“I can’t believe how much of a difference they make in the kitchen. I was so disappointed when I got in the kitchen and realized that you’d taken the plants with you. You’d left so many other things.”
“I should have said something. But either I was going to hire a mover to move them into a storage facility, or I was going to let you do it. Because after all, Sunny certainly couldn’t handle all that in her small apartment above the bakery.”
“I had figured as much.” He laughed. “I thought that if you could take anything with you, you’d have taken the horses and then fit them in that tiny apartment before you took that furniture in that formal living room.”
“Doesn’t it look so uncomfortable?” she said with a shudder.
“Oh my goodness, yes. Uncomfortable, and it looks like I’m going to break it if I sit down in it.”
“I’ll let you know a little secret though. Two of the chairs besidethe windows are recliners, and they are much more comfortable, and sturdy, than what they look. You can trust me on that.”
“I didn’t think anyone had ever been in that room. It looked undisturbed. Like King Tut’s tomb or something.”
They laughed as they walked outside, and she realized she was having a great time with him. They chatted some more as they carried the rest of the stuff up, and then he said, “I made pancakes for breakfast this morning, and I doubled the recipe but didn’t put them all on. Would you like me to cook a couple before we go out to do the fence?”
“Hang on a second. I’ll bring in the scones that I brought from the bakeshop, and we’ll have those and the pancakes as a little brunch.”
He grinned at her, and she ran out to the truck. She’d forgotten about the bag that she’d left on the front seat. For some reason, she had wanted to go in and make sure that everything was still kosher. It just felt like too good to be true, and he might have changed his mind between when they talked at the festival and this morning, even though she’d seen him in church and he was still on board with everything.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time Summer got back in, Gilbert had the griddle out and had poured batter onto it.
“There’s a chocolate and a strawberry. Do you have a preference?”
“I’m happy with either,” he said, glancing up from the griddle before looking back down and making sure that he poured the batter carefully.
“All right. I love them both too, but I’m partial to chocolate, so I’ll give you the strawberry, unless you hate it.”
“I love strawberry. I’d probably choose fruit over chocolate, although I know that that’s a bit of a controversial subject. And I could probably go to jail for that if I was in the presence of the wrong person when I said it.”
“I’m not going to send you to jail, but I am going to wonder a little bit about your sanity. Preferring fruit over chocolate? Now, chocolate-covered fruit? I can totally get that.”
“It’s like the best of both worlds?”
“Yep. Although, honestly, I prefer caramel and chocolate. Healthy stuff is wonderful, but if you can have a double shot of unhealthy,why not, right?” She looked over her shoulder, and they laughed together.
She knew she had left some paper plates in the pantry, so she felt a little conspicuous as she walked over, but if he truly wanted her to make herself at home, she couldn’t keep asking him if she could go places. So, she opened the pantry door, walked in, and saw that it was almost as empty and bare as it was when she moved out. Grabbing paper plates, she walked back out.
“Looks like you didn’t have a whole lot of kitchen stuff either.”
“I had some at our old house. I guess I should say Desire had some. But I didn’t move all that stuff when I sold the house. I did what you did, just left a good bit of it there for the next owners to either use or deal with.”
“I’m sorry. It was probably really hard with your wife and everything.”
He lifted his shoulder, almost as though he was saying it wasn’t that bad, but she didn’t question him, because he continued speaking. “We were moving into Mom’s house, and I didn’t want to bring all of my stuff there. I felt a little bit wasteful, because we were struggling for money at the time, and a yard sale would have brought in a good bit of cash. I just didn’t have the brainpower or the energy level to do that. I was trying to run the business, trying to figure out why it was losing money all of a sudden, trying to run my wife from appointment to appointment, and trying to keep up with the kids and not burden my mom any more than I had to.”
“That sounds like a really black, hard time.”
“I think it’s a little bit like what we were talking about before, where it was a hard time, but I learned a lot of good lessons.”
“Such as?” she prompted, getting silverware out of the drawer and setting it beside the paper plates before grabbing glasses and filling them up with water from the tap.
“Such as I was afraid to be a parent without my wife. She was the one who took care of almost everything with the kids. And when she wasn’t around, I… I guess I wondered if I could do it. Find shoes before school, get the kids breakfast, and get them on the bus without having a nuclear meltdown—that would be me, not them, and that’s a good thing. It just felt overwhelming.”
“Because you were dumped into it.”
“Yeah.”
