Adding Up to Marriage (13 page)

“You bet,” she said.

But without anything even remotely resembling eye contact.

“H
ey,” Aaron said an hour later as they traipsed through the woods, Tad bopping along well ahead of them while Doughboy lumbered along beside, periodically giving Jewel sad sack
Can we stop now? Now? How about now?
looks. “Does Silas, like, have a thing for you?”

And, yep, that would be her heart trying to escape her chest. “No! What makes you think that?”

“Uh, the way he looks at you?”

Despite her sour mood, Jewel barked out a laugh. “You mean, the ‘What planet are you from?' look?”

“No, the ‘I really like this chick but have no clue how to tell her' look.”

“You're fifteen, what do you know?”

Now Aaron laughed, his deep voice all squeaky-new. “Yeah. Fifteen. Not
five.
Trust me, I know that look.”

“And I'm so not having this conversation with you,” Jewel said, linking her hands around his elbow, willing herself to
believe that concentrating on the crisp, woodsmoke scented air, the serene blue sky and glittering sunlight playing peek-a-boo with the yellowing live oaks and aspens would wipe that…that…okay, that
look
in Silas's eyes out of her head.

Because that look could get her into one big, steaming heap o' trouble, if she let it. He thought
she
had a big heart? Ohmigosh—if she lived to be a hundred she'd never live down how badly she'd misjudged him at first. The difference was, he was smart enough to hang on to his. She wasn't. Or at least it was a lot harder for her, given her history and nature and all…her firm resolve notwithstanding. So for sure she was counting on Silas to be the good guy and keep a lid on his self control, because too many more of those smoldering looks, those not-so-random acts of kindness, and there was no telling what she might do—

And, hello? She was supposed to be focusing on solving her brother's dilemma, not mooning over a hot, sweet geek whose touch that morning had sent her core temperature soaring farther and faster than—

Stop that!

A contented sigh floated over her head. “This place is awesome. Where's the high school?”

“You've been here like five minutes, you'd be bored out of your skull in five more, and you can't stay. Your father—”

“Still not picking up.”

Jewel's pocket suddenly R2-D2'd at her. She dug out her phone, surprised to see Gene Garrett's name on the display.

“Silas gave me your cell number,” Donna said. “I hope you don't mind—”

“No, of course not—”

“—but I cannot fit one more casserole in my freezer. I love my church sisters to death, I really do, but they simply do not know when to quit with the food! So I asked Silas if y'all might like to take some of this stuff off my hands, and he said you could pop on over sometime and get it?”

“Um, sure. I'll be there in a bit.”

“What was that all about?” Aaron asked when she slipped her phone back into her pocket and called Tad to come back.

“Silas's mom and overzealous church ladies,” Jewel said, adding, when Aaron frowned at her, “all will be made clear in a few minutes.”

 

“See?” Donna said, opening both her refrigerator and freezer doors, revealing Tupperware and covered foil pans as far as the eye could see. “I wasn't kidding. And that's not counting what I've got stashed in the big freezer out in the garage.”

“Holy…cow.”

“Not exactly what I said, but close. Honestly, you'd think I'd
died.
”

Jewel sputtered a laugh, as, behind them at the kitchen table, Aaron and Tad chowed down big slabs of somebody's homemade coffee cake, shoved in front of them the minute they set foot in the door. More agile now that she was used to the walking boot, Donna began unloading the fridge, setting tray after tray on the other end of the table with appropriate commentary for each one.

“Okay, you probably don't want Mildred's macaroni and cheese—I don't know what she does to it, it's like eating solid lard, but I simply don't have the heart to toss it. Yet. Oh…this one's not bad, it's something Sally Perkins calls Greek Chicken, it's got that feta cheese on it. Which I like but Gene wouldn't eat if it was the only thing in the house.
And this one's…oh, yes—Emma Manning's green chili stew—”

“Oh! I've had that, when Patrice and I went up there before she had her baby? It's really good.”

“Then you take it, green chili and Gene don't see eye-to-eye anymore….”

