Delivery to the Farmhouse (Havenwood Cowboys Romance #4)

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

I worried the lane would still be muddied over the next day, but when I came downstairs—after returning the book to its place (yeah, I stayed up too late and read it in a few hours), Belle was reclined on the couch, wearing a yellow sundress with lace on the hem, and gave me the good news.

Or “bad news,” as she called it.

“Bad news?” I asked, taking the open space on the couch across from her. “Don’t tell me it’s still muddy.”

“The road should be dry enough for you to make it through,” she said, shaking her head.

“And that’s…bad news?”

“It is for me!” she said, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. “I was hoping you’d hang out here longer.”

“I can stay for a short while,” I said, feeling touched by her kindness all over again. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

I suspected she was lying on the couch because the morning sickness bug had struck again. From the way she grimaced, I was right.

“I’m fine,” Belle said. “Really. And if you need to go, don’t feel like you have to stay.”

My attention went to the window where my car was parked. “Actually, I should probably head out. I’m going to start job hunting today. Thanks for taking me in and for the clothes. I’ll get these back to you.” I wore the same clothes she’d loaned me after my shower the day before.

Belle waved me off, readjusting herself on the couch. “Take your time. I won’t fit in them for a while anyway. Oh—no?—”

Without warning, her eyes boggled. She bolted up from the couch, covered her mouth, and dashed toward the dining room and the bathroom beyond it.

Pacing the room in front of the fireplace, I waited until she was done. When Isaac’s wife had been expecting her kids, she’d gotten some ginger lozenges that helped with her nausea. On impulse, I opened up Amazon on my phone, did a quick search, and found a packet.

They were ordered by the time Belle stalked back into the room, looking pale. Someone else would probably be the one to deliver them to her house, but it would be a nice surprise once she got them.

“You okay?” I asked.

She winced and sank back onto the couch as though it was going to break beneath her weight. “I’ll be fine. Comes with the territory.”

We lingered, and then she smiled and lifted her face toward me. “You taking off, then? Job hunting?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just moved into my own place, and I have some unpacking to do as well.” I wasn’t going to tackle all of it. In fact, I planned on unpacking only what I needed to get by for now.

Because I wasn’t sure I was going to stay in Bridgewater all that long.

Belle sank back onto the couch. “I’d offer, but I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Really. Give me a call if you need anything. ”

“I will.” Rising from the couch once more, she pulled me into a hug. “Same to you, huh?”

“Sure,” I said, though I doubted I’d ask her for anything when she was feeling so miserable like this.

When I stepped outside and down the porch steps, the sun gleamed against the side of the barn. Barnyard sounds filled the air—goats bleating, chickens squabbling, and somewhere nearby, a horse nickered. I slowed, living in the moment. Existing, basking in the quaint beauty.

After drawing in a long breath of clean air mixed with flowers and the smell of animals, I trekked toward the gravel where my car was parked.

It only took a few steps, and when I reached for the driver’s side door, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t walk a little longer. I hadn’t felt this peaceful inside in months, and I really wasn’t in that big of a hurry.

That lonely, box-filled apartment was all that awaited me. That, and the unknown, as far as jobs went.

The mudhole was, in fact, dried enough to not eat my wheels. The drive down Belle’s lane was a lot easier this time, though it was still about a fifteen-minute trek to get back to Bridgewater proper.

It wasn’t long before I pulled into Dorothy’s driveway. The elderly woman was bent over in her garden wearing a large sun hat, but she rose and waved as I inched to a stop in my designated spot—a patch of concrete beside the garage.

“There you are!” Dorothy called, tucking her gardening gloves into the pocket on her apron and crossing the elegantly organized garden to me.

“Hi,” I said, heading toward the backseat and hoping I didn’t find any more unexpected surprises in there.

“I worried when you didn’t show up. Even more so when your mom didn’t know where you were.”

She’d contacted my mother to check in on me? I couldn’t decide if I was flattered or irritated by this. Leave it to a town like Bridgewater to have landlords check in on their tenants’ whereabouts.

Was no one entitled to a private life around here?

“You need some help?” she said, either not noticing my irritation or not caring. “Looks like you’ve got quite the load there.”

She pointed to the piles of blankets in my backseat.

“I can have Harold come out and?—”

“That’s sweet, but I’ve got it,” I said.

