Chapter Seven
Sunny reminded herself she was merely doing what Addie Pearl and Sawyer had suggested she do. After all, it would be foolish not to make sure she’d legally covered herself. She was being wise. Mature.
She’d been telling herself some variation of that explanation since she’d left Old Town early that morning. Never mind she could have simply mailed the documents to Addie or Sawyer. She didn’t have to hand them over personally.
She’d made an appointment with the estate lawyer the day after the surprise visit from the Blue Hollow Falls contingent. She’d done so mostly because it was the smart thing to do, but also, admittedly, because it had given her something to do during her non-work hours to keep her mind from incessantly replaying the last thing Sawyer had said to her by the food truck.
Epic fail there.
She shifted her thoughts willfully to Bailey. Sunny couldn’t tell during their visit to the Botanic Garden if Bailey was any happier than she had been that day at the courthouse, but the interplay she’d seen between the young girl and Sawyer had looked like a step in the right direction.
Regardless of whatever Sunny’s hormones wanted her to think about Sawyer, she did believe him when he said he’d stand by Bailey and that he was open to whatever kind of relationship they developed. When Sunny took everything he’d told her that day and coupled it with what she’d learned about him by doing her own digging, there was nothing to indicate he was anything other than what he appeared to be. A stand-up guy with a big heart who’d given himself in service to his country, and now to his hometown, and to his family, both old and new.
If Sunny were being honest, she’d admit she felt a bit guilty about that last part. There he was, being all big brotherly despite the fact that Addie had more or less dumped the girl in his orbit without conferring with him first, and he wasn’t even biologically related to her. Sunny, on the other hand, was Bailey’s actual half sister, and what was she doing? If anyone should be making an effort to help give the girl a sense of family, it should probably be her.
Since gaining her inheritance and a new family along with it, Sunny had excused herself from getting involved because of the distance thing. Addie and Sawyer were right there with Bailey, after all. But that was an excuse. One made more to soothe her own guilt than because she thought she had no role to play.
To that end, in addition to getting the paperwork properly signed while she was there, Sunny planned to work out a date for Bailey to come visit her in Old Town. It was a baby step, Sunny knew that, but she didn’t know how else to begin. Heck, she wasn’t even sure Bailey would want to come visit her. She had seemed interested enough to ask questions during the Botanic Garden tour, though, so Sunny hoped that might be a point in her favor.
She turned off the two-lane road that doubled as the highway in the mountainous part of the state and started up the narrower winding road that led higher into the mountains. She’d admittedly been looking forward to the chance to drive the corkscrew switchbacks along Big Stone Creek again, letting her little six-speed do what it was engineered to do, bobbing and weaving smoothly through the curves while she alternately downshifted and accelerated to get the most out of every bend. As she let herself go, let herself slide into the rhythm of car and road, she marveled at how much more colorful the forest had become in the three weeks since her last visit.
It was the middle of October now and the lower elevations were pushed almost to peak color. She knew that when leaves began to turn, the speed with which they went through the variations of their color spectrum, to when they finally fell, was impacted by a number of different factors, not the least of which was specific to the genetic makeup of each particular plant or tree. The unseasonably warm weather had slowed the transformation a bit, but at the lower elevations, the colors had already come in beautifully, and as she climbed higher and higher into the hills, she noted the color had crept up almost to the highest peaks now. How wonderful it must be, she thought, to watch the transformation up close and personal, like Addie and the other folks who lived in the Hollow got to do, year in and year out. The tapestry before her as she left the deep woods and entered the first high pasture was simply breathtaking. Once again, she felt her heart simply fill up with awe of the beauty of nature.
Of course, the second she plunged again into heavy forest where the view was restricted by the big oaks and soaring pines, her thoughts zipped right back to Sawyer. Nothing new there!
Yes, she’d been attracted from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, but, unlike the very flirty and charming Seth Brogan, she certainly hadn’t seen any of that same sort of reaction from Sawyer. She’d done her best to hide the direction her thoughts had taken and had thought she’d been pretty successful. For his part, he hadn’t seemed to be having that same struggle at all. And he’d known all along they weren’t related.