After another ten minutes or so spent divvying the largesse between them—and after the boys finished their snack and Tad took Aaron off to show him Gene's two-thousand-and-counting Hot Wheels collection—Donna lowered her ample form into one of the chairs and cut Jewel a big old slab of coffee cake, the cream cheese icing gleaming in the morning sun slanting across the table. No sooner had she slid it in front of Jewel, though, than she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the boys were still out of ear-shot and whispered, “Silas told me about your stepbrother's surprise appearance. Land, boys will get the craziest ideas in their heads, won't they? You want coffee with that?”

“Please. And yes, they do. This went above and beyond, though.”

“Honey,” Donna said as she poured coffee into two mugs, “if I had a nickel for every lamebrained thing my guys did growing up, I'd be wealthier than Bill Gates. Half-and-half okay?” When Jewel nodded, she set the carton on the table, along with the sugar bowl, then lowered herself again into the chair, stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into her own coffee. “Have you decided what to do?”

“Working on it,” Jewel said, even though the answer was a flat-out “no.” Her throat closed, refusing admission to the cake. On a soft, commiserating moan, Donna reached over to curl her fingers around Jewel's.

“I'm sure there's a solution,” she said, giving Jewel's
hand a firm squeeze before releasing it. “There always is, if you get quiet long enough to listen for the answer.”

Why couldn't you have been my mother?
Jewel thought, which she realized was both pointless and mean, provoking a spurt of guilt that further obstructed the coffee cake's journey.

“Yes, ma'am. I'm trying to do that, but…” The mug shook slightly when she lifted it to her lips.

Donna reached inside her sweater pocket for a folded tissue. “Go ahead, it's clean, I only put it there this morning.” Nodding, Jewel blew her nose, wiped her eyes under her glasses, then took off the glasses to clean the smudges. Silas's mother smiled. “Nobody ever said trusting was easy.”

Then she inclined her head toward the laughter coming down the hall. “God knows there were times our boys nearly sent us over the edge, but I find myself missing that period of our lives more often than not. Teenage boys are a hoot and a half.” Her eyes swung back to Jewel's. “And Aaron seems like a good boy.”

“Except for the running away thing, you mean?” Jewel said with a smile as, determined, she renewed her assault on the hapless pastry. “Yeah. I couldn't love him more if we were blood relations.”

“I can see that.” Sympathetic eyes met hers. “But right now you no more need a teenager to look after than I need a dozen more casseroles.”

Despite the still threatening tears, Jewel laughed, the laughter dwindling to nothing when Donna added, “And you do not need to feel guilty about that. Love him or not, taking on a responsibility that's not yours is only asking for trouble.”

Donna's insight was making Jewel even wobblier, which would never do. “Oh, I absolutely agree. Besides, Aaron
belongs with his daddy. And I'm sure this is nothing more than a big misunderstanding. Keith's…okay.”

And wasn't that a rousing endorsement of the man? True, her memories of those years maybe weren't as sharp as they should be, but she was pretty sure she'd recall if there'd been problems. Aside from those between Keith and Mama, that is. Those, she'd remember to her dying day. “Not that Keith was around all that much. He traveled a lot for his job, installing computer systems for big companies. I think.”

“Good money in that line of work, I hear.”

“I suppose, I wouldn't really know.” Frowning, Jewel lightly tapped her fork on the rim of her plate. “I gather Aaron's spent a lot of time with housekeepers and such. Which makes it even more important he be with his dad as much as possible while he's still in school, right? But why hasn't Keith returned any of our messages? I can't imagine he's not worried sick about Aaron. It simply doesn't add up—”

At Donna's quick head shake, Jewel clamped shut her mouth. A second later the boys trooped back into the kitchen, Aaron declaring Gene's miniature car collection totally awesome. Then, noticing Donna's struggle to fit whatever she was keeping back into the fridge, he immediately jumped in to help, earning him one of Donna's super-duper hugs.

And the kid ate it up, which only further mangled Jewel's heart.

So it really wasn't a surprise that, on the way back to the house, a weirdly silent Aaron sank down in the front seat, his head propped against the car window.

“Whatcha thinking?” Jewel asked.

He rustled in his seat, then scrubbed his palm over his knee. “Is Silas's dad as cool as his mom?”

