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  “I’m gonna sleep out here sometime,” he announced, looking around with satisfaction. “Maybe this year.”

  She had the feeling that this event depended completely on his willingness to brave the night out-of-doors on his own.

  “That sounds like fun,” Ann said. “I remember the first time I slept outside. My brother and sister and I pitched a tent in our front yard and camped out. I never knew there were so many sounds outside at night.”

  “Dad and me, we’ve listened to ’em,” Donovan confirmed sagely. Ann hid her smile, assuming that such listening might be the reason Donovan had not yet slept in his tree house.

  The screen door on the house creaked again, and Betty appeared on the porch. “Dinner in fifteen minutes, everyone.”

  Ann went up on her knees and waved at Betty, calling down to her, “Anything I can do to help?”

  “You and Dean can set the table, if you like,” she called back, squinting up at the shadows beneath the tree.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Dean said, starting toward the house.

  Ann looked at Donovan, winked and said, “We better go.”

  “Come on, Digger,” Donovan said, crawling to the exit. Ann followed.

  It was easier to stand going down the ramp than it had been going up. She trailed Donovan across the thick grass to the brick walkway, with its lovely herringbone pattern. Dean waited for her at the top of the porch steps, a tall tumbler of cool iced tea in hand.

  He nodded to Donovan, saying, “You go on in and wash up.” Passing the cool glass to Ann, he added, “You just relax out here. Company shouldn’t have to set the table.”

  “I don’t mind,” she told him, taking the glass.

  “It’s not too warm out here in the shade,” he said, nodding toward one of the rocking chairs as she took a long drink of the cold, sweet tea.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she gasped, feeling the icy coolness sweep through her. “Now, lead the way inside. I don’t mind helping out at all.”

  Dean’s jaw ground side to side, but he nodded and turned toward the door. She didn’t understand the issue, unless he really just didn’t want her here. He opened the screen and turned the brass knob on the interior door, pushing it open for her. She stepped straight into a long, narrow, pearl-gray room with a potbellied stove in the far corner.

  “Does that work?” Ann asked in surprise.

  “It does, but it’s a replica, a pellet stove. Grandma turned the original into a planter out back. That’s where she grows her herbs.”

  “How ingenious!”

  “You’d be surprised how much heat that pellet stove puts out,” Dean told her. “It really knocks down the utility bills in the winter.”

  “Interesting. It looks right in here, too.”

  He grimaced. “It’s all replicas in here because that’s the style Grandma likes. The dining room furniture, though, that was Grandma’s great-great-grandma’s, and she won’t part with it, no matter how much veneer falls off it or how wobbly it gets.”

  “Well, I don’t blame her,” Ann said, walking over to look at an old portrait in an oval frame. “Surely this isn’t a reproduction.”

  “No, no. That’s Great-Great-Grandpa Hayden. I almost named my son Hayden, but I wanted him to have his mother’s last name, Jessup, and one family name seemed enough for one tiny baby, so in the end I settled on Donovan.”

  “It’s a good name, Donovan Jessup Pryor. But I like Hayden, too. Maybe you can use it for your next child.”

  Dean looked positively stricken for a moment. Then he lifted a hand, indicating a door at the end of the room near the stove. “Um, this way.”

  They walked over a rag rug atop a gleaming hardwood floor. Ann noted delicate crocheted doilies and enameled chinaware atop colonial-style tables. Somehow, the flat-screen TV atop the buffet-cum-entertainment center in front of the humpbacked sofa managed to look intrinsic and cozy in the old-fashioned room.

  As they entered the dining room, Dean pointed to a chair placed against the wall and said, “Don’t sit there. It’s not safe. In fact, only the chairs around the table are sturdy enough to sit in.”

  Because there were five chairs around the table, Ann saw no problem. The size of the sideboard and china cabinet told her that the ornate, rectangular table was missing two, perhaps three, leafs. Ann went straight to the china cabinet, where Betty was setting out plates.

