in here, please.” An elderly woman stood alongside the security desk inside the door. “And state your business.”
“Lunch with my daughter.” She spoke brightly as she scribbled her name in the log. When she spun to go, the old woman frowned and stuck out a hand. “Time in, please.”
Libby wrote the numbers 12:21 as quickly as she could, then rushed to the cafeteria. She homed in on the clatter of children and lunch trays. She darted through the first set of double doors and scanned the room.
Kids of all sizes were milling around. Adults were overseeing groups of tables, and while she knew CeeCee’s teacher, Libby had no idea who the lunch monitor was for her class. She moved to the right, toward the smallest children, and spotted CeeCee as the monitor called them to attention. “Mrs. Reynolds’s kindergarteners, time to take care of your garbage and recyclables and line up.”
She got to CeeCee’s side as her little girl stood up to clean her area. “Hey, girlfriend!”
“Mommy!” Pure joy lit CeeCee’s face. She threw her arms out and half jumped into Libby’s arms. “I knew you’d come! I knew it! I told everyone that my mom would never forget about me.” She turned back toward the gathering children. “Here she is! This is my mommy!”
The lunch monitor didn’t try to hide her frown or sound all that sincere. “That’s wonderful, darling. She can walk us back to the classroom. Won’t that be special?”
Her tone said it wasn’t all that special, and her sour expression indicated that Libby fell short in this woman’s estimation. Don’t let her push your buttons. Keep your chin in the air and own the moment.
Libby longed to take the woman down a peg. Clasp CeeCee’s hand and sign her out for the afternoon and make the whole day special to make up for her mistake. She couldn’t, though. She had work waiting, work that had been put off for too long already. On top of that, Gramps couldn’t be left on his own for long periods of time, so that meant she’d walk CeeCee to her class, kiss her goodbye and go back to her orchard chores.
“Mommy, thank you for coming!” CeeCee hugged her again, as if popping in for five minutes was enough.
It wasn’t, but she thanked God for her daughter’s understanding heart. “You’re welcome, darling. I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”
“’Cept you don’t have a home.” One of CeeCee’s classmates spoke up, a little girl. “CeeCee said you don’t have a home so she lives with her grandpa. Right?”
“No home, for real?” An adorable boy shot dark eyebrows up in surprise. “Then you can come and stay with us, CeeCee, with me and my dad. And my big sister! I would like that a lot!” Excitement widened his smile and Libby fell in love with him instantly.
“Except we do have a home.” She squatted low and made eye contact with the kids, including the girl who called CeeCee out. “With my grandpa on the apple farm. We moved here to raise apples and pears and plums and to help CeeCee’s great-grandpa get around.”
“But we didn’t have a home before, did we, Mommy? When we were in that other place and they made us move. Right?” There was no denying CeeCee’s earnest request for honesty.
An old ache hit Libby’s heart.
Should she admit they’d been homeless? Or gloss over it? Nowhere in the parenting books did the experts explain what to do when your abusive ex-husband bleeds money from your accounts and leaves you bruised and penniless without a roof over your head.
She wanted to brush it off.
She didn’t. She faced CeeCee and nodded. “We did have to move, didn’t we? And then Ms. Mortie called me to say Gramps and Grandma needed help. We headed up here the very next day. It’s cool how God worked things out, isn’t it?” She smiled at the class as the teacher came forward to direct them into the kindergarten room. “Just when they needed us, we needed them right back.”
“’Xactly!” CeeCee kissed her goodbye and skipped into the room, totally happy. She didn’t understand the scourge of homelessness.
Libby did.
But she would never again fall victim to a man’s deceit. She’d been foolish once. She would never be foolish again.
The wind came out of nowhere. One minute former army captain Jax McClaren was heading toward his solitary cabin in the hills, and the next, his pickup truck was broadsided by a gust of wind so strong that it thrust the heavy-duty 4x4 sideways.
He gripped the wheel, then fought to maintain his forward progress.
The wind had other ideas.
Military training clicked in. He reduced his speed, eased on the brakes and kept the wheel straight. The brakes created instant friction to help keep the tires under his control. Not the wind’s.
He edged his way back to the proper side of the road as another car approached, heading west. When the wind slammed again, he narrowly missed sideswiping the smaller car.
His phone chose that moment to indicate a weather warning. “Approaching low front,” advised the digitized voice. “Expect dangerously high winds.”
He could have used the warning ninety seconds earlier.
The wind played tug-of-war for control of the truck. He was between towns. He’d left Golden Grove after finishing a job for a kindhearted widow who liked to bake him cookies. He had every intention of heading back to his solitary cabin to soak up some peace and quiet. Away from people. Away from gratitude he didn’t deserve. Away from life.
But when the wind slammed him again, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. As that took hold, he realized two things more. An old man, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a T-shirt, was walking down the road, trying to block the raging wind with an inside-out umbrella. Behind him, not far from a bungalow-style house in need of attention, a wooden barn literally blew apart.
Jax didn’t blink. Didn’t think. He just pulled to the side of the road and jumped out of the truck, directly in the old man’s path.
His actions startled the man. White hair flying in the gale-force winds, the old fellow stepped back in alarm.
Jax had lost a grandmother to Alzheimer’s nearly a dozen years before. He’d watched the disease drain her mind. Her joy. Her attitude. And her caring. But while others grew impatient with Grandma Molly’s changeable faces, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Through the long years of decline, he’d focused on one thing: that she was the same grandmother who helped raise three little boys when they lost their mother. He knew she loved them to the very end. She just didn’t remember it.
Recalling that, he used his most respectful tone as he faced the confused wanderer. “I thought I’d give you a lift to wherever it is you’re going, sir.”
“You know where I’m going?” queried the old guy as if hoping for a positive response.
“I expect we’ll figure it out,” Jax replied.
“Sounds like a plan!” The old fellow tried to move toward the truck but the wind bested him. Jax took his arm gently and steered him toward the truck door.
A car was coming their way from the east.
Farther out, another car was fighting its way up the road from the west. He helped the man into the passenger side of the truck, then hurried around to reclaim the driver’s seat. He thrust the truck into gear and started forward. “Were you going home? Or leaving home?” He shot the aged man a comforting look and didn’t once mention the lack of attire, but inside he was seething.
Who would leave a sick, elderly person alone like this? Who would let him out of the house wearing nothing but underclothes? If a parent allowed a child to wander like this, they’d be arrested.
The