Jewel smiled. “Depends on your definition of that, I
suppose, but yeah. I like Gene a lot. Although after raising Silas and his brothers? Nothing gets past either one of 'em… Aaron?” He'd twisted around in his seat, muttering a bad word under his breath. “Is the sheriff tailing me or something?”

“Not the sheriff,” he said, jerking back around and sliding down in his seat. When he finally looked over at her, he'd gone practically the same color as his gray hoodie. “My dad.”

 

The silence—relative silence, anyway—when Silas returned to the house around four immediately tipped him off that something was very, very wrong. Over a jolt of apprehension, he walked into the living room, where he found an oddly subdued Jewel curled up on the sofa, watching the boys vroom-vroom their Tonka fleet on the floor in front of her.

“Hey,” he said softly, which brought her face up to his, even as Tad jumped up to launch himself at Silas's thighs.

“Aaron's daddy came and took him away!” he said, and Silas's eyes shot back to Jewel's.

“You're kidding?”

Shaking her head, she unfolded herself to lower her feet to the floor, her fingers gripping the edge of the sofa as she gave him a tight, gonna-keep-it-together-if-it-kills-me smile. “Keith showed up right before lunch. They left almost immediately.”

And if that wasn't an extremely abridged version of events, he didn't know what was. Especially when Tad chirped, “There was a lot of yelling, too! His daddy called Aaron a—”

“Tadpole!” Jewel said, her face red as a radish, at which point Silas—who was jumping to conclusions about Aaron's
father faster than a grasshopper ahead of a wildfire—dragged out his phone and asked Mrs. Maple if she wouldn't mind a couple little visitors for a few minutes.

When he returned from hauling his scowling, protesting sons to the neighbor's, Jewel was still perched where he'd left her, only now her arms were folded tightly across her middle as she stared blankly across the room. “Just when I think things can't get worse,” she whispered, not looking at Silas, “they do.”

“Unfortunately, a feeling I know all too well,” he said gently. “What happened?”

“It was horrible,” she said in a tiny voice. “K-Keith pulled up behind us and jumped out of his car, practically dragging Aaron out of mine and lighting into him right there in the driveway. It all happened so fast, I barely had a chance to get Tad inside. And even after I did, Keith was so loud I could hear him through the windows calling his own son an idiot, saying he'd be s-sorry he'd ever pulled a stunt like this….”

On a sob, she buried her face in her hands, and Silas was across the room in three strides to pull her into his arms, covering her fisted hands on his chest with one of his own. “Then Aaron stormed inside to get his stuff…. and ohmigod, the look he gave me, Silas! And I couldn't do a blessed thing to h-help him!”

For a moment Silas shut his eyes, riding out the breath-stealing sense of déjà-vu.

“Why didn't you call me?”

“I never had a chance. And for Tad's sake I didn't want to make an even b-bigger deal out of it than it was.”

His youngest son had told him, on the way to Mrs. Maple's, how Jewel had taken care of them “like everything was okay,” after Aaron had gone. That she'd made lunch and played with him, helped him practice his letters and
numbers, even taken him and Ollie out for a short bike ride when Ollie got home from school. Meaning, for four
hours
she'd pretended things were perfectly normal when she was obviously a wreck inside.

In contrast, Amy had called him in hysterics over every minor crisis. And how often had Ollie met him at the door with “Mommy cried because the baby got powder all over us,” or “Mommy got mad because I tried to get some milk and spilled it all over”? The list of Things That Set Mommy Off was seemingly endless.

This gal, though, was clearly built of sterner stuff. No wussy little bunny rabbit here, boy, Silas thought with a small smile, then planted a brief kiss on her head without any thought at all. Jewel stiffened, then bounced up from the couch and hotfooted it to the kitchen.

“Lord, I must look a sight,” she said, ripping a paper towel off the roller by the sink and dampening it under a stream of water before removing her glasses to press the wet wad to each eye in turn.

“You look fine,” Silas said, getting to his feet and crossing to the breakfast bar, suddenly realizing how huge her eyes were without her glasses. How she averted those eyes, like there was something more. Something she wasn't telling him. Sliding onto a stool, Silas folded his hands in front of him. “Now tell me the parts you left out.”