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But the thing I was really counting was the hours until four in the morning, when the kitchen would smell like bread again, and I’d find myself making something she hadn’t asked for.

Chapter 5

Hazel

During the last nine days, I’d seen Barrett lift a fallen limb that would have taken three men and a winch to move. I’d seen him stand between me and a plant that could burn through skin, take the full force of it across his back, and ask whether I was hurt before he so much as looked at his own hands. I’d seen him angry (never at me), amused (increasingly often at me), and exasperated (definitely at me).

I hadn’t seen him with a little girl.

She came running out of the hardware store before Barrett had both feet out of the truck. “Barrett!”

He turned in time to catch her as she launched herself at him with the absolute confidence of a child who’d done it before, and his hands came up automatically. One moment she was airborne; the next she was perched on his forearm, her skinny legs swinging against his side.

I stopped halfway around the truck.

The girl couldn’t have been more than six. She wrapped both arms around his neck. “You came!”

“Told you I would.”

She pulled back far enough to frown at him. “You said maybe.”

“Did I?”

“Yes.”

Barrett considered this with a completely straight face. “Doesn’t sound like me.”

She gave him a look of such profound disbelief that I laughed.

The girl followed Barrett’s gaze as he glanced at me. “Who are you?”

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Hazel.”

She studied me solemnly. “Are you the plant lady?”

I looked at Barrett, who had suddenly become very interested in the hardware-store sign. “The plant lady?”

“That’s what people call you.”

“Do they?” I narrowed my eyes as Barrett’s ears twitched. “Do you call me that?”

“No,” the little girl answered for him. “He calls you Hazel.”

I looked at Barrett. He’d talked about me. Not the researcher or the plant lady. Hazel.

Warmth spread through my chest before I could stop it.

Barrett cleared his throat. “Where’s your dad, Molly?”

“Inside. He said you have to look at Agnes.”

“Who’s Agnes?” I asked.

Molly looked horrified. “You don’t know Agnes?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“She’s sick.”