Sleigh of Hope (4 page)

“I’ll take you to the mill on the weekends,” Duke told Leo, “but I want you to attend school during the week. You can go with Adam tomorrow.”

Duke was the kindest man Adam knew, but he had a way of saying things that left no room for debate. Not from Leo. Not from himself.

“Benny will be fine,” Faith assured him. “Cora and I will take good care of him while you work and go to school.”

Adam slanted a look at Leo, wanting to punch the boy for intruding in his home.

But Leo wasn’t gloating. He was fighting hard not to cry, just like he had when he saw Benny dressed in the warm clothes and shoes that Rebecca’s mother Evelyn had delivered. He hung his head and nodded. To agree? To thank them?

Adam didn’t know, but the whole conversation made him twitchy and uncomfortable.

“Da-dee-da!” Little slobber-face Benny sat beside Cora on the other side of the table, stirring his finger in the thick gravy Faith had poured over his chicken and biscuit supper. With a shriek of delight, he flapped his hand in the air. Drops of gravy flew across the table.

Adam and Leo wiped their faces in unison.

Faith hid a smile behind her hand, but Adam’s father released a belt of laughter that left them all grinning.

Cora mothered her little playmate, spoon feeding Benny after each bite she took of her own supper. The tender look on Faith’s face told Adam she loved having the little guy around.

His dad seemed as taken with Leo as Faith was with Benny.

So this was how life would go on – unless Leo
wanted
to live somewhere else.

He nudged Leo’s elbow. “I’m going to walk Scout. Want to come along?” he asked, needing some privacy so they could talk man-to-man.

“Sure.” Leo seemed to like the idea. “But I can’t keep Benny out in the cold too long.”

 Faith placed her palm over his rough knuckles. “You can leave Benny with me while you and Adam take your walk. Be sure to wear one of Mr. Grayson’s warm jackets when you go out.”

“What?” Adam immediately regretted his outburst. “I mean, I have a coat that Leo can wear.”

His dad arched an eyebrow as if he were still the sheriff searching for clues in an investigation. “I think your jacket will be a bit small for Leo. Is there a reason he can’t wear one of mine?”

“No, sir.” Adam squirmed. “I just thought yours would be too big for him.”

“It will be, son, but it’s the best we can offer him tonight.”

“That will suit fine, sir.” Leo shot a quick half-smile at Adam. “Thank you for offering yours. Can we take that walk now?”

Adam scoffed and asked to be excused. Hating Leo was impossible. This situation would have been much easier if Leo had punched him yesterday. Maybe then Faith and his father wouldn’t be fawning all over the boys.

“I’ll leave a pair of Mr. Grayson’s nightclothes for you in the watercloset,” Faith said to Leo. “After you bathe and wash your hair, leave your soiled clothes on the floor. I’ll wash them tonight and hang them by the wood stove so you’ll have clean clothes for school tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Adam rolled his eyes and pushed away from the table. This whole situation was getting out of hand with Faith and his dad doting on the boys.

Within minutes, he and Leo were bundled in warm coats heading toward Barker Common in the center of the village. Adam would have rather hiked Canadaway Creek, but in December it got dark outside before supper time.

Iron posts topped by bright gas lamps lit the Common and made it a good place to walk on a winter evening. But not many folks were out because of the blustery weather.

Scout sniffed every snowy mound and crevice across the twin parks. The hound’s frantic obsession made them both grin.

Leo gestured with his fuzz-covered chin toward the dog. “How long you had him?”

“Got him last Christmas,” Adam said, disgusted that he hadn’t seen one single hair on his whole face that needed trimming. Leo was probably shaving already.

“I’d like to get a dog someday.”

Adam had always wanted a dog, too, but until Duke Grayson came into his life it was just a
someday
wish. “Where’s your dad?” he asked, wondering why that man wasn’t taking care of his children.

Leo shrugged. “He left after my mother died. Haven’t heard from him since.”

Adam kicked through a small snow drift, feeling another bond with the boy. “My dad was supposed to be dead, but I met him last year.”

