Page 81 of Something Like Sunflowers

Doesn’t mean I can’t help him out where a woman’s touch could make all the difference, though. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

Desperately so. She’s grown on me in a way I can’t describe. I think because she’s Hunter’s, I feel closer to her.

“Let me talk to her.”

He smiles, softening and letting some of the stress fade from his face. “Go ahead,” he says, lowering to kiss me long and deep before he retreats to the stables.

I make my way to the chicken coop, my boots working in tandem with the land, unlike my heels all those weeks ago. She knows I’m there before I can announce myself, Hunter’s kid and all, and the uncanny similarities between the pair has me, once again, in awe of the fact that he raised this young lady. On his own.

“You were right,” Ellie says on a low sigh that’s void of her signature pep.

I follow her voice to the far back of the coop, where she’s crouched next to the nesting boxes from the inside. I suppress a laugh. It’s not that I don’t take her seriously, but she’s a kid in a coop, and I can’t not giggle a bit at how adorable she looks snuggled up next to the hen we call Polly. She’s a gorgeous black silkie, and my eyes dart to Ellie’s in question, one she answers with a click of her tongue and another deep, long sigh.

“I put Polly on these eggs two days ago, and she hasn’t left them since. Except to eat and poop, which I did witness on account I slept in here on Tuesday.” She runs out of air explaining and sucks in a quick breath that makes me laugh out loud. “Then our duck laid an egg, and I stole it. It’s been under Polly for a whole day, and she’s just sittin’ on it same as her other two, even though she didn’t lay it. Even though it doesn’t even look the same as her other eggs.”

The passion behind her eyes runs wild, her curiosity and wonder coming in never-ending waves. A scientist. A lady. A girl who is screaming for answers.

“I reckon we’re gonna hafta call him Chuck, huh?” She lifts her chin, eyes shining like bright blue sapphires against the night sky, and I confirm what I already suspected, that she absolutely does not hate me.

Still.

“Why did you flood the guest room, Ellie?” I ask. Plain and simple.

When I was a kid, everyone was always trying to sugarcoat life for me. Make it dazzle and shine, so the moment was never dull, conflict always controlled, but all it does is harbor disappointment that breaks loose years later like a cannon, all-encompassing and aimed to kill.

No, honesty is always best.

“I was trying to make you sleep together,” she mumbles.

“What?”

Does she know what she just said?

I must show every range of questions across my features because Ellie bursts out in a fit of giggles and then claps her hand over her mouth, clearly understanding a whole lot more than her Papa thinks she does because she says, “Ew, no! I didn’t mean that way. I mean, like…well, you’re in love, aren’t you? And if you’re in love, you won’t leave. Guests leave.”

“And just so we’re clear…you don’t want me to be a guest?”

She nods.

“I want you to be for real married to Papa.” She climbs out of the coop and down the ramp meant for livestock and not sixty-pound pint-sized cowgirls, landing on the dirt with a thud and darting her little eyes up at me. “If you’re for real married, you’ll stay. And if you stay…” She trails off, widening her eyes and turning her head away in determination.

A determination I can read with every fiber of my being. Because it’s me through and through. Somehow. Even though she isn’t my Ellie, not really, she shares this with me all the same.

I can tell. She won’t let me see her cry.

I twirl her around and guide her to the nearby bench where we sit. “If I stay…maybe what, Ellie?” I ask, eyes locked on hers as she struggles to hold back the tears building within them. “I don’t like to cry, either” I admit, holding her stare. “But we don’t have to. We can let the tears sting and burn together as long as we want, because we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do. We don’t have to love the hand we’re dealt just because people say we should. And we certainly don’t have to be okay.”

She nods, her nostrils flaring. “If you stay, they won’t make me leave.” She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, then watches the silkies, deep in thought. How does one explain the huge emotions sparring within when they’ve only had a decade to learn them?

“Penelope was a shitty mom,” she finally says, looking at me sharply to gage my reaction to her language, but I don’t budge. I may not be her mom, but if I were, I wouldn’t care if she threw a curse word in there a time or two if it helped her express how she’s feeling, and Hunter would think the same. Somehow, I inherently know that.

“Go on,” I say.

“She didn’t want to stay with her babies, even though that’s literally the only thing she had to do. She had one job, and she didn’t care enough to do it. I thought maybe it was her eggs, but I tried different eggs, you know? But she wouldn’t do it. Until you came along and said to try the silkies, so I did. Polly.”

She inclines her head toward the coop, referring to the bird who remains affectionately stationed atop her eggs—and of course, the duck egg—with no signs of leaving.

“Polly loves those eggs, Dev. She stays on them like her life depends on it.”

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