  “What a magnificent piece of furniture.”

  “It’s English,” Betty told her proudly. “Been in my family seven generations, eight now with Donovan. Great-Great-Grandpa Dilman Hayden bought it used for Great-Great-Grandma Rosalie at an estate sale in Boston. She gave it to her daughter, Mary Nell, who gave it to her daughter, Susanna, who gave it to her son, Arnold, who passed it down to me. Dean’s mother cares nothing for it, but his aunt Deana and I agree that it ought to go to him and then, hopefully, to Donovan or another of Dean’s children.”

  “Grandma,” Dean grumbled, “Ann’s not interested in our antiques or our family history.”

  “But I am,” Ann refuted brightly. “I think it’s beautiful furniture, and I love the history of it. I think you should have it completely restored.”

  “And how do you suggest we pay for that?” Dean snapped, his hand going to the back of his neck. “The last estimate we got was over a thousand dollars, so we’ll just have to make do. Or eat in the kitchen.” Betty sent him a troubled look.

  Too late, Ann realized that Dean might fear she would find his home and its contents below her standards.

  “We eat in the kitchen all the time,” she said with a shrug, setting aside her tea to carry the stacked plates to the table, “but if we had this table, I’d insist that we eat in the dining room, even if we had to sit on benches.”

  Glimpsing the triumphant smile that Betty shot Dean, Ann walked around the table, setting the plates, which were painted with delicate pink peonies and drooping bluebells, onto blue place mats. Dean brought around blue cut-glass tumblers and grass-green napkins rolled neatly inside brass rings adorned with pink china peonies.

  “It looks like a garden,” Ann said, stepping back.

  “Grandma likes her ‘pretties,’ as she calls them,” Dean commented, placing a set of brass salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table.

  “I can see that,” Ann told him, walking over to finger a ruffled doily beneath an impressive soup tureen on the sideboard. “My mother would have loved this place. I can almost see her here.”

  “Oh?”

  Ann nodded and put her back to the sideboard. “I didn’t get her domestic gene, I’m afraid, but I love the history of these things and the continuity of them.”

  “Aunt Deana likes modern stuff,” Dean said, trailing a finger along the edge of the table, “but I don’t mind the old stuff, so long as it’s serviceable.”

  “If you take care of things, then they remain serviceable,” she pointed out.

  “I do my best,” Dean said shortly.

  “I know you do.”

  Donovan came into the room with a basket full of hot biscuits. “Daddy, can I have a biscuit with butter? Please? It won’t ruin my dinner, I promise. Grandma says for you to come get the roast.”

  “I’ll get the roast,” Dean said, looking askance at his son, “and the butter. Ann, would you see to it that he gets into his booster seat?”

  “Happy to.”

  Donovan didn’t need help. He was sitting in his booster seat with an open biscuit on his plate before she could get the chair out from under the table. She shoved it back again while he picked around the edges of the steaming bread. Dean brought in the butter dish and the pot roast then went out again to help Betty carry in the vegetables and tea. Ann buttered Donovan’s biscuit and watched him quickly devour the thing, smacking his lips and closing
his eyes in ecstasy. Ann had to laugh.

  “He loves Grandma’s biscuits even more than Callie’s cookies,” Dean said, placing a pitcher of tea and a bowl of ice cubes on the sideboard.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Donovan agreed, licking butter from his fingers.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed anything that much,” Ann said.

  “Wait until she brings in the honey to go with the biscuits,” Dean said, leaning close to speak softly into Ann’s ear. Donovan caught the salient word, however, and crowed with delight.

  “Honey!”

  “After you eat your vegetables,” Dean dictated.

  Donovan wiggled excitedly in his chair and picked up his fork. Shaking his head, Dean walked around and pulled out a chair for Ann then did the same for his grandmother, who entered the room just then with a platter of vegetables to go with the pot roast. He took his own seat at the head of the table. Ann felt sure that he’d been occupying that chair since his grandfather had died. Dean had been all of, what, fifteen years of age then? As he clasped his hands together and bowed his head to pray over the meal, Ann recalled what her father had said about him.

