“Change my ways, I reckon.”
“How will you do that?”
“Say better what’s on my mind when I’m thinking it.” He turned to his mother. “Not like Lizzie. Not the way she blurts things out. I mean I could talk about what you said. The fire. Pa. What it was like when he was drinking and looking for a fight. How it was kinda peaceful when Sheriff Ben locked him up. It’s hard to say that, him being dead and all. Sometimes I forget and think he’s just in jail. I dream about him getting out and coming back.”
“Oh, Clay.” Lily’s heart lodged in her throat. “Did you have that dream last night?”
“No. Well, sort of. It’s muddled in my mind. It came to me and then I heard you scream so it was hard to tell the actual from the dream. Truth, it all seemed real.”
Lily said, “Truth. When I saw you standing at my bedside, I thought you were your father.”
Clay’s eyes, those eyes that were so like his father’s, opened owl-like in wonder. “You did?”
“I did.”
“Musta scared you.”
“It did.”
“You scared me, too, when you screamed that way.”
“And you’ve heard it before,” she said. “Imagine how it must have frightened Roen.”
“Did it?” Clay asked Roen. “Did it frighten you?”
“Made the hair on my arms stand at attention.”
Clay nodded. “Mine, too. I guess we got that in common.”
“A lot more than that, I suspect.”
“You think so?”
“We both care about your mother.”
“Yeah, but I love her.”
Lily held her breath.
Roen didn’t miss a beat. “What makes you think I don’t?”
“You didn’t kiss her after. Hannah and me talked about it. There should have been kissing. There was when Sheriff Ben married the doc. We were there.”
“Ah. So you have experience to draw on.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, the truth is I wanted to kiss your mother. She wasn’t comfortable with it.”
“Probably because she’s skittish. I told you about that.”
“You what?” Lily said. It was as if she hadn’t spoken.
“I remember,” said Roen. “I figured that was it so I went along with her.”
“Guess it’s good that you didn’t argue.” Clay’s eyes drifted to the stack of blankets under the table beside the rocker. “You gonna sleep down here again tonight?”
“Clay!” Lily was mortified. “It is not your place to ask questions about where anyone chooses to sleep.”
