His eyes hold mine and he nods again. “It is. When I got sick with the chicken pocks when I was twelve, I read every one of them. Some of his handwriting is nearly chicken scratch, but they were so interesting I couldn’t stop. He had a good life on his own terms.”
“So the woman he saw in the woods with the raven hair, what happened?”
“He married her. As my mom would say, ‘he fell ass over heels in love’. It was one of my mom’s favorite stories.” The humor leaves his face and his eyes move to the bookshelf on the other side of the room. “Most of her books and my grandmother’s books are over there.”
So the history of the Harlow Ranch is in this room. My gaze moves to the other shelf, which holds pretty books with gold scroll on the binders and colorful covers.
I feel his eyes on me and when I look back at him, the air around me shifts and my heart skips a beat, he is studying my face. “What?” The question is nearly a whisper.
He looks at me for another moment, our eyes locking, before he shakes his head. “I need to get back to work.” And with that, he turns and leaves the room. The door to the office across the hall quietly shuts.
I realize I’m holding my breath and I let the air out in one big whoosh.What was that?The butterflies in my stomach are still fluttering as I look toward the doorway that’s now empty.
He smiled at me. A real smile. And why do I feel so happy about it?
After finishing the library, I find Sloane in the dining room cleaning the china in the big hutch. Her long black hair is pulled into a ponytail and hangs between her narrow shoulder blades. She looks over her shoulder and gives me a smile.
“I don’t know why I am cleaning these, we just had them out for the holidays and everything is still clean.” She shakes her head and chuckles. “For some reason, the power being out makes everything so quiet and it kind of starts to get on my nerves. I feel like I need to keep moving.”
The absence of a washer and dryer, central heating, and all the other humming background noises that become a normal part of life are gone, and it is eerily quiet. I nod. “I know what you mean, like the quiet will swallow you up?”
She looks at me with a scrunched nose. “Yeah! It does feel that way.”
Holding my arms out to my sides, I ask, “I’ve finished the library, what should I do next?”
“You want to do the silverware?” She points to an open drawer filled with cutlery in the hutch.
“Sure.” I grab the cloth and pull the slatted wooden container out of the drawer and set it on the table.
We work in silence for a few minutes before I try to act casual when I ask a question that’s been floating around in my mind. “So, where is Lainey Rai’s mom?”
Sloane looks at me before she glances out the window to the stables and then to the hallway. When her eyes come back to me, she pauses before she says, “Sarah died in a car crash six years ago.”
The muscles in my shoulders go slack as goosebumps erupt on the back of my neck and skitter down my arms. My hands fall limp onto to my legs, still holding the spoon I’m wiping. “Oh, how horrible,” I whisper. I try to imagine what it would feel like to lose someone you love so much, but I can’t. The closest I can come to is trying to imagine my life without Thal. Just the thought makes it hard to breathe.
Still looking around for anyone who might overhear, Sloane continues wiping. “I wasn’t here back then, but Opal told me it was one of the few worst times for the family.”
My head jerks up. “What were the others?”
“When Mrs. Harlow died after having Breanna. Opal said Mr. Harlow stepped right up and raised all the kids on his own, with her help and Gray, Mason and Marley.”
“How old were they?” Part of me feels like I’m prying, but the question came out before I realized I was asking.
“If I remember right, I think Gray was ten and the twins were eight.”
They both lost their wives.
“You said few, were there others?” Normally I would have more decorum and not pry, but I can’t seem to help myself.
Sloane’s lips press together, but her eyes stay cast down at the dish she is wiping. “That’s not my story to tell.”
The lump in my throat stops my questions, but my imagination is working overtime, wondering what could have happened. We work in silence until we hear Hallie in the kitchen getting dinner ready.
Just as dinner is almost ready to put on the table, Marley comes in with Lainey Rai and I see the family in a new light after my conversation with Sloane. They’ve endured so much, but they just keep taking care of each other. I want to hug them all and protect them from all the hurt out there.
Including my father.
I huff a breath from the warm cocoon of Breanna’s bed, the light from the floodlights down by the stables sends shadows of the tops of the trees across the ceiling in the bedroom. It took forever to get the sheets warm after I slid into bed, but I’ve been staring overhead ever since.
