O
ver the next few days, Zach felt as though he were on trial. To Kate's credit, she no longer tried to keep Miranda away from his room. But he didn't kid himself. One wrong move, just one, and she'd forbid the child to see him. He couldn't count the times that he glanced up while playing with Miranda to see Kate in the doorway, her watchful gaze reflecting emotions he couldn't read. Dread? Fear? Perhaps even a bit of jealousy? Try as he might, he couldn't figure out what her problem with him was.
She wanted him on his feet and out of her house, the sooner the better; she made that as clear as rain. Not intentionally, he felt sure. He didn't believe Kate had it in her to be unkind. But the message came through. The moment he was strong enough to don his jeans and sit on the edge of the bed, she looked happy enough to bust and began encouraging him to try his legs. Though he complied and managed a few shaky steps, he couldn't help but feel like a bad case of influenza she couldn't wait to be rid of.
What kind of man did she think he was, anyway? Only a monster would steal a child's heart and then callously break it.
As perverse as he knew it was, Kate's fierce protectiveness of Miranda and her suspiciousness of him only served to make him more determined to befriend the child. If it was the last thing he did, he'd make Kate admit his relationship with Miranda was one of the best things that had ever happened to her.
And so it was that he deliberately set out to capture Miranda's heart. Bad move. Before he knew exactly how it happened, he was the one who had fallen hopelessly in love.
Miranda… She was laughter and magic and sweetness, all rolled up in a tiny bundle. When she settled in the circle of his arm and cuddled close, he felt a sense of contentment and purpose. Listening to her talk held him spellbound for hours. Her endless questions about the world and everything in it gave him a new outlook on the everyday things he took for granted.
Some of her questions he was able to answer, others he wasn't. Either way, he was left pondering things that had never concerned him. Why did the wind blow and then stop? Why did folks say "I beg your pardon" when they hadn't done anything wrong? Why was it all right for husbands to have fat stomachs, but ladies had to wear corsets? Why did cream separate from milk? Why were religious folk referred to as God-fearing if they weren't afraid of God? Why did some plants make flowers and others didn't? If the rain was in the clouds, why did the whole sky turn dark before a storm? What made lightning? And why did the air feel prickly before the lightning came?
One of Miranda's unanswerable questions troubled Zach. Why was it that parents could be bad to their children and that was okay, but when children were bad, they got whipped? Not spanked. Not thrashed. Not punished. Not scolded. But whipped? The expression on Miranda's face when she asked that question made a cold shiver run up Zach's spine.
When Miranda wasn't asking questions, which took up a great deal of their time, Zach entertained her by telling her stories or teaching her games. She spent hours playing oops, a game of dexterous skill Zach constructed that involved catching a ball in a cup. When her interest in that waned, he sent her to find two sticks and an embroidery hoop so they could play graces, the object being to catch the hoop with the sticks.
Since Miranda was a girl, Zach knew it was inevitable that she'd eventually ask him to play with her dolls. That was where he intended to draw the line. But when the moment finally came, he didn't have the heart. For one, the armload of rags she held were the most pitiful excuses for dolls he had ever seen. Kate had fashioned them from worn-out socks. Their button eyes didn't match. Their yarn hair was so sparse they looked as though they had a bad case of mange. And, like the quilted counterpane on his bed, their dresses had been fashioned from old clothing scraps, all in shades of mourning. Even so, Miranda held them with reverence and touched them as if they were beautiful.
Zach played dolls. What the hell. Only a man who wasn't very sure of his own masculinity was afraid of being sissified.
"This is our secret," he warned Miranda. "If your ma comes in, the dolls go under the bed. Agreed?"
Miranda's first response to that was a giggle, but she finally conceded with a nod. Zach settled down to play dolls. The first crack out of the bag, Miranda complained that Zach's doll, Suzanne, was a girl doll, and therefore she didn't "talk scratchy." Feeling absurd, Zach tried to speak in a high-pitched voice. His efforts sent Miranda into fits of laughter. They finally decided that Suzanne had a sore throat.
In one afternoon of playing dolls, Zach learned more about Miranda than he had in all their previous hours together. The first thing he noticed was that her doll families always had a ma, but never a father. When he suggested they remedy that, Miranda's favorite doll, Sarah, promptly hid beneath the sheet.
