A n hour later, Emmet stood with Leila Lafferty and Bayleigh Sutherland next to a pile of straw bales that someone had to heave onto the flatbed to take to Father Patrick’s nativity scene in the town square. Since Bayleigh looked about twelve months pregnant, with Leila right behind her, Em was doing the heaving.
“Take a break, Emmet,” Bayleigh said. “I don’t know where Ted is but he should be here to help.”
“I can manage,” Em said, tossing another bale onto the trailer.
Colt, damn him, and Sawyer were in a barn somewhere evaluating which sheep might be the easiest to convince to leave the flock for a brief acting career.
Bayleigh and Leila stood in the trailer, their job being to tug the bales into place to make room for more.
“Well, I need a break,” Leila said. She straightened and put a hand to her back, then clambered onto the ground. “Sheesh, Em, how can you be so slender and graceful, yet still so powerful? You’re amazing.”
“I’m going to see what’s keeping Ted,” Bayleigh said. “He promised to help today.”
It took her a little longer to get off the trailer, given the belly in front of her and when she walked away, her side-to-side gait suggested she was feeling more fatigue than she wanted to admit.
Em wiped the sweat off her face and reminded herself that she was here to support Hetty, to make sure that no one hurt her, that nobody had nefarious motives for developing a relationship with her. But boy, it wasn’t easy to stay objective, especially with Leila. There was something so…honest and up-front about her. Vulnerable, but also strong. She could really like her.
If she let herself.
“You’re very lucky,” Leila added.
Em looked up at the wistful tone in Leila’s voice. “Lucky?” She took off her leather gloves and shook the straw from her jacket. Hauling bales was hard work, as Colt had warned her, but she’d die before admitting it to him.
Leila settled herself awkwardly onto a straw bale, took off her woolen beanie and shook out her hair. It was thick and dark, like Emmet’s, but instead of Em’s wild mane, hers was sleek and wavy.
“I mean,” Leila said, “I’m a little jealous. You got to grow up with Heather Scott. Honey Hudson. Mel Brezo. Whatever you call her.”
It was always unsettling to hear the woman she knew as Hetty referred to by these other names. She’d always known that Mel Brezo was Hetty’s professional persona. And she also knew that Hetty was a nickname for Heather. But she hadn’t known she’d once gone by Honey, or that she’d been married, let alone what her original surname was.
“I didn’t grow up with any of those versions,” she told Leila. “I grew up with Hetty Malone. And I lost my own mom when I was a kid. Not sure I’d call that lucky, but you’re right, Hetty has always been there for me.”
“Okay but look at what Kendall is going through right now,” Leila persisted. “She had Coralee—her mom—there one year, gone the next, now back and still causing grief, though I know she’s trying her best. It seems to me that Honey—Heather— always did her best with you. That tells me that she had support or something, or that she’d dealt with her stuff and was ready to parent you the way you needed it. That’s the ideal, isn’t it?”
Em had been told about Leila adopting Sawyer’s daughter Piper, on the condition that Piper’s birth mother Miranda remain able to visit whenever she wanted.
“I guess. She was my mom’s best friend. I’m not sure what we would have done without her.”
Leila stroked the baby bump straining the zipper of her parka. “I lost my mom—my adoptive mom—when I was a kid, too. There’s a lot of that in this family, it seems. Heather’s mom died when she was the same age my adoptive mom died. I think when I found that out is when I first started bonding with her.”
Em looked at Leila’s belly. “You excited about becoming a mom? I mean, you already are, to Piper. But…you know.”
Leila smiled. “Yeah, I know. And yes, I’m so excited. Scared too, though.” Her smile faded. “So much can go wrong. I mean, look at what happened to Heather…Hetty…to…our mom.”
Our mom. Em’s jaw tightened. Sure, Hetty was Leila’s birth mother. But Em didn’t want to share her. She didn’t want these people talking to her, talking about her as if they had a claim on her.
And she hated that she felt this way.
Breathe. Remember who you are.
Hetty loved her.
“Our mom,” she said finally. “You know, I came here expecting to hate you. I figured, you and Lucas and Brade found out about Mel Brezo, and now you were looking for a big payday.”
Leila got up, stretched out her back and took a few steps toward the rough-hewn logs set up as a stable backdrop. “I recall.”
Em hadn’t met them the day that Lucas and Leila came to Chinook and braced Hetty in Malcolm Black’s office. But she’d witnessed the fallout. Hetty had been devastated, terrified. Em had never seen her like that. And her first reaction was to be furious with the people who had done this to her.