The thing was, it had been bad enough when he’d been biologically verboten. Worse still was that moment when she’d learned he was fair game. It was like both of her X chromosomes had instantly burst into a happy dance. No waving aprons needed.
However, all that had been utter child’s play as it turned out. Because things had gotten downright squirming-inside-her-clothes hot when Sawyer had made it clear his XY’s were doing a little chromosome dance of their own.
Because she hadn’t already been on fire before that.
It was bad enough she’d read his service history and knew he was a war hero. He was also being an utterly adorable big brother to Bailey. Then he had to go all Taylor Swift dance mode at the food truck, and try as she might to feel embarrassed by his little hip-wiggling boogie, what she had been was amused. And charmed. The man did not give a flying fig what others thought of him, and for a girl sporting five names, that was an appealing attribute.
“And now you’re heading straight back into the self-proclaimed bad boy’s lion den for round three!” Except, she reminded herself, this time she’d come to put an end to all future rounds. Sawyer liked things to be controlled and in order? “Well, then, he should love this.”
She had thought she’d take a little drive around, see if she could find the actual town of Blue Hollow Falls, but she’d waited too long to plug the little town into her GPS and hadn’t had signal now for close to a half hour. So she went straight to the mill the way she’d come in before. Then almost wrecked her car as the mill came into view.
“Holy mother of muscles and sweat,” she breathed as she somehow managed to swing into the same spot as before and cut the engine all while staring. There might have been a little drooling involved as well. Stevie, you’re going to be so mad at me.
Stevie had offered to tag along for moral support, and because she was dying to get a look at the old mill—as well as another gander at Sawyer and high hopes for a Seth sighting as well. Sunny hadn’t been sure how the meeting would go, though, and wanted to keep things simple. Plus, she’d yet to confide in Stevie about the whole food truck conversation, and she honestly didn’t know how she was going to hold up to seeing Sawyer again. So she’d told Stevie they’d go together another time, but they’d both known that was an empty gesture, since Sunny had also honestly stated that she didn’t know if or when she’d be going back to Blue Hollow Falls again.
“But I might be persuaded to make it a regular event if the scenery is going to look like that,” she murmured. And she wasn’t looking at the fall foliage. “It’s like I died and went to lumberjack heaven.”
There were three men up on the roof of the mill, and another half dozen scattered around on the grounds around it. Some were climbing up and down the scaffolding that now braced part of the outside wall, while others were running wheelbarrows back and forth filled with what she assumed were shingles. Or they were hoisting said shingles up the scaffold to the roof. All of that apparently required lots of glistening muscles to be bunching and flexing.
When she finally peeled her attention away from the man parade, she noted with some shock that a lot had happened in three weeks. The rusted, damaged tin panels that had once comprised the roof of the mill were gone. Only a small part of the wood frame was still exposed, and it appeared to have been largely rebuilt. The overall shape of the roof remained, as did the large cupola in the middle, but whereas it had been tin paneled before, the new roof had been fully reconstructed using . . . were those slate shingles? She snagged her phone and used the zoom on the camera. Yep. Blue slate shingles.
The former tin roofing, though showing deterioration, had been in keeping with the style and history of the mill, but the stone shingles lent it an entirely different look that was both rustic and beautiful. Set in the tableau of the fall foliage with the waters of Big Stone Creek rushing over the boulders next to it . . . simply gorgeous. She could see the place becoming a destination just for photographers alone. She imagined the setting with snow covering the banks and topping the low-stacked stone wall that surrounded the mill, maybe smoke curling from the two stone chimneys. It would have a distinct beauty in all four seasons.
Along with Addie, Sawyer, and the Bluebird Crafters Guild, Sunny had also Googled the mill itself, but there hadn’t been much historic information available on it other than a brief newspaper story about the mill being shut down that had been reprinted as part of a bigger story on the history of silk production in the States. That had pulled her right down a rabbit hole where she’d ended up reading a great deal more about the history of silk production and silk mills in the British colonies. All fascinating stuff, particularly from a horticulture perspective. She’d read more about the bombyx mori moths and mulberry trees and thought how interesting it would be to actually explore the origins of silk production. She couldn’t help but wonder if there might not be a better way to go about producing the desired result now, with all the advances that had been made in growth technology.
