His eyes met hers for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure she meant what she said.
“That’s nice,” he said after a moment. “Maybe that’s what Dad thinks too.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Hailey said, nodding.
“He doesn’t yell at us,” Travis said, in a voice tinged with the tiniest bit of wonder. “Not ever.”
Suddenly her sadness about the kids’ mother leaving faded a tiny bit. If Cassie had been so overwhelmed by parenting that she got frustrated with the kids for just acting like kids, then maybe leaving had been the right thing to do, especially when she knew they had Ransom.
“Are you hungry?” Travis asked her suddenly.
“Yes,” she told him.
“Come on,” he said, giving her a tentative smile and then grabbing her hand.
Hailey squeezed his hand back gently as they walked, and the warmth of gratitude filled her heart.
For Mae, grabbing someone’s hand didn’t seem like a big deal. Hailey assumed that the little girl’s self-confidence would never let her worry that someone might not want to hold her hand.
But it meant something bigger that Travis had reached out to her.
Please let me be the kind of person who deserves his trust,she prayed silently.
12
RANSOM
Ransom spent the days following the celebration at the open-air market feeling like he was living in a dream.
During that whole day, the kids had been so excited to explore all the booths and play with friends. And Ransom had felt happier and more relaxed than he’d been in a long time.
And he knew that a big part of that had to do with having Hailey by his side. It wasn’t just all their old friends and neighbors smiling or winking at seeing them together. It was the way he felt more like his old self when she was near—more like his real self.
Hailey had always made him want to be a better person. And now that he was an adult, he had so many more opportunities.
He just hoped that he could manage to hold onto that feeling when she left this time.
On Monday, he’d given the dogs a nice trainingsession in the paddock and then taken them for a good run. After they had eaten their breakfast and he’d done individual trainings, including trying to puzzle out a job for Shadow, he headed up to the house for lunch.
But instead of fixing his own lunch, he had decided to bring bread, cheese, butter, and a can of tomato soup up to the big house, hoping that Hailey was at home.
He found her sewing curtains while Aidan finished painting the living room. Ransom fixed lunch for all three of them and then helped Hailey hang her new curtains in the library.
With all the work, the room was transformed, but still familiar. She had done a beautiful job brightening it up with white paint and then adding layers of pillows and throws and now the curtains to make the space feel extra cozy. The splash of color on the bookshelves drew his eye to the books, which were nicely arranged with a few knickknacks interspersed on the shelves as well.
“Aidan lent me his ladder so I could clean the little chandelier,” she’d told Ransom proudly.
The crystals in the chandelier were bright and clear, adding little rainbows of light to the walls here and there.
Hailey wanted to pick up a few little things for the living room from the church thrift shop, so Ransom offered to take her in the truck.
It turned out to be a good thing, because in addition to some smaller items, Hailey found a pair of high-backed wooden benches that she said were probably inglenook benches. Ransom wasn’t really sure what an inglenook was, but he thought they would look nice on the porch, and they seemed to make Hailey very happy.
So she had paid for everything and then he loaded up the hodgepodge of treasures in the truck and they headed back to the house.
And so the week went, with Ransom sneaking up to the big farmhouse for an hour or two whenever he could and watching Hailey transform the place into a fairytale version of the home he had always loved.
“Does it bother you to see so many changes?” she asked him one day.
