Dry Creek Daddy. Janet Tronstad

      “Is either of you a relative?” The woman looked up from the paperwork on her desk.

      “Well, I’m—” Hannah stumbled and paused.

      She had run away from the Stelling place when her pregnancy started to become obvious. Her adoptive mother had died of cancer years before and her father still moved around the house like a disinterested stranger, glaring at Hannah if he noticed her at all. She had curled up in a protective ball when Mark went into his coma. She felt like she was in the emptiness with him, waiting to die. But there was the baby inside her, calling her to live.

      After the first wave of grief passed, she knew she had to make some decisions. She was brittle and could break at any time. She refused to stay around someone who was supposed to care about her but didn’t. Leaving the Stelling house was a stubborn decision based on hurt, but she knew it was right for her. She was better off in a home for unwed mothers, where she had no expectations of kindness as she did living with her adoptive father. Besides, she knew how to make it in an institution. No one could disappoint her. She never had gotten the hang of being part of a family.

      She was taking too long to answer the clerk’s question and the woman was looking at her with suspicion. Hannah straightened her shoulders. The hospital wasn’t asking about the strength of her tie to the man she called Father. All they wanted was her legal status.

      She nodded to emphasize her point. “I’m his daughter. His only family.”

      Neither one of them had anyone else. Strange as it was, that feeble truth had pulled her back to Dry Creek.

      The woman still eyed her skeptically and asked for identification. Hannah pulled out her wallet and flipped it open. “Here’s my driver’s license.”

      The clerk seemed friendlier after she’d checked Hannah’s name on the license. “We have to be careful who we talk to. The privacy laws, you know.”

      The woman looked down on her desk and pulled a clipboard from the pile in front of her. “The two of you can have a seat in the waiting room. Someone will call your name shortly and then escort you back to your father.”

      Hannah nodded. “Thank you.”

      Most of the seats in the waiting room were taken. Hannah noticed several mothers with toddlers and was thankful that Jeremy was not here. She was determined to keep him out of hospitals as much as possible. Planning to lead into telling him why, she’d asked if he might want to spend a night in a hospital sometime. The very thought seemed to terrify him. Since then, she hadn’t come up with a good way to tell her son that he would most likely need to do just that because he was very sick.

      “How’s this?” Mark asked as he gestured to the two empty chairs in the corner.

      Hannah nodded and they walked over to them. She’d have to tell everyone about Jeremy’s leukemia diagnosis at some point, but she didn’t want to do that until she had at least unpacked their clothes and gotten them settled.

      She wondered how Mark could know who she was thinking about, but he seemed to because they had no sooner sat down in the chairs than he asked, “Which of these kids is closest to Jeremy’s size?”

      Mark seemed a little shy about asking.

      She looked up and smiled. The first thing she’d noticed about him when he came into the café earlier was that he was wearing one of his rodeo champion belt buckles. The lights overhead made the buckle sparkle here and there where it hit the brass and silver parts. Mark prided himself on winning those prize buckles and had several. Today, though, he looked like the boy she’d met when they were both ten years old. He had a hank of hair that was unruly. It had always been that way. The rich brown strands curled slightly everywhere on his head, except behind his left ear. Tufts of hair just stuck out, defiant of any comb. Hannah had noticed last year that Jeremy had an identical spot developing on his head.

      “The boy holding the orange ball is about Jeremy’s size,” she said quietly.

      As Mark studied the child, she looked at him. Apart from the hair problem, he had a stubborn chin. It took the edge off his handsomeness. He had some fine lines on his face now that had not been there before. She wondered if they were from pain. Everyone she had talked to said he would never come out of that coma. When he started to get better, she had called the hospital. The doctors said they needed to be careful about his visitors and only his sister could see him. It had been the amazing story of the week on local news when he moved his finger for the first time, though. She’d wept happy tears for days. It wasn’t until later that she realized everything would not just slip back into place. It could not.

      “My sister says Jeremy loves horses,” Mark said. “Maybe you can bring him over to our ranch and he can ride a pony in a few days.”

      She’d heard the Nelson horse ranch was prospering now that Mark, his sister, Allie, and his new brother-in-law, Clay West, were all working together. Mark’s father was there, too, but he was semiretired.

      “Jeremy would love that,” Hannah said before she realized it could not happen. She didn’t know exactly what his treatments would be, but she figured that, when they were over, Jeremy would be too frail to risk breaking any bones. Even if everything worked, the doctor said Jeremy might be in a wheelchair indefinitely. “It’s probably best to wait a while, though.”

      Mark started to say something, but just then a door opened and a nurse called out, “Miss Stelling.”

      Hannah looked up. “This way please,” the woman said. Hannah stood and Mark was right beside her.

      The lights were bright and a series of doors led off the hallway. Muffled voices seemed to come from everywhere.

      The woman motioned for them to stop beside a closed door, and Hannah glanced up to Mark. His face was pale. Those pain wrinkles seemed more pronounced. She reached out and took his hand. They had both lost loved ones in this hospital. His mother. Her adoptive mother. Mark squeezed her hand and didn’t let it go. “We’ll get him well again.”

      Hannah couldn’t find her voice to answer, but she already knew she did not agree with his glib response. The coma had protected Mark from the struggles she’d had in the last years. She gently withdrew her hand from his. Mark couldn’t help that coma, but she believed he’d already decided to move away before he got shot that night. He was going away to college. Her son didn’t need to become attached to someone who would eventually leave him.

      The woman stepped into the room and then came out.

      “You can go in,” she said. “The nurse inside will help you.”

      “Thank you,” Hannah whispered.

      Light green walls reflected the strong florescent lights. A grunt came from the elevated bed in the middle of the room.

      “What took you so long?” a man’s querulous voice accused her from where he lay. Blankets partially hid his face, but she knew him.

      Hannah stopped in midstride. Her father had barely greeted her when she drove in last night, saying little beyond directing her to set herself up in the small house near the barn. That’s where the farmhands had stayed when there were any. It was drafty and dusty. It hadn’t been used in years. Her father had no reason to expect to see her standing here now.

      “You can’t talk to Hannah that way,” Mark said before Hannah could answer. “You didn’t call and tell her what happened. She didn’t need to come to the hospital at all.”

      “It’s okay,” Hannah whispered. She was embarrassed at the gulf between her and her father. But she hadn’t moved back under any illusion that he’d give her a warm welcome.

      She’d come because she had no other home. And the part-time job in the café gave her time off so she could take Jeremy to his doctor’s appointments. She’d still be able to work enough hours to buy groceries and, if necessary, pay rent. She reminded herself she needed to find out exactly what her father wanted in payment for use of that run-down house. She prayed it wouldn’t