“Wait.” Leo stopped in his tracks. “Isn’t Mr. Grayson your father?”

“He is now. It’s a long confusing story.” Adam tugged his woolen cap lower to cover his chilled ears. “You planning to go to school like my dad says?”

“If that’s what I need to do to work the mill.”

“It is. It’s the same deal I get.”

Leo shoved his big hands deeper into the pockets of his borrowed coat. “I’d rather just work.”

“Me, too. I’d have a sock full of money by now.”

“If I could work every day I’d buy a nice house for me and Benny.”

Adam had a similar dream before Faith married Duke, but he kept that to himself.

“And I would rescue my friends from the orphanage and tell them they could live with me,” Leo said.

“Was the orphanage that bad?”

“For me it was.” Leo sighed, his breath swirling away like steam from a train chimney. “I stayed for Benny’s sake, but when three of my friends left, I took Benny and went with them. We hid in barns and chicken coops, but after three days of freezing and starving my friends went back. I couldn’t. I found your greenhouse and, well...” He shook his head as if he’d been defeated in a long hard fight. “I’m glad you found us.”

Adam nodded, feeling an odd sense of relief talking with someone who could truly understand what his own life had been like. “Before Duke married Faith, I wanted to work so I could buy us a nice house like the one we have now.”

“Were you homeless, too?”

“No.” He blinked a fat snowflake off an eyelash. “My family lived in the building across the street by the greenhouse. There were no interior walls when we moved in. We made furniture out of planks and barrels, slept on floor mats and mostly ate thin, meatless soup because we couldn’t afford anything else.”

Surprise filled Leo’s eyes, but Adam could tell that he would welcome any place where he and Benny could burrow in and keep the snow off their heads.

Suddenly that man-to-man talk about Leo and Benny moving out felt wrong.

Adam picked up a frozen snow-covered stick and threw it several yards ahead of Scout. His eager dog shot after it with a howling yelp that made them laugh and follow along. “You’ll like working at the mill,” Adam said, trying to lighten the mood. “We work real hard, but my uncles prank each other all day, so it’s fun to be around them.”

“How many uncles you got?”

“Three,” he said, feeling his chest expand with pride. “Uncle Radford is a war hero. He’s Rebecca’s dad and–”

“Wait!” Leo stared at him. “Is she your cousin? I thought she was your–”

“She is.” Adam stopped and faced Leo, intending to make it clear that this was one piece of his life he wasn’t sharing – even if it cost him a black eye, or worse. “We’re cousins by marriage, not by blood. She’s my girl and it’s going to stay that way.”

Leo stepped back and raised his palms as if to surrender the fight. “That was clear before you said anything, Adam. I was just trying to understand where everyone fit in your family.”

“Rebecca fits with me.”

“Understood.”

The tense moment had Adam’s heart pounding. No matter who challenged him, he would fight for Rebecca.

Leo lowered his hands and nudged him forward. “So what about your other uncles?” A half-grin slanted his mouth. “Am I allowed to be friends with them?”

“Of course, you dolt.” Adam kicked through a mushroom shaped mound of snow, feeling stupid for acting like a jealous dog with a bone. Rebecca wasn’t a bone to be fought over. But she was
his
girl and it was going to stay that way.

“My uncles are all tall and strong like my dad,” he said, glad to change the subject. “Uncle Kyle is sort of quiet, but he can pull some good pranks when he wants to. So can my dad and Uncle Radford. But my uncle Boyd is a real rascal and he causes the most trouble. Sometimes he makes us laugh so hard that none of us can work until we dry our eyes.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It is,” Adam said, knowing that some of the best moments of his life had been at the mill. “But it’s hard work.”

“I can do it. I hope I can start this weekend,” Leo said, his breath crystalizing in the frigid night. “I need to give your father’s coat back.”

Adam thought of the three dollars he had saved during the last year while working the mill, and he felt guilty for having so much when Leo and Benny had so little.