"Where did Sarah go?" Zach asked carefully, not liking the bloodless pallor of Miranda's face. "Is she tired of playing?"
"She's in the cupboard," was Miranda's reply.
"In the cupboard?" Zach circled that. "Why, Mandy?"
"Because her pa comed home, and she don't like him."
That stopped Zach dead. "Then let's give her a new pa."
"She can't get a new pa if the old one just comed back."
That made sense. He guessed. "So she's hiding in the cupboard? That isn't very fun."
"She likes the cupboard. She can't do nothin' bad in there. And she knows her ma won't tell where she's at, so her pa can't find her."
"Oh, I see." Only, of course, Zach didn't see at all. An ache filled his chest. "Mandy, are you—is Sarah afraid?"
She fixed wide, wary eyes on his. "Not when she's in the cupboard. Not unless her pa calls her and she don't answer. Then she gets afraid. 'Cause he'll get mad if she don't come."
"What'll he do if he gets mad?"
A muscle at the corner of her small mouth began to quiver. "He'll hit on her ma." She glanced furtively over her shoulder, almost as if she were afraid someone might be behind her. "That makes Sarah cry. 'Cause her ma's gettin' blue spots, and if Sarah unhid herself, her pa'd give her the blue spots instead." A haunted look came into her eyes. Sarah's ma says blue spots don't hurt grown-up ladies like they do little girls. But Sarah thinks her ma's fibbin', and she feels sad."
"Does Sarah's ma get lots of blue spots?"
Zach wasn't sure he wanted to hear the child's answer. And as it happened, Miranda didn't exactly give him one.
Instead, she brightened and said, "Let's make her pa go away again. On a trip. He can go to—" She wrinkled her nose. "What's that faraway place where nobody goes?"
" Texas ?"
She gave an emphatic nod.
Zach phrased his next question cautiously. "Why don't Sarah and her ma go on a trip instead? That way they'd never have to worry about her pa coming home."
"They don't gots enough money to go on trips, and her pa always finds 'em if they try to walk. One time Sarah's ma saved her pennies for train tickets, but the 'ductor and sher'ff made 'em git off in Medford and wait till her pa got there. After that, Sarah's pa hid all the pennies."
"I see," Zach said softly. "Well, in that case, we'll just have to send Sarah's pa away, then. Clear to Texas so he won't come back for a long, long time."
She agreed with another emphatic nod.
Texas it was. And Zach never again made the mistake of conjuring up a father for Miranda's dolls. That didn't prevent an ugly suspicion from forming in his mind. Miranda was a bright child, and he knew from playing dolls with her that she had a vivid imagination that often amazed him. But how inventive could a child her age possibly be? Unless she had firsthand experience, how could she know so much about bruises and trains and conductors and the town of Medford ?
A couple of times he considered asking Kate about her deceased husband. What kind of man had Joseph Blakely been? Was he the reason Zach sometimes thought he saw fear in Kate's and Miranda's eyes? In the end, though, he kept silent. After all, Joseph was dead. If he had once been a threat, he wasn't now. Zach had no more right to pry into Kate's past than she did his. It wasn't as if he didn't have a secret or two of his own that he didn't want to share.
Kate seldom mentioned Joseph, but when she did, her features always settled into a grim stillness. Her memories of him clearly brought her pain. Now Zach was no longer certain that her pain stemmed from grief.
* * *
About a week after Kate began letting Miranda visit with Zach, he was awakened one morning shortly after dawn by the sweet sound of the child's voice.
"Today's my ma's birthday."
The announcement dragged Zach up to consciousness. He turned his head and opened one eye a crack. Miranda stood beside his bed, her small form a gray blur. He blinked and tried to focus.
"Say what?" he croaked. Squinting at the shaft of sunlight on the window, he surmised it was morning since it had been dark outside the last time he looked. "What time is it?" He tried to see the clock. "Whose birthday?"
She held up handfuls of twisted paper, her eyes glistening with what he suspected were unshed tears. Mouth atremble, chin quivering, she repeated, "My ma's."