While I knew Dorothy fairly well, I didn’t know if her husband was the meddlesome type. In any case, I didn’t really want either of them in my space right now.

Dorothy smiled and stuffed her hands back into her gloves. “Okay, you just let me know if you change your mind and we’ll be right there for you.”

“I will,” I said. “Thanks.”

She turned back to her garden, and I opened my car’s back door, pulling the open-topped box out. I saw several last-minute items I’d stuffed in here—a few notebooks, a wooden box holding several seashells I’d gotten while at Dierke’s Lake when I was a teenager, and a stuffed animal from my childhood that I wasn’t ready to let go of yet.

The door to Dorothy’s basement apartment wasn’t far. I shuffled, trying to watch my steps past the box’s bulk, and paused. Juggling the box and working the key into the lock was more difficult than I banked on.

The box toppled.

“Oh, dear!” Dorothy darted across the green sprouts of what I assumed to be zucchini and began collecting the random items that were now scattered across her well-trimmed lawn. She snatched Plucky, my stuffed duck, and the two notebooks. And then her attention caught on my Anywhere binder.

Dang it .

“Here, I’ll take that,” I said, mortified, holding the box toward her.

“Anywhere But Here?” she said, reading the binder’s cover that I’d scrapped together when I’d first made the book.

Pictures of beautiful ocean views, celebrities who’d been popular at the time, TV shows I’d loved—all created a collage with the words ANYWHERE BUT HERE smack in the center using fat letters clipped from magazines.

“Yep,” I said, not wanting to go into more detail. “Sorry about this. I should have put the box down instead of trying to hold it and manage the lock.”

Especially since I had yet to unlock the door myself before today.

“Let me,” Dorothy said, taking the keys from me.

She worked the key and opened the door without a single issue. Then, she made her way to my car and without asking, collected the two plastic bags stuffed full of clothes and the handful of folded blankets Mom wanted to leave with me in her arms and preceded me down the narrow stairs.

Okay, then.

Before I knew it, we had everything cleaned out of my car. I thanked her, and she waved it off, returning to her garden. Two trips later, and I was by myself. Me and the boxes.

Oh, and the Anywhere But Here binder.

I wove through the boxes stacked here and there and sank onto the blue couch, holding the binder on my lap. I hadn’t looked at this in years.

The spine cracked as I opened its center. The older entries were far less organized, but I’d gotten scrappy as they went on. My heart swelled with nostalgia as I looked over notes I’d written and pictures I’d collected.

Living above the post office, my parents and I hadn’t gotten out much. We hadn’t done many family vacations. (Or any.) But my friends had, and they’d always told me how cool the places they’d seen were.

With every story—family trips to France, getaways to Disneyworld in Florida; one friend even went to Hawaii with her family after her oldest brother graduated from high school—it had awoken something in me.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. So I planned trips with full imagination, not holding anything back. I’d researched, explored, clipped pictures or printed them, and I’d kept every single one of them in this.

My Anywhere But Here binder.

My fingers trailed over pictures, details, histories on each location so I could appreciate it that much more once I finally got there. And itineraries. Every trip was set for a full month because that would give me time to really explore. I’d see the touristy highlights, yes, but I also wanted to get in on things only locals would know and appreciate, too.

“Greece,” I said, flipping the page to find a full-sized image from a National Geographic magazine. I’d watched Mamma Mia! , and it had kicked off this whole idea.

Then Scotland.

England.

Egypt, of course. And Rome, too.

I flipped through page after page, feeling a surge of anticipation I couldn’t name or explain course through me. This was another reason I didn’t want to move with my parents.

This book had it coming. I was going to pick one of these destinations.

But I wasn’t going for only a month. I was going there to stay.

I needed the cash to facilitate the move, though. Since I hadn’t been paying rent while living with my parents, I had savings. But I didn’t want to tap into it. Not until it was time to go.

That meant I needed something to live on until then.

“That’s why most of you are going to stay packed,” I told the boxes. “So don’t get any ideas. I’ll pull out what I need, but the rest? You’re all going to storage. Yes, you, books,” I said, standing from the table and stroking my fingers along the box with that label.

“Even you, dishes. And—wait. Maternity ?”

An exasperated noise left my throat. Was the universe trying to shove my loveless existence in my face? It was stuffing its thumbs in its ears and making Neener Neener noises at me.