Thank goodness for Malcolm Black. How much had he suspected, Em wondered now? And when had he begun to suspect it? Hetty’s point-blank refusal to publicly own her paintings was more than artistic eccentricity. She had a fan base, an audience, a market. She could have made a ton more money if she’d agreed to attend exhibits, to answer questions about her process, where she got her inspiration. Few artists truly enjoyed that part of the job. But Hetty’s insistence had been something else. Now, Em understood. Hetty’s art connected her to one of the darkest times of her life, something she’d come through, at a horrendous cost. And given that, thanks to Weldon Scott, she was thought to be dead, she could hardly let her name and image out in public.
“How about now?” Leila said. “You still hate us?”
Em gave a little laugh. “You make it really hard.”
A smile broke over Leila’s face. “Back at you, sister. I don’t know, maybe I’ve got less baggage than some of you, parent-wise, at least. My mom loved me. She’d been sick as long as I knew her, and she made a point of being the best mom she could, with the time she had. My dad is the best man I know. My issues came from being me: impulsive, immature, fill-in-the-blank. I almost ruined things with Sawyer.” She laughed. “What am I saying? I did ruin things with him. Then we got a second chance, a miracle.”
She gazed around the small paddock, her breath puffing in the chilly air.
“Maybe,” she continued, “that’s why it seems so right, having us all reunite here, now, at Christmastime. It’s the season of second chances, isn’t it? It’s the season to remember that no matter how dark it gets, the light will soon return. That we all need time to be quiet, to pull back, to embrace the darkness, knowing that it’s underground where the seeds germinate, unseen, to show up when we’re ready to give up.”
Em’s eyebrows rose. “Well, well. A poet as well as an artist.”
Leila’s cheeks flushed. “I tend to get a bit carried away. Ignore me.”
“No,” Em said. “That was beautiful.”
“And overly optimistic, too.” Leila made a face. “Not all reunions are such a time of celebration. Doug Andrews, Kendall’s deadbeat dad, is here for the wedding. I guess Coralee let him know. Kendall’s furious and I can’t say I blame her.”
“Kendall doesn’t want him here?”
Leila snorted. “Why would she? She barely remembers him. Coralee divorced him to marry Ashley and Jason’s dad, who was more of a dad to Kendall than Doug ever was. But then that one split the scene, too. She’s had a rough ride, father-wise. Coralee really stepped in it this time. But the woman never had much mothering instinct, from what I could see.” She stroked her baby bump again. “Kendall vows she’ll never have children and I can’t blame her, but part of me is so sad that she’ll miss all this. Do you want kids, Emmet?”
“You can call me Emma. Or Em.”
“Oh! Thank you.” Leila came over and gave her a quick hug. “I know this is all so very weird, but I really think we’re going to be good sister-friends, don’t you?”
“If you can co-parent with your husband’s ex-wife,” Em said, “I imagine we have a chance.”
“So…kids? Yes or no?”
“Maybe,” she said, “if I had a partner who wanted them.”
“I always knew I wanted to be a mother, but not everyone feels the need. Or they satisfy it with a pet.”
“I used to have a cat,” Em said. “Maybe I’ll get another one someday. My career doesn’t really focus on the pluses of motherhood. When you’ve spent years studying gender pay inequities, the second shift of working mothers, the socioeconomic costs of parenthood for women, as opposed to the benefits it brings men, it doesn’t seem like there’s much in favor of it.”
“That’s data,” Leila said.
“Spoken like a true artist.” Em laughed to take the sting out of her words. “Actually, I’m a little envious of you, too. I mean, besides your connection to Hetty. Heather. All of you. Diana’s got the whole Norman Rockwell life going: three kids, picket fence, et cetera. You’re having a baby with an honest-to-God cowboy. Bayleigh Sutherland too.” She sighed. “I’ve never had anyone like that in my life. I think I’d like kids, but I’d never do it unless I had a partner I could truly count on. Someone who adored me, the way your men adore you.”
A picture of Colt, a braided rope in his hand, popped into her head. Sheesh, a few days in the same town and she was ready to start doodling hearts and flowers around his name in her journal.
“You’ve never been in love?” Leila asked.
Had she? A childhood crush hardly counted, right? Images of that night, in the storage closet flooded her mind. Emmet, huddled, crying and shaking, with Colt’s arm around her. Holding her, telling her everything would be okay, that they were safe, that he’d never let anyone hurt her again… She’d fallen in love with him a little that night. It wasn’t real, of course. She knew now that the panic hormones flooding her system that night had primed her brain to bond to the person she’d shared the experience with. And sure, to her prepubescent mind, Colt was a dreamboat, with shaggy hair, a tiny bit of scruff already forming on his chin, his gangly arms made of thin ropy muscles layered over bone. He’d been so kind, so sweet, and—
“Who was he?” Leila asked.
Em jumped and shook her head. “Nobody. I should get the rest of the bales loaded. They want to set up the manger scene this afternoon.”