"Your ma's?" Zach ran a hand roughly over his face, blinked again, and stifled a yawn.
"I wanna make her a paper rose, but I forget how."
In Zach's estimation, unshed tears were nothing to mess around with. He sat up a little, finger combed his sleep-tousled hair, and shook his head to clear it. "A paper rose?"
She heaped the twisted paper on his bed. "Can you fix it?"
Zach stared down at the mess. "Honey, I'm not much of a hand at making flowers."
Her mouth drew into a tremulous pout.
"I can sure try, though," he quickly amended. After all, how hard could it be to make a flower from paper?
Ten minutes later, Zach had the answer to that question. Damned hard. He held up his attempt at a rose, which was pretty pitiful looking even in his books, and upon seeing it, Miranda promptly let out a caterwaul to wake the dead. It certainly brought Zach wide awake, at any rate. Then she burst into tears.
He tossed aside the paper and drew her onto his lap, wincing at the press of her weight against his sore thighs.
"Hey, now. It's nothing to cry over."
Her sobs gained force. "I wanna give her somethin' nice."
"You will. We'll think of something."
After enfolding her in his arms, he propped his chin on her head. Her silken hair smelled of Pear's soap and little girl sweetness, a scent he wasn't at all sure could be defined. Since meeting Miranda, he only knew it existed.
Perhaps innocence had an essence all of its own.
"Honey, please don't cry. I said we'll think of something."
"But I don't got a present to give her!" she cried. "She'll come back from the barn 'specting somethin', and I don't gots nothin'."
"We'll just have to surprise her. We'll make her wait all day, thinking we both forgot, and then we'll give her something tonight. Those kinds of presents are the most fun, anyhow, because you don't think you're going to get anything."
"But what?"
Without a cup of coffee to clear his head, Zach wasn't very inventive. "You could pick her some real roses. A great big beautiful bouquet. She'd love that."
"But
she
made them roses, not me! I wanna give her somethin' I did. Somethin' purdy that she can keep. She don't got nothing that's purdy, Mr. Zach. Not a single thing."
He had noticed that, yes. The only beautiful things in this house were Kate and Miranda. "Maybe you could pick her some wild flowers. That'd be something you did, and she'd be real surprised. When they start to wilt, she can press them in her Bible so she can keep them a long time."
"Alls we got is danderlions."
He smiled in spite of himself. "Dandelions are pretty."
"They're weeds. Ma jerks 'em up ever' time she sees one."
So much for that idea. Zach searched his mind. Suddenly he recalled a gift for his mother that his father had helped him make years ago. "I've got it. Let's carve her a plaque."
That clearly stirred Miranda's interest. "What's a plaque?"
Zach wondered if she had any idea how weak in the middle he felt when she regarded him through puddles of tears. A man didn't stand a chance. "It's kind of like a picture. Made out of wood. Ladies hang them on their walls. We could carve her a rose in the center and darken the etching with charcoal. It'd be something pretty that she could keep forever."
Her swimming eyes brightened with pleasure. Feeling relieved, Zach lifted a corner of the bedsheet to dry her cheeks.
"Okay, let's do it."
He chuckled. "Can I have my coffee and breakfast first? It wouldn't be much of a surprise if your ma came in to feed me and caught us making her a present."
"Okay," she agreed reluctantly. "You can eat first."
* * *
Immediately after breakfast, Zach sent Miranda to the barn for a suitable piece of wood. Since she had never seen a plaque, suitable turned out to be the operative word. She made four trips before she returned with a flat board that held any promise. Since Zach was afraid she might cut herself with his pocketknife, he had to do the carving while Miranda did "the most important part" by holding one end of the wood.
When Kate came in from doing chores, a mad scramble ensued to hide the newspaper full of wood shavings and the half-finished plaque. Zach ended up with the shavings dumped in the bed, which was uncomfortable, to say the least.
After lunch, he shooed Miranda from his room long enough to don his jeans. Then the two of them cleaned out his bed. Once that was done, they set to work again. By late afternoon, the carving part of the process was complete, and all that remained was to darken the etching with charcoal. Zach had looked forward to this stage all day, for the coloring was something Miranda could do by herself.