I certainly hadn’t put that box in the U-Haul. It could have been a mistake, just like the box with Belle.

Or…it was Mom trying to give her little hints.

After Jensen had left, she’d told me not to lose heart. Not to give up. There was still someone out there for me. Part of the problem was that she knew how badly I wanted it, too: love. A family of my own.

I knew my mother a little too well. Just another one of her clues.

Dialing her number, I tapped FaceTime so I could show her what I was talking about. So she couldn’t play the innocent card.

“Hi, honey,” Mom said, her face filling the screen. “Dorothy said you never came home. Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “But I’m not sure what this is doing here?”

I fanned my phone toward the box in question.

“Oh, we meant to take that with us.”

Sure she did.

“Is that Nat?” Dad’s voice sounded from somewhere behind Mom. Then his face appeared. He gave me a goofy smile and a wave. My heart squeezed at the sight, and despite my current irritation, I smiled back.

“Dad, this box is labeled ‘ Maternity .’”

I doubted these had belonged to Mom. Since I was her last baby, and I was coming closer to my twenty-fourth birthday, this could have been Isaac’s wife. But why would she have stored her maternity clothes with us ?

It had to be Mom’s. Which meant whatever lay in this box was beyond out of style.

Then again, according to Taylor Swift, nineties trends were making a comeback…

Still, what did my sixty-eight-year-old mother need with maternity clothes?

“They were Larisa’s,” Mom said. “Chelsea didn’t want them. I heard that Belle Toby was expecting and thought she might like to use them. Sorry, forgot to mention it.”

Hm. Belle was the target, not me? Either way, it was still weird.

“You’re giving Belle my older sister’s maternity clothes?” I asked, resting my elbow against the stack of boxes.

“You’re not going to be using them anytime soon,” Mom chided.

“Unless you’re keeping a secret from us,” Dad said in the Most Awkward Way Possible.

Mortification was a very real concept at that moment, and for some reason, I thought of Colton Holden—the last person I should be thinking about right now. I didn’t know I could feel as though my face were sunburned so instantly.

“Of all the things you could have said right now, Dad,” I muttered, pressing a hand to my temple.

What would they do if I did tell them I was pregnant? Freak out. Lecture me about the hazards of sexual intimacy before marriage.

Like I had that problem.

“What? It’s possible,” he said.

He’s got to be kidding me right now.

“I need a man to get pregnant, Dad, and in case you didn’t notice, I don’t have one of those.”

I’d hoped Jensen would be the one—after we got married, of course—but he’d gone all betrayer on my heart and had ripped it out right in front of me last Christmas.

Don’t start singing that song , I told my brain .

“Not just a man. A marriage, too,” Mom said, wagging her finger at the phone. “Some people don’t seem to think that’s necessary anymore, but God’s word doesn’t change even if the world does.”

There was that little lecture I’d known would come.

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t give these clothes to Belle.”

“Whyever not?”

“I was just there delivering a package to her door. She’s already buying maternity clothes, Mom. And baby clothes. She has her own style; she’ll get her own things.”

Never mind the fact that her giving away these clothes—clothes that had been set aside for me, presumably, since my sister was so done having kids—implied that not only did I not need them right now, but I never would.

Giving away these clothes was like the final nail on my coffin of singledom.

“I don’t see the problem,” Dad said.

My throat went tight. I swallowed back the lump filling it. “What if I want these?”

He eyed me. “You said you weren’t even dating anyone.”

The nails just kept sinking in deeper. “You know what? Forget it.”

I’d probably never get married. I’d probably never need them. Farewell, hopes. Goodbye, dreams.

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling everything inside of me unravel one stitch at a time. “Did I think Jensen was going to propose to me last Christmas? Did he jam my heart into the nearest paper shredder instead?”

“Nat,” Dad said.

Both of my parents looked at me with concern as though I’d just admitted I needed therapy. Maybe I did.

I shook away that thought. No, not therapy. My Anywhere But Here book eyed me, nodding its head .

Or it would if binders had heads. Or could move.

I needed a change. I needed to find a direction. I needed something to start going right.

“You know how you feel like everything is falling apart?” I said, sinking back on my couch. “That’s my life. I’m a tower of Jenga blocks where so many have been pulled out that the whole thing is teetering and ready to collapse any minute.”

