Silver Thaw (12 page)

Jeb did a mental windmill motion with his arms to keep from stepping off into that hole. He’d lived most of his adult life trying never to utter falsehoods. Now, he was either lying or skirting the truth with alarming frequency. “Oh, no,” he assured Chloe. “You didn’t eat one of
these
chickens.” That wasn’t a lie. They were still clucking and devouring spinach. “I occasionally buy a fryer at the grocery store.” That, too, was a fact. When Jeb had no fryers ready for harvest, he did buy some. “
These
hens are my little friends.”
Why did I add that? I’m just digging myself in deeper.

“What are their names?” Chloe asked, okay with
eating chicken from a Styrofoam tray, but
not
okay with eating a feathery critter she’d actually met.

Jeb was thrown by her question.
Names?
Thinking quickly, he pointed through the wire. “That one’s Sweetheart.” His mind raced for more handles. “The rooster is Bogie, named after Humphrey Bogart, because he was so”—he almost said
sexy
but changed gears to say—“handsome. And that one’s Fuzzy, and the ornery one”—
I’m truly brilliant under pressure
—“is Ornrietta.”

“What are the other ones named?”

Jeb feared that he’d trip over his own lies if he named any more hens. He needed time to create and memorize a list. “You know, princess, it’s twenty-five below, no time for me to tell you the names of over twenty hens. Your mommy will get upset.”

Foremost in Jeb’s mind was the thought that if he got lucky enough to keep this child and her mother with him, none of his chickens would ever see a dinner plate.

“You stay here, okay? Hold on to the wire so you don’t slip while I collect the eggs.”

“Oh, I hope you find some blue ones!” she exclaimed.

At the back of the coop, Jeb had pocketed only four eggs when he heard a ruckus, hens clucking, Bogie crowing, and Chloe shrieking. He hurried around the structure and saw Chloe inside the run. Jeb had heard of chickens flying the coop, but he’d never actually seen it occur. Wings lifted, hens were running in all directions outside of the pen. He made his way to the open door and reached for Chloe, his intention being to get her out of there and shut the escape route before any more feathered inmates skedaddled.

But the fast motion of his hand sent Chloe diving for the ground to avoid the blow she clearly expected. Jeb
was so horrified that he forgot all about the fleeing fowl. He dropped to his knees to gather the little girl into his arms, thankful for once that everything was frozen solid. On a warm day, they’d both have been covered with chicken shit.

“Oh, baby,” he said. “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

“I just wanted to pet one!” Chloe wailed, trying to dodge his hands. “But all of them ran! I didn’t mean to let them loose!”

Jeb drew her against his chest. She trembled in his embrace like a spring aspen leaf in a high wind. “It’s all right. Of
course
you wanted to pet one. It’s my fault, not yours. I should have helped you go inside.” His experience at soothing a hysterical child could have fit inside a cold-remedy cup, but he instinctively began to rock back and forth, doing a butt plant on the heels of his boots and then shifting forward. “It’s okay. I won’t
ever
hit you, Chloe, I promise. Not ever.”

He felt her shuddering subside a bit, and then she shifted in his arms to brush at his cheeks with her glove. “Don’t cry, Mr. Jeb. I know you won’t ever hit me. Bozo told me so. But I still get scared and
think
I might get hit.”

Until that moment, Jeb hadn’t realized that tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Damn
. He never wept, not because he didn’t feel like it sometimes, but because his dad had raised him to keep a stiff upper lip. But seeing this child prostrate on the ground with her arms folded over her head to deflect blows had opened his floodgates.

Chloe caught more tears with her fingers. “Don’t cry. Sometimes I even do it if Mommy swings her arm toward me, and she
never
hits. I just duck. I can’t help it.”

Jeb gathered her closer, embarrassed that she was trying to comfort him when it should be the other way around. “You’re just hand-shy, sweetheart.” He loosened one arm from around her to wipe her cheeks.
Tears born of terror
. What had that son of a bitch done to her? Jeb suspected he had whacked her a lot, much as he might a pesky housefly. “It just makes me sad, is all. Little girls shouldn’t be afraid that an adult is going to hit them.”

“I know.” She brushed her glove over his cheek again. “But my mean daddy didn’t care.” She squirmed to sit erect on the downward slope of his thighs and gazed out at his backyard. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jeb. All your chickens are loose. How are we going to catch them?”