"How about getting me some charcoal?" he asked.
She went perfectly still. "Charcoal?"
"Yeah. You know, a chunk of the black stuff that's left over after a fire. There should be some in the fireplace grate."
At the suggestion, Miranda turned absolutely white. There was no mistaking that look in her eyes. He shifted his gaze to the scars on her hand. At last he knew how she must have gotten burned. She wasn't the first child to have played with fire and suffered catastrophic consequences.
Though still horribly weak and shaky on his feet, he swung off the bed and stood. "Now that I think on it, there's no reason why I can't go and get it myself," he said lightly. "Point me in the right direction."
"The closest fireplace is in the room by the kitchen," she said thinly. "There's another one in the parlor, but you'd have to walk longer."
"And where is the kitchen?"
Zach expected her to lead the way, but she remained on the bed, face still pale. He didn't have much strength, but if she grew this upset just thinking about the fireplace, he had no choice but to explore until he found it. The house wasn't that large, and he knew the kitchen had to be on the first floor.
"Sit tight," he said, grabbing the footboard of the bed for support as he moved toward the door. "I'll be right back." A few faltering steps across the floor and he amended that. "Well, maybe not right back. But don't give up on me."
Several minutes later, he returned to the bedroom, charcoal in hand, feeling as exhausted as if he had run a five-mile race. When he reached the bed, he collapsed. Further work on Kate's plaque had to wait until he had caught his breath and rested.
Despite the delay, the gift was finished by the time Kate came in from doing the gardening and evening chores. A work of art, it definitely wasn't. Without any way to sand its surface, the wood was still rough, despite all Zach's attempts to smooth it with his knife blade. But Miranda was ecstatic over it. Between the two of them, they concocted a plan to surprise Kate with her present when she came in to serve Zach his supper.
Their careful plans went off without a hitch—until Kate leaned over to set Zach's supper tray on his lap. Miranda chose that moment to pop out from under the bed, yelling "Surprise!" a little more loudly than they had rehearsed. The shout startled Kate so badly that she nearly dumped Zach's meal all over him.
"Oh, my!" she cried, pressing a hand over her heart. "What is this?"
Miranda beamed up at her and shoved the plaque in her hands. "Your birthday present. I made it for you."
Kate's eyes went wide as she examined the patterned edge Zach had carved. Then she ran shaky fingertips over the rose, looking more impressed than the artwork warranted. He silently applauded her for giving a fine performance.
"Oh, Miranda," she whispered, "how lovely."
"Mr. Zach helped. But only a little bit."
Kate's mouth curved up at one corner in a smile that he suspected she was trying to squelch. "It's—oh, sweetness, words can't describe it. You made this for me? All by yourself, with only a little help? I can't believe it."
As she spoke, Kate's eyes filled with tears, and she sank to her knees to embrace her daughter. "I've never received anything so lovely. Most times everyone plumb forgets my birthday!"
"Not me," Miranda chirped. "I'll always give you a present on your birthday, Ma. Just you watch."
"I know. How lucky I am to have such a thoughtful little girl!" As if she suddenly realized she had tears on her cheeks, Kate swiped with her sleeve and fluttered her eyelashes. "I seem to have something in my eye. A bit of wood chip, maybe."
Miranda threw Zach a secretive I-told-you-so look. Then she used her sleeve to help her mother mop up. Zach fixed his gaze on his supper plate.
Happy tears
. He camouflaged a grin by filling his mouth with salmon.
"This calls for a celebration," Kate announced shakily. "After our supper, what say we have a birthday party?"
In her excitement, Miranda jumped up and down. "Can we have it in here, so Mr. Zach can have fun with us?"
Kate pushed to her feet, still holding the plaque in one hand. "Of course. It wouldn't be fair to exclude him after he helped you to make me such a lovely gift."
The sincerity in Kate's voice brought Zach's head up. She was turning the plaque in her hands, testing its surface and once again tracing the design with her fingertips. He studied her face, searching for any sign of artifice. All he found was an unspoiled sweetness. That silly etching of a rose, humble and imperfect as it was, meant the world to her; it truly did.
Zach looked away again, this time not to save her feelings but to hide his own.