Sitting there now, seeing the mill coming to new life right before her eyes, she wished she could have seen the place as it had been originally, but she made a mental note to get Addie to send her photos of it when it was all completed. Or . . . maybe she’d bring Stevie back after all. Given she’d made that promise. Kill two birds.
Which brought her attention right back around to the men.
She’d spotted Seth as one of the workers on the roof immediately. His beard made him an easy one to ID. Sawyer was up there, too, along with another man she’d never seen before. Seth had on the same ancient fatigues, this time with a long sleeved green T-shirt and another heavier plaid shirt tied around his hips. His hair was in a single plait down his back today and between that, the beard, and those shoulders of his, he looked like some kind of Norse god as he tossed slate shingles up the steep incline of the roof to the other man, the one Sunny hadn’t met. That man was catching and stacking them as if they were tossing around paper clips. He had dark hair that was a little on the shaggy side, and wore old tan canvas khakis and a blue Henley that hugged his lean muscled chest and ropy shoulder and arm muscles like a lover. But even with all that eye candy tempting her, once her attention snagged on Sawyer, she forgot all about the others.
He had on old worn jeans that snugly fit his thighs, which looked even bigger with the knee pads he had on. He was down to yet another filthy T-shirt that might have once been white, but Sunny didn’t give a damn. He was kneeling on the roof, straddling the peak, hammering the shingles into place. Back in the city, the temperatures had steadily fallen in the past week, marking the end of the Indian summer they’d been experiencing, but had still hovered in the upper sixties to low seventies. Three hours south and west, but a few thousand feet higher in elevation, the thermometer reading on the dash of her car said it was a much brisker fifty-two degrees. That said, the sky was a blistering blue and the sun beamed directly down on the roof and the dark slate shingles Sawyer was nailing into place. All three men were sweating like it was the middle of July. Which made that old T-shirt cling to Sawyer’s sculpted torso like a second skin.
From the safe confines of her car, she zoomed in with her phone camera and watched in guilt-free, rapt pleasure as he swung his hammer, driving in nails like a machine, one after the other, again and again. Her thoughts glided quite effortlessly to what he must be like in bed, pistoning those lean hips of his in that same methodical rhythm, muscles bunching, flexing, sweat glistening, as he drove himself into the warm, willing softness of her—
A rap on her window made her squeal and jump at the same time, and sent her phone flying into the passenger seat then bouncing down into the foot well. What is it with people around here banging on the windows of my car? Heart galloping, and her face not a little flushed, she turned and saw—
“Bailey?” Sunny pressed the ignition switch then quickly lowered her window. “Hey,” she said, trying mightily to regroup as quickly as possible, but even she heard the breathless quality to her voice. “You startled me,” she said with a laugh in a lame attempt to cover her reaction. “I was just coming to see you and Addie. I got caught up in all the changes to the mill. Wow, huh?”
The young girl looked over at the mill, and Sunny noticed her gaze went up to the three men doing the assembly line shingling of the roof. She looked back to Sunny, then to where her phone had landed, then back to Sunny, but her expression was, as always, unreadable. If she’d had any inkling what had been going through Sunny’s mind, she didn’t show that either. Sunny had to remind herself the girl was only ten years old. But looking into those bright but sober blue eyes, she wasn’t so sure what Bailey might understand, even at such a tender age. Sunny certainly had been well ahead of the maturity curve when she’d been that young.
“I want to show you something,” Bailey said. “Before you talk to Addie.”
Surprised, and more than a little intrigued, Sunny nodded. “Okay, sure.” She’d been about to tell Bailey she’d taken the following day off, so she had plenty of time before or after her meeting with Addie and Sawyer to go traipsing about with Bailey, but decided it was better to keep that bit of information to herself. If she needed a reason to cut and run, work was a handy excuse.
Opting to leave the paperwork in the car, and her purse along with it, she closed the window, grabbed her phone from the floor, and her key fob, then climbed out and clicked the lock button. “Where to?” she asked with a smile.