  A man fully grown. That was how her father had described Dean, and as usual Wes was correct. Dean had been the owner of this property since the age of fifteen, and when he’d wound up a father at the age of twenty, he’d taken responsibility for his actions, listened to wise counsel, found a solution to his problems and gone to work, surrendering himself to Christ in the process. She, on the other hand, had been a Christian almost her entire life, the product of a loving, two-parent home, raised with every advantage, and she’d let petty insecurities drive her away from her home and the people who loved her most. She felt so foolish.

  There was grown, and there was mature. In some ways, Dean was much older than she was.

  It was time for her to actually grow up.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Come up! Come up! Come up and see my room,” Donovan urged. “I got the whole attic to myself. Don’t I, Dad?”

  “You do,” Dean confirmed, “but you know the rules. What do we do after meals?”

  “Clear the table,” Donovan announced. “I get the salt and pepper. And the butter.”

  “Just keep your fingers out of the butter,” Dean ordered with a chuckle, pushing the dish to the edge of the table so Donovan could reach it. “Then you can take the napkins to the laundry and put away the napkin rings.”

  Donovan ran off with the butter dish, while Dean began gathering plates and Betty started carrying leftovers to the kitchen. Ann didn’t ask what she could do, just began picking up glasses and cradling them in the crook of one arm.

  “You’re going to get your shirt wet doing that,” Dean complained. “We’ll take care of this.”

  “It’ll dry,” she rebutted easily. “I want to help.”

  Dean frowned, but he said nothing else, just led the way into the kitchen. The large, bright room surprised Ann. By far the most modern room in the house that she’d seen thus far, it boasted tall cabinets painted a soft yellow, mellow gold walls, brick flooring, a metal-topped island, a sweet little maple table and chairs, and white enamel stove unlike anything Ann had ever seen. It had at least three ovens and a grill and five burners. She left the glasses on the metal countertop and went straight to it.

  “I have never seen such a cookstove. Mom had something similar but not so big.”

  Betty grinned broadly. “Amazing, isn’t it? Built new in 1940. Milburn bought it used to restore, but he didn’t get it finished before he died. We didn’t have money for Christmas the year after he passed, but Dean managed to get this back in working order and all shined up like new for me. They don’t make them like this anymore.” She ran a hand lovingly over the gleaming enamel.

  “Mom said the same thing,” Ann told her, smiling at Dean.

  “A new stove like this costs thousands and thousands of dollars,” Betty said proudly.

  “It’s just an old stove,” Dean said, shaking his head.

  “It’s a work of art!” Ann exclaimed. “Believe me, I’ve seen hotel kitchens with less.”

  He shook his head again, but the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I believe you’re expected upstairs,” he said, waving her toward a door that opened into a hallway.

  “I am.” She smiled at Betty. “I understand that Donovan has the attic all to himself.”

  The older woman chuckled. “He was promised his dad’s old room when he started school. We made the move last week.”

  “Milestone after milestone,” Ann said.

  “And coming on fast,” Dean grumbled, leading the way.

  They passed a bedroom and a bathroom before they came to the narrow stairs. Two more rooms seemed to lay beyond, but he didn’t lead her that far down the hall. Instead, they climbed the stairs. Donovan waited halfway up.

  “This way! This way!” he called, as if another path might magically appear.

  There was no door. The staircase, surrounded by tall railings, opened right into the middle of the long, narrow space. A desk had been placed beneath a window at the end of the room. Donovan’s backpack rested atop it. A narrow bed had been tucked into the corner on one side of the railing, along with a dresser and chair. The other side of the room was basically one long wall of shelves and cubbyholes with a space at the end for a closet.

  Donovan twirled in the space before the desk, his arms outstretched, and cried, “Ta-da!”

  “Utterly perfect,” Ann pronounced, taking it all in. She looked at Dean, who remained on the stairs, his arms braced on the railings. “This was your room?”