That
was a damned good question. Collecting himself, Jeb followed her gaze. Hens streaked one way and then another. Bogie, the caretaker of his flock, had gone into rooster panic mode, taking flight to check on first one cluster of females and then another. Bozo, distracted from his pissing tour, had turned to stare at them, his expression a mixture of alarm and eager anticipation.
Something to chase!

“Bozo, no!” Jeb yelled.

But he was too late. Bozo surged forward, his boots slipping under him, to approach a cluster of hens. Kicking up his speed, the dog was almost upon them when he lost traction and went into a slide, all two hundred and thirty pounds of him cannoning into the birds. Feathers flew, and so did Bozo, bypassing the chickens to plow into the front of Jeb’s shop. Jeb’s feathered
friends
took off in all directions.

“Well, shit,” he said.

Chloe got off his lap. “My mommy says that people
who say that word have filthy tongues. After we catch the chickens, you need to scrub yours really hard.”

Jeb almost laughed, but it wasn’t funny. He couldn’t cuss like a sailor around a little girl. His mother would scalp him. “You’re right. I’ll scrub my tongue really good with a toothbrush when we get back inside.”

As he pushed to his feet and helped Chloe up, Jeb was thankful for the chicken shit that his birds deposited on the bottom of the run with amazing frequency. Frozen solid, it provided plenty of traction.

Only that wouldn’t be true once they left the pen. He knew how treacherously slick it was out there, and Chloe wore no shoe chains. “Sweetheart, I think you need to go back in the house. I’ll catch all the chickens, okay?” Just then, Bozo regained his feet and lunged at another hen, only to do another belly flop.
This isn’t looking good,
Jeb thought. “I don’t want you falling and getting hurt.”

Chloe jerked her hand from his. “I’ll be okay, Mr. Jeb. I don’t fall as far as you do.”

Jeb started to protest, but with amazing dexterity Chloe had already shot out of the pen. “Sweetheart, chickens peck!” he yelled. “They might hurt you!”

She took a spill and quickly regained her feet. “They can’t peck me through my clothes!” And off she went. Bozo saw a partner in crime and did a slip-slide approach, falling just as he reached Chloe. The collision knocked Chloe down again. She giggled and sprang back up, clearly delighted that they had to chase chickens in below-zero temperatures. Watching her fall and regain her feet with so little effort made Jeb feel old.

What followed was a comedy of errors. At one point, Jeb went down on his back and slid toward Babe’s pen, his head going under the fence rails. With his butt
shooting shards of pain up his spine and his head swimmy from hitting the ice, he blinked and looked up at a pig snout and beady eyes. Babe gifted him with a snotty snort, which splattered his face.
Yuck
. When he’d collected his senses enough to wipe his cheeks, he found that the drippings had frozen to his skin. With far less agility than Chloe, he struggled to his feet, took a deep breath to dredge up some macho, and took off after the chickens, who seemed to have multiplied in minutes from twenty-seven to well over a hundred. And, stupid bastard that he was, he’d never clipped their wings. The little bitches huddled and clucked until he got near them, and then they flew away, leaving him with nothing to grab but drifting feathers.

Chloe loved it. She caught Bogie first, and then, losing her footing en route to the run, fell several times, always keeping the rooster above her so she wouldn’t injure him under the crush of her slight weight. She made Jeb feel like an overmuscled bumpkin.
What the hell?
She was so tiny. How come he was blowing this?

At some point, Amanda appeared in her blue parka and snow boots. Jeb guessed she’d seen what was happening from the kitchen window. So far as Jeb could tell, she wasn’t any more graceful on the ice than he and Bozo were. When she did an ass plant, he worried that she might have hurt herself, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He doubted she’d ever met a chicken. Now she was trying to catch the damned things.

Slowly but surely, they collected all the hens and returned them to the run. By then, Chloe had learned the hard way to shoo the fowl away from the door before she opened it to return another chicken to the flock. The cold wind had made Amanda’s eyes water, and the tears
had frozen to her cheeks. Jeb felt older than Methuselah. Panting, Bozo lay sprawled on the ice, his jowls spread over the crusty snow, making Jeb worry that his lips might have frozen to the ground. But, no, he drooled so much that sticking was impossible.

