By the time the afternoon light started to wane and went gold, the mirror was hung and the quilt was on and the curtains, which turned out to be a lovely pair of powder blue velvet side panels with sheer white center panels, were finally out of their plastic and hung.
The room wasn’t done.The walls still wanted paint at a minimum although Sunny would love to introduce Madison to the elegant and wonderful world of period accurate wallpaper design.The boxes still needed unpacking, but the clothes had nowhere to go, yet.
Madison had asked Sunny’s opinion about clothing storage, and she’d suggested a chest of drawers and maybe a small armoire if they could find one that wasn’t too expensive.
The space had a center of gravity now.It looked like the one perfect corner had claimed most of the space.
Sunny gathered her bag to go collect her own children, who’d been at a play date with Charlotte’s twins longer than was polite.After this morning’s shopping trip, she’d raced home, fed the kids lunch, and called Charlotte to take her up on her offer to entertain her four kiddos for an afternoon.
She had to come up with a better child care arrangement than dumping the kids with new women friends or relying on Presley, who was too young for such a responsibility, even if she was capable of doing it.
“Thank you,” Madison said shyly.“You could—if you wanted—when you come do the books next time, could come see if my paint color works.I haven’t picked it yet.I want to get it right.”
It was, Sunny understood, the only way Madison knew how to make the offer.Come backwas dressed up as a question about paint.
“I’d like that,” Sunny said simply.She knew from personal experience not to acknowledge the importance of the question.She, too, had been that shy, wild creature creeping hesitantly out of the wilderness, ready to bolt at the first sign of a threat.
As she walked to Charlotte’s craft store in the lengthening light, she noticed with the suspicion she reserved for any good feeling that she’d spent a whole afternoon with her guard all the way down.
She was already raising one girl who kept her corner of the world perfect because she couldn’t trust the rest of it.She’d apparently just spent the day with another one.
It worried her how much both girls guarded their hearts.They needed to see adults around them, adult female role models like her, trust other people and not get burned by doing so.
Small problem.She was more guarded with her heart than both of them put together.
4
The house had a new sound in it.
Hank noticed it the way he noticed a heart murmur, not all at once but as a thing his ear kept circling back to until he was sure of it.Ever since he’d moved in, the old house had been deeply quiet with just him living in it.For a few hours several days aweek he saw patients here, and the foyer held a murmur of sound beyond him and the occasional screaming toddler with an ear infection.But that was it.
Madison’s arrival had added very little to the noise.She watched TV quietly in the family room in the back of the house sometimes, and she spent a lot of time in her room, reading.Occasionally water ran somewhere in the house where he wasn’t at.
But most mornings now, a low and industrious sound came from the front room.Paper riffling into stacks.The clatter of a keyboard.The soft thunk of a desk drawer closing.
Two weeks.Eight mornings.That was how long Sunny had been here, and his office had begun making sounds of work actually getting done.
Friday morning he carried a mug of coffee through the butler’s pantry from the kitchen to the office and set it on the desk where she could reach it without looking.She’d told him on her first day that she took it black.By her third day, she’d told him a man who kept a coffee pot going and never once let her fetch her own refills was either the easiest boss in Montana or up to something.He’d said he was the easiest boss in Montana.She’d written it down, deadpan, as if she meant to verify the claim later.
“Morning,” he said.
“You billed the Pruitt baby’s well-check to an insurer that dropped him in March.”Sunny didn’t look up.“I refiled it under the correct plan.You’re welcome.Also, this,” she lifted a curling receipt between two fingers like it was evidence in a trial, “is for fence posts.”
“Correct.I needed to repair the backyard fence.”
“It’s filed under medical expenses.”
“The Hadleys paid me in fence posts after I gave Bill a chest x-ray and heart work up.”
She looked up at that and something startled flickered through her eyes.“I didn’t know doctors still did that.”A pause.“But you can’t deduct a fence as a medical expense.”
“Could if I fell on it.”
She smiled briefly.“Fair point.I’ll give it a try with the IRS.I’m marking it payment for medical services rendered.She made a note and added it to the row of sticky notes stretching across the top and down one side of the desk pad she’d installed on the desk.In eight days he’d started to gauge how good or bad a day she’d had by the volume of those notes.Only once had he seen them wrap around all four sides of the pad.She’d called Tessa and asked if Jack could babysit her kids for a few hours.She’d stayed until nearly supper time fighting back the proliferation of notes to only three sides of the pad.
The front screen door banged.It still needed oil, but he hadn’t oiled it because the squeak told him when somebody came in.
The voice of his future sister-in-law called out, “Doc?You decent?Doesn’t matter, I’m coming in.”