  “Until I went to college,” he confirmed. “After Donovan was born, it was easier to be downstairs with him in the room next to me.”

  “I’m gonna live here forever!” Donovan exclaimed.

  Ann laughed. “It is a fun room.”

  She let the boy show her all of his most treasured possessions, including the photo album that he kept under his bed. He had photos of the mother and great-grandfather he’d never met, as well as his grandmother, Dean’s mother, whom he called by her given name, Wynona. Obviously Wynona had taken after her father, Milburn in looks, and so had Dean. Sadly, she didn’t seem to have inherited either of her parents’ sense of responsibility. Thankfully, Dean had.

  “Wynona comes around sometimes,” Donovan said offhandedly, closing the album with a snap. “Mostly it just makes Grandma mad when she does, though. I wish you could come on Wednesday,” he whined. “You know, just for the first time.”

  “Well,” Ann said, wrapping her arms around him as they sat there on the edge of his bed, “it just so happens that I don’t have to go to the city until Wednesday afternoon.”

  Catching his breath, Donovan tilted his head back and looked up at her. She winked, and he whooped.

  “Yippee!” Twisting, he threw an arm around her neck, toppling her onto the bed. Suddenly he scrambled up. “Hey, now I got a dad and a mom to take me. Well, sort of a mom.”

  Ann willed back a sudden rush of tears, smiled and said, “A substitute mom. A—a stand-in.”

  “Yeah.” He beamed. “A sustitude mom. I gotta tell Grandma!”

  He tore around the end of the railing. Dean stepped up out of his way, admonishing Donovan to slow down. Ann rose from the bed to follow in the boy’s happy wake, but she didn’t make it past his father. Dean lifted his hands to her shoulders, where they hovered uncertainly.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he said softly.

  “But I wanted to.”

  Sighing, he finally brought his hands to gently frame her face. She closed her eyes, feeling the sweetly magnetic pull that had only ever existed with this man, and willed him to kiss her. In the end, however, he kissed not her lips but her forehead. She tri
ed not to be disappointed, tried not to fear that he had thought better of an involvement with her now that he knew she was actually available. As she walked down those stairs, however, she knew that while she might be a very welcome substitute mom to Donovan, she had absolutely no reason to hope that she might one day be a beloved wife to his father.

  * * *

  Substitute mother did not equal wife. Dean reminded himself of that fact over and over again throughout the coming days and nights. He kept as busy as he could, which wasn’t difficult, given that he’d arranged to take off the rest of the week after school started, so he had lots to do before then. Both he and Donovan had some serious adjustments to make, and he wanted to be readily available if the school called to say that Donovan was having a difficult time. At least that was what he told himself. The truth was that he was dreading going back out into the field without his son at his side.

  He remembered what it had been like when Donovan was a baby. No one could be better suited to caring for an infant than Grandma Betty, but Dean had felt an irrational fear and resentment at having to be away from his son all day. He’d made a point of returning to the house for lunch just to hold and cuddle the miraculous little bundle of humanity that had so radically changed his life. As soon as Donovan was out of diapers—and that was earlier than with many children—Dean had started taking the boy with him.

  Those days were over now, and Dean felt as if his whole life had upended yet again. It was foolish to feel such emptiness just because Donovan was starting school. If he couldn’t handle this, what would happen to him when Donovan actually left home?

  He and Ann hadn’t discussed arrangements for Donovan’s first day of school. Dean had avoided doing so because he didn’t want her to know what a difficult time he had talking about it. Grandma had decided that she would be better off staying home; she didn’t want to cry in front of Donovan for fear he would conclude that school was a bad thing. Dean was feeling pretty emotional about it himself, though he could feign enthusiasm without tears. As for Donovan, he bubbled with excitement and at the same time felt obvious trepidation. Dean didn’t know which one of them was more pleased when they walked out the front door of the house on Wednesday morning and found Ann waiting for them.