He turned and grunted at that. “I don't need anything fancy.”

“It might be time for a change though,” Maegan muttered as she followed him into the hall and down the stairs. One of the main things she had learned from her times with Mrs. Hargrove was that God wanted people to be willing to change—to give up their old patterns that were not working and try something new.

“Oh, I'm fine,” he said again as he stopped at the bottom of the chair and looked around. “This old house never was much of a showcase.”

Maegan could see that for herself. The sofa had a brown blanket thrown over it and a metal trunk stood in for a coffee table. The windows were wide and the view outside was stunning, but the curtains were too short and faded to do any of it justice. “If it's money, I—”

“Oh, there's plenty of money,” Clint protested. “I've had some good years recently. The bank account is almost fat.”

“I was going to say I could make some curtains,” Maegan continued. “I sew pretty well and drapes are not that hard to do.”

She had to admit it was a bold offer. Most men didn't want a woman decorating their house. “I mean, since we're painting some of the rooms anyway. You could pick out the fabric, of course.”

Clint looked around again. “I guess a new paint job will make the rest of the house look pretty shabby unless I do something. But I wouldn't want to take your time.
Or I could pay you. I hate to let you use all your vacation time unless I pay you. That way it won't be so bad that you're not working.”

Maegan hesitated. She hadn't told him the latest. “Actually, my job called and they have me working on some projects while I'm here.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “I made a lot of connections in the social services area when I was looking for my sisters. Turns out some groups on the internet found out about what I did—these are people who want to find their families, too—and they called the law firm I work for and they got me started on it.”

“And you can do it all from here?” Clint asked intently, an odd note of something she couldn't identify in his voice.

“Pretty much. It's phone work mostly. I called around for an hour or so before I came out here this morning.”

Clint nodded in seeming satisfaction. “That's good. Real good. I— Well, that's good is all. I—”

Maegan had never seen Clint stammer before. She hadn't thought he was the type to fumble anything. Now, he might refuse to answer something. She'd encountered that a few times in the days they'd spent together. And sometimes he said something was okay when it clearly wasn't. He'd rather suffer than complain. But she'd never seen him choke on his words before.

“I'm not going to charge you for the curtains,” Maegan finally said. That was the only thing she could think of that might be giving him trouble.

He shook his head like that wasn't where his mind
had gone. “I'm just glad you can work from Dry Creek. That's all.”

“Oh, yeah, that should work out fine for now,” she said.

 

Clint stood there, facing her and ignoring the questions in her eyes. He needed to get the knots out of his tongue before she thought he'd gone daft. He'd almost stepped over that precipice without even thinking about it. He'd been going to say that maybe she could have a job in Dry Creek long-term. He might have even asked about them having a future together.

He was a fool sometimes, but he hoped he had enough sense to know that a woman like Maegan didn't make a snap judgment when it came to her future. They'd known each other a week now. People didn't fall in love in that little time, did they?

When he didn't say anything, Maegan looked at her watch.

“Shouldn't we go get Lilly?” she asked and the moment was gone.

Clint thought he'd be relieved. He'd avoided the plunge into embarrassment. But it didn't feel as good as he thought it would.

Of course, Maegan was right. It was time to head into town and get Lilly.

Clint had picked Maegan up when he'd taken Lilly to the bus this morning so they both rode in his pickup to meet the bus at the café.

The gravel road leading into town was packed solid now that the rain had stopped. The sun had been bright for most of the day, but it was still chilly. Maegan was
quiet for most of the ride and Clint had let his cautious nature guide him.

Driving into the small town of Dry Creek though, he remembered other times—all those times as a boy when he hadn't reached out and asked someone to help him and Joe have a better life. He knew the town here didn't look like much, but people took risks every day. The old men who gathered in the hardware store could swap tales about times when they planted crops that had been wiped out by drought or hordes of grasshoppers. They'd suffered loss. But he knew that, if he asked them, they'd tell him there were times in a man's life when he needed to risk everything on the chance that he would find something precious.