Jeb still needed to collect the rest of the eggs, and Chloe begged to go with him. Amanda nodded to let Jeb know it was okay, so he held the child’s hand as they walked behind the coop. It wasn’t until Jeb collected two more eggs and started to stuff them in his pocket that he realized the four he’d gathered earlier had been crushed.

“Well, shit,” he said. “What a slimy mess.”

Chloe was clinging to the shed to stay upright. “You definitely have to scrub your tongue, Mr. Jeb. It’s filthy.”

Jeb couldn’t help but laugh, and Chloe grinned up at him. As their gazes locked, something intangible yet magical passed between them.

Amanda picked her way toward the house. “I’d better go back inside to finish breakfast,” she called. “We’ve all worked up an appetite.”

“We’ll be right there,” Jeb yelled back.

After gathering more offerings from his flock and wiping his egg-smeared fingers clean on his jacket, Jeb grabbed Chloe’s hand so she wouldn’t slip on the ice. Why he bothered, he didn’t know. She’d fallen at least a dozen times already, and as far as he could tell, no damage had been done.

“Will you tell me more of the hens’ names tomorrow?” Chloe asked.

Jeb glanced down into her innocent eyes. He could come up with more names today while he checked on neighbors. He’d keep a running list on his center console
when he got short breaks between houses. Maybe he could call two of the hens Lucy and Ethel. Tomorrow when Chloe helped to do chores, he just hoped he wouldn’t need a cheat sheet. “Sure. I can do that.”

“I heard you call one of them Bitch. Only I can’t remember which one she is.”

He winced. “Um, that isn’t really a name, Chloe. It’s another not-very-nice word.”

“Oh.”

As they walked with caution across the yard, Jeb gave her fingers a quick squeeze. “So Bozo is talking to you, is he?”

She nodded. “In dog language. He told me you never hit people or pull their hair, and you never,
ever
kick mommies in the stomach.”

Jeb felt as if a shod horse hoof had nailed him in the solar plexus. He yearned to assure her that he would never allow anyone to be mean to her or her mother again. But that was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep. At least he could tell her that she was right about him . . . or, rather, that Bozo was.

“Uh . . . no, I don’t. Never. Now, we both know Bozo can’t really talk, not with words, anyway. So how did he tell you all that stuff about me?”

Chloe gave him a gap-toothed grin that dimpled her rosy cheeks. “Bozo loves you. When he’s snoring on the floor, he doesn’t wake up when you walk around his legs. And when you wave your hand after he toots, he isn’t afraid you’ll hit him. You don’t even get mad when he slings drool. Mommy says I should wait to be sure you’re
really
nice before I let myself like you too much, but I think that’s because my daddy tricked her. He made her think he was nice when he was really very mean.”

“Ah.” Jeb rolled that revelation through his mind. “So your mommy doesn’t really like me very much yet.”

“She’s starting to. She says you
seem
nice.” The child’s eyes grew round. “Oops! I forgot to say thank you for my snow clothes! Mommy told me I should.”

Jeb stopped just short of his back steps. “You need to thank Myrna for the clothes. She’s the nice lady who lives across the road.”

Chloe shook her head. “Mommy said you bought it all. She knows. Clothes in a closet for a long time don’t smell like these do. I thought she was going to give it all back, but she said it didn’t seem right to say no to answered prayers.”

Jeb’s heart caught. He had to fess up. Nothing else would do with those big eyes trained on his face. “Well, she’s right about the clothes. I bought them. No wonder your mother doesn’t trust me yet. She knows I told her an out-and-out lie.”

Chloe squeezed his hand. “Mommy says you did it for a good reason. I don’t think she’s mad at you.”

“I sure hope not.”

Jeb whistled for Bozo before they went inside. Still grasping Chloe’s hand as they scaled the steps, he realized that even with two pairs of gloves separating their fingers, he could feel the child’s trust in him seeping through the layers. It was a precious gift.

Sans the parka and snow boots, Amanda still wore her sleeping outfit when they reentered the kitchen. To Jeb, she looked beautiful with a crease on her cheek from the pillow and her long hair tousled from the chicken-chasing escapade. The soft curve of her unfettered breasts drew his gaze. He had to force himself to look away.
Easier thought than done.