Bailey looked her up and down, her opinion of Sunny’s choice of ankle-high black leather lace-up boots, black jeans, a thin, pearl gray sweater, and a deep red pea coat was neither approving nor disapproving. “Do you have gloves?”
“Gloves?” Sunny repeated. “It’s a little chillier up here but I really didn’t think—where are we going?”
Bailey motioned to the woods to the left of the lower lot. “Back that way. Not far, but it’s colder in the trees. Mostly pine, so not a lot of light getting through.”
Sunny followed her gesture, and recalled the last time she’d been here. It was the same direction she’d seen Sawyer and Bailey head off when they’d left the mill as she’d driven away. “Let me see what I’ve got.” She moved to the back of her car and popped the hatch. Smiling, she came up with a pair of blue rubber gloves that were standard issue at work. “Well, it’s better than nothing.”
That got a hint of a smile from the girl. “Actually, those are good,” she said. “You don’t happen to have any clippers or anything, do you?”
Now Sunny frowned. “What kind of clippers?”
“Never mind. Come on.”
“Wait, does Addie know where—”
“She knows,” was all Bailey said before heading off in the direction she’d pointed to before.
Sunny closed the hatch and hit the lock button again, then happened to glance up to the roof of the mill and caught Sawyer looking straight down at her. How he’d heard her hatch slam shut over all the other ruckus, she couldn’t be sure. Maybe he just felt the scorch of your hot and steady stare. She shushed her little voice and lifted her hand, waved. When he frowned slightly before waving back, she realized she was holding the blue gloves in her waving hand. Aprons, gloves, what will you wave at the man next? Certain other garments instantly came to mind, all of them made out of silk and lace, causing her to abruptly tuck the gloves into her jacket pocket and her prurient thoughts along with them.
Proving to herself that she was going to handle this situation with Sawyer in a mature, rational, and completely neutral manner, she gave him a friendly little salute, which earned her a wide grin in return, along with a hooting hello from the Norse god. So much for being Switzerland.
Ignoring the flush currently heating up her entire body, she hurried to catch up with Bailey. She swore she could feel Sawyer’s gaze zeroing in on her retreating back. Talk about scorching.
She caught up with Bailey just as the young girl entered the woods. “Wow,” Sunny said, as they entered the cool glade. “It’s beautiful in here.” The undergrowth was gone here, as little to no sunlight made it through the canopy of high pine boughs. Beds of yellow pine needles, gray twigs, fat little charcoal brown pine cones, and fallen branches framed the trail that Sunny knew had likely been created by the deer in the area. They were creatures of habit and tended to follow the same course, changing only when forced change by fallen trees or shifts in water flow patterns of creeks and streams jammed with fallen foliage. She knew this because of her studies, not because she was the outdoorsy, hiker type. A fact that was becoming quickly and painfully clear; the little lace-up boots she wore were designed to look cute with her skinny jeans, but comfortable for hiking? Not so much.
The trees were a bit sparser the deeper they went, allowing the sun to cast beams of light through the high boughs, as if lighting their way. “Kind of magical,” she added, as she trailed along behind Bailey. “When I was little, I started creating a garden in our tiny backyard in Alexandria. I liked to pretend there were fairies and elves living there. I even made a few little houses and some rustic patio furniture.”
Bailey glanced back over her shoulder attentively, but didn’t say anything to that.
They hiked on a few more silent minutes, and Sunny tried again. “You seemed to know a little about llamas. Have you worked with other farm animals? Or horses maybe? I wanted a horse like nothing else when I was younger, but we couldn’t even have a dog or a cat, so I knew that was never happening.” Not to mention there had been no budget for pets, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Bailey went on a few steps, then slowed and waited for Sunny to catch up. “You never had a pet? Ever? Not even a fish or something? Are you allergic?” She said that last part with a tinge of disgust, as if allergies were a sign of weakness.
Sunny shook her head. “No, that wasn’t it. My mom was pretty sick most of my life. All of it, really. One of her problems was respiratory, meaning—”
“I know what ‘respiratory’ means. She couldn’t breathe right.”