Chapter Three

W
hen Adam and Leo got home from school the next day, Scout greeted them at the door with his usual flurry of licking and jumping. Adam scratched his dog’s head and silently thanked him for being loyal – unlike his classmates who were all agog over Leo. The girls were smitten with him and the boys were in awe of his big arms and fuzzy chin.

Leo hadn’t seemed to notice any of it. He had sighed and fidgeted the whole day and seemed irritated by their slow stroll home.

Adam didn’t care. Their walk to school and back was often the only time he and Rebecca had to talk. He wasn’t hurrying that walk for anyone.

As he roughhoused with his dog, he noticed Faith in the parlor with their aunt Tansy and Anna Levens.

The parlor was Faith’s favorite room and she entertained there often. Duke had secretly bought the house and surprised Faith with it on their wedding day. His mother and sisters-in law had outfitted the room in a garden type setting they thought would appeal to Faith. His aunt Tansy had painted tiny green-stemmed wildflower bouquets of aster, bee balm, and forget-me-nots on the cream-colored walls. Adam liked the deep green parlor furniture and plush brown and gold rug. But it was the tan and buff drapes over the three large parlor windows that kept the room from looking too feminine.

The ladies were working on some sort of sewing project and talking in hushed voices. Whatever the women were discussing seemed private, but before Adam could courteously announce himself, Leo headed straight to the parlor. He scooped Benny into his arms and gave him a playful, growling hug, making the boy giggle. That Leo didn’t like his little brother being out of sight was embarrassingly obvious.

Tansy watched Benny and Leo with such a tender, wistful look on her face that Adam wondered what she was thinking. Tansy was one of four women who had become an honorary aunt to him and Faith and Cora while they were living in Syracuse. When Faith brought them to Fredonia, their aunts came with them. They were all unpredictable women in a fun sort of way, but Tansy was the really sweet one of the four.

The women greeted him and Leo with their usual warmth. Cora scowled, waiting impatiently for the return of her playmate.

Leo put Benny on the floor and bowed formally to Anna and Tansy, looking as if he were there to court them.

Adam burst out laughing.

“Adam Grayson!” His aunt Tansy tweaked his side in her playful manner. “Don’t you snicker at this boy’s impeccable manners,” she said, in her southern drawl that sugarcoated every word out of her mouth. It was especially funny to hear her say her married name Dahlin’ instead of Darling, which it became when she married Cyrus Darling, one of the Graysons’ mill hands.

Grinning, Adam leaned against the wide oak door frame that concealed another of Faith’s favorite things: eight-foot quartered oak pocket doors that could be closed for privacy.

Tansy patted the empty chair beside her. “Leo, sit and tell me how you came to be in Fredonia.”

His slightly panicked expression made Adam feel a little sorry for him, but he decided to let Leo squirm a bit. Besides, they couldn’t bolt from the parlor without being rude.

With a polite nod to Tansy, Leo perched on the edge of a wingback chair beside her. “Well, ma’am, my mother died and my father left Benny and me at the Orphan Asylum in Dunkirk. It was... I didn’t like it there, so I took Benny and walked to Fredonia. The barn we were sleeping in was too cold for Benny. I thought maybe the greenhouse would be warmer, so we went inside and... now we’re here,” he finished, shame and defeat in his eyes.

“Oh, my...” Tansy clasped her palm over Leo’s big knuckles. “That breaks my heart, dahlin’.”

Adam had heard Leo’s story, but it still made him feel bad, and it seemed to break Anna’s and Faith’s hearts, too.

Tansy sighed and shook her head. “It was fortunate you found your way to this loving home,” she said. It seemed she wanted to say more, but she just patted Leo’s hand. “When I heard you boys were here, I brought along a hat and scarf that I knitted a few weeks ago. I left them for you in the foyer. You’ll need to keep your ears warm at your new job. I hear you’ll be working with Adam at the mill.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Leo’s enthusiastic nod made Adam glad he had helped get Leo a job.

Now it was time to help him escape the women.

“What are you all working on?” he asked, not really interested, but feeling a sympathetic urge to save Leo from any more of his aunt’s fawning.