After Jeb doffed his outerwear, Chloe tugged on his hand. “It’s time for you to go wash your filthy tongue,” she informed him.

Amanda sent Jeb a questioning look. He ignored her and, accompanied by Chloe, went to the master bath. As Jeb bent over the sink to scrub his tongue with a toothbrush, Chloe said, “All the way back. You need to get
all
the dirt off.”

Jeb had always gagged easily, and now was no exception. What he didn’t expect was for Chloe to gag from watching him. She ran to the toilet, hunched her shoulders, and coughed up clear stuff. Alarmed, Jeb dropped the toothbrush in the sink.

“Are you okay, princess?”

Straightening, Chloe gulped and nodded. “Hearing sick sounds makes me get sick, too.”

Remembering that he’d had the same problem as a kid, Jeb lifted her onto his hip. “Well, I think I did a good job.” He poked his tongue out. “Is it clean enough?”

Chloe peered into his mouth. “You’ve still got blue bumps at the back.”

“Toothpaste.” Jeb swallowed and opened up again.

“Say aw for me.”

“Aw.”

Chloe sighed. “It could stand more scrubbing, but then we’ll both upchuck again, and I don’t want to.”

“Me, either.”

*   *   *

Amanda had made bacon, fried potatoes, and oven-browned slices of homemade bread. Chloe’s egg was already scrambled.

“How do you want yours this morning?” she asked Jeb when they returned to the kitchen.

Jeb asked for over easy and got perfect eggs. During the meal, Chloe fretted that breakfast was too high in fat, which to Jeb was a bewildering observation from a six-year-old. But then, Chloe seemed mature for her age in many ways, especially when she spoke.

Amanda caught Jeb’s gaze. “Mark detested high-fat meals.”

Mark.
Jeb finally had a name for the son of a bitch. He wondered what Mark had done to Amanda when her cooking hadn’t suited his dietary preferences.
Mark Banning.
Now he could use his people-tracking app to find the jerk and pay him an unexpected visit someday. Oh, how Jeb looked forward to that. He might end up in jail, but it would be worth it. His father had zero tolerance
for abuse of women or children, and he’d raised his sons to rectify matters if they ever got wind of an infraction.

Late to make his rounds on Elderberry, Jeb had just taken a bite of potatoes when his phone chirped. He fished the device from his hip pocket, saw that the text was from Tony, and slid his finger across his iPhone screen to read the message. “Praise the Lord!” he exclaimed.

Amanda and Chloe gave him startled looks.

“The west side of town has power again,” he explained. “The people on my route have electricity!”

“Yay!” Chloe clapped her hands. She glanced at her mother. “May I say ‘praise the Lord,’ too, Mommy?”

Amanda smiled. “In Mr. Jeb’s house, yes, you may.”

“Praise the Lord!” the child shouted.

“This means I can wrap it up early today,” Jeb told them. “I’ve hauled up enough wood to last most folks for days. Since it’s a no-school day, how about if we look at some rentals this afternoon? Maybe we can find you a new place to live.”

“Does that mean our leaky pipes can’t be fixed?” Chloe asked her mother.

Amanda replied, “The pipes aren’t the problem now. The snow and ice grew too heavy for our roof. Remember when we heard the loud crack, and you thought our roof was breaking? Well, you’re a very smart girl, because you were right.”

“You mean it broke?”

Amanda nodded. “We are fortunate that Mr. Jeb wouldn’t leave us there. Some roof beams fell on our sofa, and we could have been injured.”

Chloe looked at Jeb, her eyes wide. “Could it have squished us? Could we be dead?”

Jeb didn’t want this kid to grow up terrified of storms. He reached over to tweak her nose. “That is an old house and not built very well. Normally roofs don’t break.”

Chloe nodded as if his answer satisfied her. Then that too-old-for-her-years expression flitted across her face. “Mr. Jeb, do good houses cost a lot of money?”

“Not all of them. We’ll see what we can find.” Jeb had a plan. But for now, he needed to humor Amanda and let her believe she’d soon be living on her own again.

*   *   *

When Jeb finished checking on the neighbors, he dropped back by the house to pick up his guests to go rental shopping. Amanda appreciated his offer. She and Chloe couldn’t remain here for weeks. On her budget, a rental would be stark compared to this luxury, and the longer Chloe was here, the harder it would be for her to readjust.