Sunny smiled. “Yep. So—”
“You could have had a fish. Or a dog that doesn’t shed.”
Sunny nodded. “Could have, but it was just better all around that we didn’t.” She didn’t want to get into the particulars of some of her mother’s mental flights of fancy. At least, that’s how her mama had phrased them. Daisy Rose was often a delightful force of nature, but she had her issues, and not all of them were physical. So, even with the part-time care Sunny had eventually arranged while she was at school and, later on, at work, Sunny couldn’t trust that her mother wouldn’t get it in her head to set the fish free . . . or some other “live long and prosper” type thing she said her little voices occasionally coached her to do. Daisy Rose didn’t believe in any of nature’s wild creatures being kept in captivity, and Sunny often thought that included Daisy Rose herself.
To Sunny’s surprise, Bailey nodded and said, “I get that.”
Sunny wanted to ask her more, find out why she got that, get more of a feel for what Bailey’s life had been like up to that point, but figured it was better to let Bailey reveal things at her own pace. On the other hand, maybe a direct approach would let Bailey know that Sunny might understand more than her young half sister thought she did. Sunny had grown up in one place with one parent, but neither of their childhoods had been what anyone would consider normal. “Addie told me a little about your file,” Sunny told her, opting for the direct route. “I’m sorry you had to move around so much. I guess that made it hard to have a pet.”
Bailey shrugged, then turned and continued walking.
Sunny thought maybe her comment had been too frank, but then Bailey said, “I never thought about it. Not at first. None of the places I lived had any. It didn’t come up.”
Sunny knew there was a “but” in there somewhere, so she just said, “Yeah. I knew early on it wasn’t going to happen for me, either, so I didn’t let myself go there. Well, except about the horse, but, you know . . . horses. Hard not to want one of those.” Bailey said nothing to that, so Sunny went on. “I think that was why I did the fairy gardens. I wasn’t much of a doll or stuffed animal type person.”
Bailey glanced back at that. “Me, either.”
She didn’t look or sound sad about that, like she’d shunned dolls and stuffed animals for fear of letting herself get attached to anything. She’d said it much like Sunny had, as if it was just how she was. “Well, I still have that backyard. I live in the same house I grew up in. The gardens I started as a kid are a bit more elaborate now, but the fairy places are still there. You know, if you’d like to come see them, maybe hang out with me for a weekend or whatever, I’d like to do that. I was going to ask Addie today if we might work something out. If you’re cool with that, I mean.”
Bailey paused again, and Sunny almost bumped into her. She turned. “Really?”
Sunny looked down into those pretty blue eyes and saw not defiance or disbelief . . . but hope. And her heart teetered. “Really.”
“I’ll ask Addie,” Bailey said, then immediately turned around and kept on walking, maybe a bit more determined than before.
Sunny smiled, and walked on behind her. Baby steps.
“I had a goat,” Bailey said, almost in a rush, after another minute or two had passed in silence.
A more companionable silence now, Sunny had thought, and apparently she’d been right. “You did? At the farm you mean? Your last foster home?”
Bailey nodded, but kept trudging forward, her head a bit bowed now.
Sunny couldn’t have said what made her do it, but she caught up to Bailey and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, gently halting her, then immediately let go, feeling that she didn’t want to invade this girl’s personal space unless invited to do so. Bailey had so little control over her life, Sunny wanted to respect what control she did have.
She waited for Bailey to turn around. When she did, the young girl’s features were smooth. “It’s okay,” she told Sunny, as if guessing why Sunny had suddenly stopped her. “He’s fine where he is. He belongs to them anyway.”
“But he was yours, too?”
Bailey lifted a knobby shoulder and for the first time she looked exactly like the little girl she was. “I helped birth him. The Frasers—the family I was with—they raised pygmy goats. Little pains in the butts, really, they get into everything. But . . . you know . . . kind of cute, too.”
“I bet,” Sunny said, smiling. “You helped a mother goat with her baby? By yourself?”
Bailey shook her head. “No, Mrs. Fraser was doing the hard part, but she said I could help. I took care of the goats and she said when I proved myself, I could help with the babies.”
