Brambleberry House: His Second-Chance Family. RaeAnne Thayne

she paused, her arm outstretched but the apple she was reaching to grab forgotten as she watched him smile at something Simon said. She couldn’t hear them from here but so far it looked as if Simon wasn’t making too big a pest of himself.

      “Is this enough, Mama?” Maddie asked from below, where she stood waiting by the bushel basket.

      Julia jerked her attention back to her daughter and the task at hand. “Just a moment.” She plucked three more and added them to the glistening green pile in the basket.

      “That ought to do it.”

      “Do we really need that many apples?”

      “Not for one pie but I thought we could make a couple of extras. What do you think?”

      She thought for a moment. “Can we give one to Mr. Garrett?”

      Maddie looked over at the steps where Simon was trying his hand with Will’s big hammer and Julia saw both longing and a sad kind of resignation in her daughter’s blue eyes.

      Maddie could be remarkably perceptive about others. Julia thought perhaps her long months of treatment—enough to make any child grow up far too early—had sensitized her to the subtle behaviors of others toward her. The way adults tried not to stare after she lost her hair, the stilted efforts of nurses and doctors to befriend her, even Julia’s attempts to pretend their world was normal. Maddie seemed to see through them all.

      Could Maddie sense the careful distance Will seemed determined to maintain between them?

      Julia hoped not. Her daughter had endured enough. She didn’t need more rejection in her life right now when she was just beginning to find her way again.

      “That’s a good idea,” she finally answered Maddie, hoping her smile looked more genuine than it felt. “And perhaps we can think of someone else who might need a pie.”

      She lifted the bushel and started to carry it around the front of the house. She hadn’t made it far before Will stepped forward and took the bushel out of her hands.

      “Here, I’ll carry that up the stairs for you.”

      She almost protested that it wasn’t necessary but she could tell by the implacable set of his jaw that he wouldn’t accept any arguments from her on the matter.

      “Thank you,” she said instead.

      She and Maddie followed him up the stairs.

      “Where do you want this?” he asked.

      “The kitchen counter by the sink.”

      “We have to wash every single apple and see if it has a worm,” Maddie informed him. “I hope we don’t find one. That would be gross.”

      “That’s a lot of work,” he said stiffly.

      “It is. But my mama’s pies are the best. Even better than brambleberry. Just wait until you try one.”

      Will’s gaze flashed to Julia’s then away so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined the quick flare of heat there.

      “Good luck with your pies.”

      “Good luck with your stairs,” she responded. “Send Simon up if you need to.”

      He nodded and headed out the door, probably completely oblivious that he was leaving two females to watch wistfully after him.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH helping Julia peel the apples, Maddie asked if she could stop for a few minutes and take a little rest.

      “Of course, baby,” Julia assured her.

      Already Maddie had made it an hour past the time when Julia thought she would give out. School alone was exhausting for her, especially starting at a new school and the effort it took to make new friends. Throw in an hour of after-school activities then picking the apples and it was no wonder Maddie was drooping.

      A few moments later, Julia peered through the kitchen doorway to the living room couch and found her curled up, fast asleep.

      Julia set down the half-peeled apple, dried her hands off on her apron, and went to double-check on her. Yes, it might be a bit obsessive, but she figured she had earned the right the last few years to a little cautious overreaction.

      Maddie’s color looked good, though, and she was breathing evenly so Julia simply covered her with her favorite crocheted throw and returned to the kitchen.

      Her job was a bit lonely now, without Maddie’s quiet observations or Simon’s bubbly chatter. With nothing to distract her, she found her gaze slipping with increasing frequency out the window.

      She couldn’t see much from this angle but every once in a while Will and Simon would pass into the edge of her view as they moved from Will’s power saw to the porch.

      She had nearly finished peeling the apples when she suddenly heard a light scratch on the door of her apartment over the steady hammering and the occasional whine of power tools.

      Somehow she wasn’t surprised to find Conan standing on the other side, his tail wagging and his eyes expectant.

      “Let me guess,” she murmured. “All that hammering is interfering with your sleep.”

      She could swear the dog dipped his head up and down as if nodding. He padded through the doorway and into the living room, where he made three circles of his body before easing down to his stomach on the floor beside Maddie’s couch.

      “Watch over her for me, won’t you?”

      The dog rested his head on his front paws, his attention trained on Maddie as if the couch where she slept was covered in peanut butter.

      “Good boy,” Julia murmured, and returned to the kitchen.

      She finished her work quickly, slicing enough apples for a half-dozen pies.

      She assembled the pies quickly—cheating a little and using store-bought pie shells. She had a good pie crust recipe but she didn’t have the time for it today since Eben and Chloe would be returning soon.

      Only two pies could cook at a time in her oven and they took nearly forty minutes. After she slid the first pair in, she untied her apron and hung it back on the hook in the kitchen.

      Without giving herself time to consider, she grabbed the egg timer off the stovetop, set it for the time the pies needed and stuck it in her pocket, then headed down the stairs to check on Simon.

      It was nearly five-thirty but she couldn’t see any sign of Anna or Sage yet. Sage, she knew, would be meeting Eben and Chloe at the small airstrip in Seaside, north of Cannon Beach. As for Anna, she sometimes worked late at her store in town or the new one in Lincoln City she had opened earlier in the summer.

      She followed the sound of male voices—Will’s lower-pitched voice a counterpoint to Simon’s mile-a-minute higher tones.

      She stepped closer, still out of sight around the corner of the house, until she could hear their words.

      “My mom says next year I can play Little League baseball,” Simon was saying.

      “Hold the board still or we’ll have wobbly steps, which won’t do anyone any good.”

      “Sorry.”

      “Baseball, huh?” Will said a moment later.

      “Yep. I couldn’t play this year because of Maddie’s bone transplant and because we were moving here. But next year, for sure. I can’t wait. I played last year, even though I had to miss a lot of games and stuff when Mad was in the hospital.”

      She closed her eyes, grieving for her son who had suffered right along with his sister. Sometimes it was so easy to focus on Maddie’s more immediate needs that