Once Jeb got Amanda, Chloe, and Bozo into his truck and they were out on the road, Chloe squealed in delight. “It’s so pretty! Everything sparkles.”

Jeb studied the terrain. “I’ve been so busy working, I haven’t taken the time to notice. You’re right; it’s spectacular. A lot of folks call it a silver thaw because the ice makes everything look sort of silver.”

Amanda turned the phrase over in her mind.
A silver thaw
. For a long time, her heart had felt nearly as frozen as the world around them. She’d felt no warmth toward anyone but Chloe. Now, being around Jeb, she was starting to see the world in a different light. She’d grown fond of his silly dog, who occupied the backseat with her daughter. The pillowcases that held Amanda’s worldly goods had been stowed under the bench seat because Jeb had forgotten to bring them inside last night.
Jeb
. When he smiled, he made Amanda’s heart feel as if it
were melting. She found that frightening. It troubled her to even think about trusting a man again. She didn’t care how nice he seemed or how handsome he was. He was still a man.

“I can’t afford anything that rents for over five hundred a month,” she told him. “And if possible, I need to pay less. My budget is pretty tight.”

“Gotcha,” Jeb replied.

Their first stop was at an efficiency apartment in a large older home converted into flats. “This could work,” Amanda pronounced. “Small, but within a mile of the school.”

The landlady, a brunette of about thirty, frowned at Chloe. “No children allowed,” she said. “My parents live here, and they don’t like noise.”

Amanda’s heart sank. “But she’s a very good little girl, ma’am, and you didn’t say in your ad that no children are allowed.”

“I’m saying it now,” the woman replied.

Next Jeb took them to an old house that rented for four hundred a month. It reminded Amanda a lot of her last rental. Still, it was close enough to Chloe’s school for her to walk to work. The owner, an old man, was hard of hearing, and they had to shout for him to catch what they said.

Under his breath, Jeb told Amanda, “This place isn’t suitable as a doghouse.”

“But it’s in my price range and close to the school.”

“Weak roof, no foundation, and the floors are rotten. You and Chloe could fall through. I vote no. You have a place to stay for now. You aren’t that desperate.”

Amanda felt pretty darned desperate. She studied the ceiling. “How can you tell that the roof is weak?”

*   *   *

Jeb sighed and took another walk through the house. He pointed out to Amanda signs of a stovepipe fire on the ceiling. He discovered that only one burner on the range worked. The kitchen exhaust fan sounded like a jet engine taking off. The one toilet rocked back and forth when he nudged it, telling him the floor was so rotten that the commode could fall through at any moment.

“I cannot—” Jeb stopped and rephrased what he meant to say. “You and Chloe can’t live in a dump like this.” Jeb was glad the man couldn’t hear a word he said. He stood near them, acting as if they might steal anything not anchored down. “It’s unacceptable.”

“You’re not in charge of our lives. I make my own decisions, and I don’t need your blessing to do
anything
. Are you reading me loud and clear?”

Jeb nearly grinned. Amanda’s small chin had come up, and she looked ready to take him on. As browbeaten as he suspected she had been, she still had the mettle to stand up for herself. He felt both frustrated and proud of her.

“Let me put it differently.
Please
, with
sugar
on top, don’t rent this house. I’m not picking it apart to be difficult. It’s not safe. I won’t be able to rest at night knowing that you and Chloe are asleep in here with a fire going in that woodstove.”

Even under her down parka, he saw her shoulders slump. “Foul play. You’re trying to put a guilt trip on me.”

Jeb wished he could plant a kiss on her forehead instead. He settled for winking at her. “Is it working?”

She threw up her hands. “For rent this low, everything we look at may be a dump. You need to understand my financial situation. I can’t afford a palace.”

“Be patient. We’ll find something that is at least
safe
. Something, maybe, that I can work on to make better.”

“I can’t allow you to do that. You’ve done too much for us already.”

“You, Ms. Banning, are not in charge of my life. I make my own decisions. Are you reading me loud and clear?”

She burst out laughing, and it was a glorious sight to behold. Her eyes danced. Her face flushed and seemed to glow.
Shit
. He was falling head over heels for a woman who didn’t even
like
him much yet.