“Wow, so I guess you did that. Good for you.”
Bailey nodded. “It was totally gross,” she said. “But, you know, pretty cool, too.”
Sunny laughed. “My thoughts on birth exactly.”
Bailey looked up sharply then. “Do you have kids?”
“Oh, no. No, I don’t. But I had a friend when I was in college who had a cat she’d smuggled into her dorm room. I lived at home and commuted to school, but I happened to be there hanging out when the mama cat had kittens.” Sunny wrinkled her nose. “You described it pretty much exactly how I remember it.”
Bailey grinned then, and Sunny was struck again by how it transformed her face. She recalled hearing the giggle that Sawyer had somehow gotten out of her when they were walking along the Mall. She really hoped that this latest change in Bailey’s young life would bring more reasons to laugh. A lot more.
They both turned up the trail again. Sunny could see brighter light ahead and thought maybe they were going to one of the high meadows. Maybe to see some ancient mulberry trees or something. After all of her reading on the subject, she’d actually be really interested in doing that. As the path widened, she and Bailey fell into step together, side by side, and Sunny wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have checked with Addie or Sawyer personally before the two of them had taken off. What she knew of Bailey’s background led Sunny to believe the girl had been telling the truth when she’d claimed Addie knew about their hike, but they were going a bit farther than Sunny had expected.
Her thoughts went back to the goat, though, and the farm Bailey had been on before the inheritance had changed things. “Did you like the Frasers?”
Bailey nodded. “Yeah, they were okay.”
“I’m sorry you had to leave like you did. Did you get the chance to go back and say good-bye to them? I mean, you went back to get your stuff and all, right?”
“We did that,” Bailey told her. “Addie took me. We had to get papers signed. There was a lawyer, and we had to see Miss Jackson again.”
“Oh,” Sunny said, feeling suddenly and stupidly left out, realizing how much more there had been to Bailey’s transition than she’d realized. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask you that day you came to visit me.”
“No problem,” Bailey said, and Sunny wondered how often she’d said that in her life.
“So . . . did you get to see your goat?”
She thought she heard a little intake of breath, and Bailey just nodded. Sunny stopped her again, only this time, she left her hand resting gently on Bailey’s shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Bailey. I—I guess I haven’t been very good about this. I just—it’s all new to me, too. But I do want to try,” and she realized as she said it, just how much she meant that.
“Your mom just died,” Bailey said. “I’m sorry for that, by the way. But I know you don’t want—”
Sunny crouched down. “It’s not a matter of want. I didn’t know what to even think about all of this. I’ve just been . . . trying to process everything, I guess. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know you, for us to know each other. I don’t know what we can be to each other, or what you want us to be, but I’m open to figuring it out.” She waited for Bailey to meet her eyes. “Cool?”
Bailey’s eyes weren’t watering, but that didn’t mean they weren’t swimming in emotion. Sunny felt her heart clutch tight in her chest when the young girl nodded. Bailey might play it like she was cool as a cucumber, and about a lot of things, probably she was. But at the heart of it all, she was just a kid. Sunny recalled that when she’d been Bailey’s age and the truth of how her life was going to be really began to hit home . . . she’d toughened up a great deal, too. And yet, if someone had stepped into her world, like a Sawyer or maybe an older half sister . . . she’d have been hard-pressed not to let those walls crumble a little bit either. Hope was a hard thing to quash, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Not at all.
“I can’t pretend to know what it was like, living how you have so far,” Sunny told her, deciding if the two of them were going to build anything, there had to be a solid foundation of honesty and trust. Without that, anything they constructed would be flimsy at best. “Just as most kids couldn’t comprehend what my life was like, taking care of my mom the way I did. But I didn’t care if they understood. I just cared that they wanted to be my friend, regardless of what my life was like.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “I get that.”
Now Sunny’s eyes were swimming in emotion. “I want to hug you, and tell you it’s all going to be okay, and at the same time, I don’t want you to get your hopes up about things I can’t control. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone telling me that when I was your age.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, and Sunny let her hand fall away, respecting that this was a lot for Bailey, too. “I’m good. Addie is nice.” She looked around, then back at Sunny. “It’s good here.”