Speaking the words opened the hole in my chest a little wider, and yet was somehow comforting, too. I loved that they were both listening to me.

“I knew you were sad about that Jensen boy,” Mom said, watching me with concern. “But I had no idea how much.”

My heart began to pound unconventionally fast. Like, cheetah speed.

Dad and Mom eyed each other.

Dad cleared his throat. “I’ll call Tad Benion, that new postmaster, and tell him you want your job back. Working as a carrier again could be exactly what you need.”

“No, thanks, Dad. I don’t want to,” I said.

Dad inhaled. Mom sniffled. They looked at one another again and then at me. “What do you mean you don’t want to?”

I hadn’t ever told them about my desires to travel, to leave town and kickstart my life. I also hadn’t ever shared the biggest reason for my delay—I was waiting for God’s approval. I wanted some heavenly direction, to know that He was okay with my plan.

And as many times as I’d prayed and asked, I hadn’t yet gotten it.

“I think it’s time for me to branch out,” I said. “To try something new. I need something that doesn’t remind me of Jensen every second of the day.”

“How does the post office remind you of him?”

“He went with me on deliveries, Dad. He hung out while I was working, or he would meet me afterward and we’d walk down to The Mercantile for ice cream. He’s in every inch of this town, and I can’t stand it.”

Mom elbowed Dad and the screen showed more of her face. “Why didn’t you come with us? You should have. You still can. It’s so nice here. They’ve got these sand dunes nearby that are like a real-life desert!”

“I don’t want to,” I said.

Mom looked hurt, but Dad warded her off.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know! I just—everyone else’s lives are moving on. You guys are moving on. Belle’s having a baby. Allie and Bryce are getting married. Even the Scotts think they might get their dad to let them date.”

Ivy Scott, Emily Stone, and I had been friends since about the time I’d started my travel binder. Ivy’s younger sister, Jo, hadn’t ever been in our circle, but their dad put the term “overprotective” to its limits.

Dad chuckled at this.

“And me? I’m stuck. I have no direction, nothing to look forward to, nothing to learn or be excited about or anything. I’m wallowing in the mire while the herd is moving on. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to be the old spinster who grew up at the post office and now runs it.”

I wasn’t sure if my words made any sense to them whatsoever, but it felt so good to let everything out.

“God has a plan for your life, sweetheart,” Dad said.

This reminder was too much. I was tired of hearing this. Tired of basing all my faith and prayers in a Being who, so far, had remained remarkably silent.

“When He gets around to telling you what that plan is, let me know. For now, I have to do something else.” Anything else.

Mom and Dad exchanged another worried glance.

“We should never have left you on your own,” Dad said.

“I can handle it,” I said .

There was a reason I’d kept this to myself. They wouldn’t have left if I’d admitted how I was feeling.

They’d moved on. Larisa and her husband lived in Salt Lake City. They’d moved on. Isaac and his wife had, too. Even Chelsea, who was just older than me, had married and had a baby of her own.

Why not let me do the same?

“I don’t want to deliver mail,” I said, fully aware of the fact that I sounded like a petulant ten-year-old. But I needed to draw them away from my previous confession.

“Why not try a new job? There’s plenty out there. That insurance place where Emily works is hiring.”

The thought of working behind a desk made me want to vomit. Much as I liked Emily Stone, she and I had grown apart since high school.

“I’ll look around, okay?” I thumbed the edge of my travel book.

If they went this badly ballistic when I told them how I felt, what were they going to do once I left for good?

After brushing my teeth, I climbed into bed and scrolled through my phone. I searched for jobs in the Cassia County and Bridgewater County area. Farm work. Potato factory. Ooo, there was one for answering phones—that could be an option.

And then there, at the bottom, my heart gave a little interested flip.

Construction Workers Needed.

That was something I’d never considered. Construction would be an entirely new change of pace. In fact, it would be completely different from anything I’d ever done before.

I’d be out in the sun, soaking in some much-needed vitamin D, getting a tan—I brushed aside thoughts of Colton’s impressive physique—and building muscle while working with heavy objects.

Getting my hands dirty in completely legal ways.

I typed in my information and attempted to go to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t rest. Had I ever been this eager for anything in a long time?

I was done waiting for God to show me His plan for me. If He even had one for me at all.

My doubts on the matter delved deeper the more I thought about it.

I was making a plan for myself.