After they returned to the truck, Amanda said in a flat, toneless voice, “There aren’t any more I can afford.”

“Tomorrow always comes!” Jeb grinned at her. “Am I really so bad you can’t wait to get away from me?”

Chloe chimed in from the backseat. “I don’t want to get away from you, Mr. Jeb. I don’t think Mommy means it that way.”

Amanda’s lips quivered as she struggled to suppress a smile. “You are exactly right, Chloe. And Mr. Jeb knows that isn’t what I meant.” To Jeb, she said, “It isn’t about
you
. It’s about
me
. I need to make it on my own. Mark constantly told me I’d
never
survive if I left him, and believe me, I had a thousand good reasons to do so. Now I’ve done it, and I need to prove him wrong. Can you understand that?”

“Yep, I get it, honey.” He wished he could bite off his tongue. “Amanda, I mean. I get it, but is it necessary for you to manage with absolutely
no
help?”

“Yes.”

Thinking fast, Jeb said, “Over the last few days, I’ve spent a small fortune on supplies for my neighbors. Most of them offered to reimburse me, but I wouldn’t take
their money. In years past, they helped others, expecting nothing in return. The men cut and chopped wood, then delivered it to people who could no longer do it themselves. The women baked and then delivered the goods to those in need. They cleaned homes for free. If a toilet plugged, the women showed up with plungers, and if that didn’t fix it, they called their husbands. Now, those who are ill or elderly are calling in their chips. They once did it for someone else, and now someone else is doing it for them. In Mystic Creek, that’s how things work.”

“You’re describing a town where everyone loves each other. That isn’t reality.”

“It isn’t the reality here, either,” Jeb confessed. “Do you think I
like
Lucy and Ethel?” Remembering his decision to create a list of hen names, Jeb almost said
shit
out loud. He’d forgotten to work on it this morning. “They’re bossy. They follow me around like supervisors. They
do
say thank you, but they haven’t offered to reimburse me for a dime. And they call me
sonny
. I keep expecting one of them to grab me by the ear.”

Amanda was clearly struggling not to laugh, and Jeb deliberately pushed her over the edge so he could see her face light up again. “The only
nice
thing about them is that they have Herman’s ashes on a shelf with candles lighted all around his urn.”

That did it. And this time when she laughed, she was so taken by surprise that she snorted. “Who was Herman? Not a husband. You said they never married.”

Jeb returned his attention to the road. “Herman is a long-since-deceased cat. They have pictures of him everywhere. He was a fat tuxedo with long white eyebrow hairs and whiskers. Their devotion to a pet is about all I can find to like about them.”

From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Amanda closing her eyes. “Do you think they ever made rounds during a storm to help their neighbors?”

“I doubt it,” Jeb replied. “But I helped them anyway, because in Mystic Creek that’s how things are done. Help with no paybacks.” He paused. “I work with saws. If I cut off all the fingers on my right hand and I need help, who will I call?”

“Your mother.”

He grinned. “Okay, you’ve got that right. The
point
is that I’m hoping I could call you instead, and that you’d show up to take care of me.”

Now he saw a tear slipping down her cheek.
Damn
. He almost drove into the ditch.

“I will,” she murmured. “If you ever need me and Chloe, we’ll be there. I promise.”

Jeb hadn’t intended to make her cry. “Bargain, sealed without a handshake. We all need help sometimes. I admire someone who’s proud. I think all of us need at least
some
pride. That said, too much pride can be a bad thing. I count you as a friend now.”
That was good, another rabbit out of his hat
. “I hope you count me as one of yours. Bottom line is, you’re in a mess right now. You were doing great until this storm struck, but now you do need a little help. It’s not like the storm was your fault, but it’s left you without a home. I care about you two. Are you reading me loud and clear?”

She nodded. “Like bold print.”

*   *   *

When they got home—and it worried Amanda that she’d fleetingly thought of it as
home
—they made their way over the treacherous ice to the front porch, with Jeb, wearing shoe chains, holding Chloe’s hand, and Amanda
carrying the pillowcases filled with their belongings. She couldn’t
wait
to check the SD card to make sure that it had survived the storm. Without it she would have no proof of what Mark had done to her little girl.