“Did you have friends at school, where you were? Do you want them to come visit you here? Has Addie talked about school here?”
“The Frasers homeschooled. She had two older kids. It was okay.”
“Will Addie homeschool you here then? Does Blue Hollow Falls even have a school?” She’d yet to see the town itself, but she couldn’t imagine it was of any real size.
Bailey shook her head. “I had to go to the elementary school down in the valley—it’s the closest one to here—and take some tests so they could figure out what grade to put me in. And we had to get the papers done first before she could enroll me.”
“Oh,” Sunny said, “well, that’s good. I hope, anyway. You can meet kids your own age.”
Bailey didn’t say anything to that, which Sunny understood all too well. Making friends was dangerous, but much yearned for territory. And Sunny hadn’t had to change schools every year, either.
“They said I could go in at a grade above my age, but Addie said it would be better for me to stay with kids my own age.”
“What do you think?”
Bailey just shrugged.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was in grade school,” Sunny confided. “I have a weird name and I was different. My mom was what they used to call a hippie, and I wasn’t dressed like the other kids.”
“What’s a hippie?” Bailey looked interested once again, and maybe relieved not to be talking about herself.
“Well . . . I don’t really know how to explain that. She lived on a—” Sunny broke off, thinking a commune wasn’t something she wanted to try to explain to a ten-year-old. “A kind of mountain farming community. Everyone worked together and lived together and they grew and raised their own food and lived off the land. They tended to favor tie-dyed clothes and handmade things and . . . you know, I can’t really explain it. But it was an alternate lifestyle that kids in the city definitely did not get.”
“Your name’s not weird,” Bailey said.
Sunny smiled. “My full name is Sunshine Meadow Aquarius Morrison Goodwin.”
That got a reaction out of the otherwise unflappable youngster. “Whoa. That’s like a crazy bunch of names. Really?”
Sunny pulled her phone out of her coat pocket and opened the wallet side of the phone case. She slid out her driver’s license. “Really,” she said, handing it to Bailey.
Bailey took it and looked at the front. She looked back to Sunny. “Do all hippies have five names?”
Sunny laughed, shook her head. “My mother had six. She chose hers when she was eighteen. She chose mine, too.”
“Why didn’t you change yours then?”
“Oh, I planned on doing that, believe me. But by the time I got old enough, I had decided to own it instead. It’s part of who I am, part of my heritage.”
Bailey handed the license back, but didn’t say anything. Then she blurted out, “My middle name is Danielle.” She made a face. “I’m not a fan.”
Sunny snorted out a surprised laugh at the attitude. “I’m not laughing at the name,” she quickly added. “I think it’s pretty. I do.”
“It’s kind of . . . foofy,” Bailey said. “You know, like a frilly doll name.”
“Well, if you wanted, you could go by Dani. But one thing I learned is that you get to go through almost your whole life once you’re an adult without having to tell anyone your middle name.” She smiled. “Even if you have three of them.”
Bailey smiled a little at that, nodded.
“You know, that day you came to visit? My co-worker Stevie and I had just that day shared our middle names, and we’ve worked together and become really good friends now for well over a year.”
“What’s her middle name?”
“Aretha.”
Bailey wrinkled her freckled nose. “Is that even a name?”
Sunny laughed. “Yes. It belongs to a really famous singer, actually.”
“Well, she is a pretty good singer, so I guess that makes sense.”
“You know, I guess it does,” Sunny said, and pushed up to a stand. “I know this all has to be a lot to take in,” Sunny told her. “But I think everyone is trying to do right by you. Addie and Sawyer definitely stepped up more than I did, but I will do better.”
“It’s okay,” Bailey told her. “I’m—”
“Good,” Sunny finished for her with a smile. “I know. You’re also a kid who needs a family she can stay with until she figures out what she wants to do on her own. I think you have that family now, or at least the foundation for one. Doesn’t mean it will be easy, or that starting all over again doesn’t suck.”
Bailey glanced at her then.
