Page 18 of Over the Verdant Hills
“I don’t mind at all. I’ll check on you before I go to bed, okay?”
“You don’t have to go to bed early because of me.”
“I want to get an early start in the morning, and I have a good book I’ve been reading. It’s upstairs, so I might as well stay up there.”
Normally he might sit on the porch for a little bit, if it wasn’t chilly, as it often was in the spring. Still, the promise of summer was heavy and ripe in the air, and the idea that he would be spending a lot of it with Claire made him feel brighter. Except…was she going to get a job? What was she going to do? Were her kids going to be there all summer?
He was curious, wanted to know, and that was kind of unusual. Usually he could just take things as they came.
He got up, rinsing out his dish before putting it in the dishwasher and putting the soup away. He thought they had enough to last through tomorrow, when he was going to make ribs.
Was this what his life was going to consist of? Taking care of his mom when his dad wasn’t home, cooking for her, and thinking about the girl with whom he’d shared his first kiss?
Maybe the anticipation in the air wasn’t because of summer coming. Maybe it was because of something else. Like his life was going to shift in a major way.
He shook his head. That was silly.
Chapter Seven
“It always helps when the kitchen is warm. In the winter, it’s harder to get your bread to rise, and you have to wait longer. Come summer, it’ll rise so fast it’ll practically fly out of the pan, and you’ll have to chase it across the kitchen floor.”
Claire laughed at her gram’s exaggeration.
There really wasn’t a whole lot to making bread, but somehow her grandma had a knack for making it better than anyone she knew, and she was hoping to learn it herself. Her grandma had agreed to teach her, and Claire had already had several not-so-good failures.
The bread tasted okay, but it didn’t have that light, sweet, yummy taste and soft texture that her gram’s bread had.
Grandma explained that it really had to do with kneading it, but Claire didn’t understand what she was doing differently than what her grandma did. She did everything her grandma told her to.
Grandma said it just took time.
“All right. I’m going to take my walk by the lake while this rises.”
“That’s good. I’ll do my devotions in my chair.”
They smiled at each other—a little change in their routine—as the bread lesson had taken a little extra time that morning.
Her kids were going to be sick of homemade bread by the time shewas done, because they’d had it every night for supper for the last three nights. And it hadn’t been fabulous. But she’d made garlic bread, and then grilled cheese sandwiches, and Grandma had made some kind of vegetable soup that had gone perfectly with it the third night.
They’d just have to figure out something to have with it tonight. But she’d think about that while she was walking.
She opened the door and came face-to-face with Josiah. How could she have forgotten about him? He’d been there all three days as well.
She was starting to get used to him. A little, anyway.
“Good morning,” he said from where he was on his knees in front of the flower beds in front of the house.
“Good morning. I don’t know why I forgot you were going to be here this morning,” she said, feeling silly for startling when she’d seen a man kneeling as she’d opened the door.
“You had a lot on your mind.”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Making bread, mostly. Because she didn’t want to think about any of the other hard things. Including the fact that she knew exactly when school ended for the year, and she still hadn’t sent her husband the date. Nor had she tried to figure out a route where they could find the best place for them to meet and exchange the kids.
It was the fact that she dreaded exchanging the kids and losing them for the entire summer that was making her reluctant, she was sure.
“What’s the matter? You look down today.”
Did she? She didn’t mean to. She brightened her expression and tried to put on a smile. “Sorry.” She finished walking out the door, closing it carefully behind her without allowing the screen door to slam.