“You know you don’t have to be okay, or good,” Sunny said. “Not all the time.” When Bailey frowned, as if confused, she added, “What I mean is, you can tell us when you’re not okay, when you’re mad, or frustrated, or when you want to do something differently. You might not get what you want, but it’s okay to speak up.”
When Bailey didn’t react to that pro or con, Sunny smiled and added, “Sawyer told me he was a holy terror as a kid—his words—and Addie hung on to him. I’m not saying go full-on holy terror, but you can go full-on Bailey, and be yourself. She’ll hang on to you, too. We all will.” Sunny had no idea what it was she was actually promising, only that she’d be true to her word in every way she could. For all that she’d finally found her freedom from family responsibility and wanted to revel in it, possibly forever, being Bailey’s sister didn’t feel like a burden to her. It felt like . . . a new beginning. A good one.
She tucked her license back in her wallet and fished out one of her business cards. “I know this is formal looking and all, but it has my e-mail and my cell phone number on it. So you can always get to me, no matter what.”
Bailey took the card, looked at it, then back at Sunny. “Thanks,” she said, and stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans.
Sunny wasn’t sure if Bailey was just being polite, or what she thought of the speech Sunny had just made, and decided it didn’t really matter at the moment. What mattered was she’d made sure Bailey knew she could reach out and had given her the tools to do so. More baby steps.
“We’d better go,” Bailey said. “It’s right up there.”
Sunny tucked her phone back in her pocket and gave her a quick salute, much as she had Sawyer. “Lead on, Bailey Dani.”
Bailey glanced up, the smirk on her lips almost a grin. “Right,” she said, adding more quietly after she’d turned and gone a few steps, “Sunshine Meadow,” the humor in her voice, clear as a bell.
Sunny hadn’t thought about the plusses that might come with having family. She’d only fretted the minuses. For all that she’d worked so hard to maintain a positive attitude toward her caregiver role, she hadn’t succeeded as well as she’d thought. Because, at that particular moment, she felt awash in happiness, and joy, and she was a little stunned by that. The prospect of befriending a smart-beyond-her-years, ten-year-old girl suddenly didn’t seem so fraught with potential danger signs and lifestyle restrictions. In all of her pondering about what she should or shouldn’t do where her newly discovered baby sister was concerned, never once had it occurred to her that Bailey might be giving something of equal or even greater value back to her.
They got to the edge of the woods just then and Sunny stepped behind Bailey out into a small clearing filled with overgrown wildflowers that the warmer than average fall weather had kept from going to seed far longer than usual. Bailey didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to.
Sunny couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to, because all the air had gone out of her on one stunned gasp. She took a small, almost stumbling step around Bailey and moved forward until she was standing in the middle of the hip-high meadow growth. It was both haunting and stunning, and for the second time in a row, this visit to Blue Hollow Falls had shown her something that left her utterly awestruck and speechless.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Bailey said, her voice hushed, as if the structure in front of them warranted a certain reverence.
Sunny nodded, agreeing on the sentiment, and the tone in which Bailey had delivered it.
In front of them stood an enormous, horribly dilapidated and long abandoned, yet utterly stunning glass and wrought iron greenhouse.
“I thought you’d want to see it.”
Sunny couldn’t tear her gaze away long enough to even glance at Bailey, could only nod again, still dumbstruck. Somehow, past the lump that had instantly filled her throat the moment she’d laid eyes on the place, she managed to say, “It’s unbelievable.” She let her gaze run over every detail of the place, from the triple row of leaded green glass panes that comprised the walls of the two long wings, to the ornate iron filigree work that decorated the huge central atrium. “Look at you,” she breathed, walking toward the green glass structure as if it was physically pulling her in.
Bailey ran ahead of her. “Follow me. I can show you where we can get in.”
Sunny should have questioned that. The place was in terribly bad shape. But she couldn’t shake the oddest sense of homecoming, though she’d never seen the place in her life.
Bailey went around the end of the right wing, then looked back and waved her hand, motioning Sunny to follow her.
Feeling as if she’d fallen into some kind of wild dream . . . Sunny did just that.