Weed Show the girls how to weed
JJ DID NOT ADD “figure out what that shoulder pat was” to her list, because she didn’t want to know why she’d felt...jittery all of a sudden. Or like she wanted to stay precisely there, in the midday heat, with Cade’s hand on her shoulder.
Very big hand.
She marched toward the girls, a smile plastered on her face. Wondering what on earth had compelled her to say she didn’t know why Grandma had picked her. There was just something about being the constant caregiver for two children for those endless morning hours that made things want to pour out of her mouth.
I don’t know how to do this.
I want to cry when other people cry, and I’d rather run in the opposite direction than deal.
I really like the way Cade smiles.
And fills out his jeans.
She sucked in a breath and blew it out. Okay, so he was good-looking. When had that ever mattered? Hot guys looked at her about the same as any not-hot guys, which was not at all. She was Cade’s babysitter.
She had three months to heed her late grandmother’s wishes, and she was determined to do it. Even if it made her nauseous.
JJ approached the duo as Lora was desperately trying to get Ellie to participate in some game about flowers and fairies, but Ellie had her arms crossed and her chin in the air.
“I don’t want to play your dumb baby games,” Ellie said snottily.
It was like watching herself and Lila in those painful months Mom and Dad had spent deciding what to do about them. Lila had surrounded herself with the happy and the fanciful, and JJ had wondered how Lila could ignore all that pain in the air.
JJ had probably said that exact same sentence to her: I don’t want to play your dumb baby games. Not when she’d known everything was changing, and not for the better.
Let yourself feel. Those three words from Grandma’s letter haunted her, because she was so afraid if she started...she’d never be able to stop.
“Come on, kiddos. Time to eat,” Cade said, and JJ didn’t know if he was ignoring the tension between sisters or didn’t see it.
He plopped the bag of sandwiches onto the table in the middle of the screened-in back porch. The girls greedily grabbed sandwiches and unpacked them from baggies with clear practice. This was something they did a lot. With Grandma June.
JJ pulled out her phone to avoid the lump in her throat.
Give the back porch a good scrubbing
Figure out the mowing situation
Stop looking at Cade’s arms
With those additions to her list, she gingerly slid into the seat between Ellie and Cade and took a sandwich—no crusts.
Cade handed her a juice box with a wry twist of his lips. “I was all out of fruit punch, so you’ll have to settle for grape.”
He made her want to smile, and JJ wondered why she felt like she shouldn’t. Her father never would have gently poked fun at the lunch he’d brought her.
“Daddy makes the best sandwiches because—” Lora licked a chunk of jelly that had fallen through the side of the sandwich and plopped onto her palm “—he uses extra, extra jelly.”
Cade leaned close to JJ. “I had to secretly switch to sugar-free before she rotted her teeth out,” he whispered companionably.
“I guess I should tell you that I let her have a few pieces of candy earlier.”
He didn’t get irritated or lecture her like she might have expected. He grinned. “I suppose it’s only fair if you three have your secrets. Lord knows June did with them.”
JJ frowned. Her father had impressed upon her that she should never keep secrets. Even with Grandma June. He was her father, and he had to know everything going on with her life.
As she’d gotten older she’d come to realize he was most worried about her having any contact with her mother, and Grandma June facilitating it. Even now he sometimes seemed worried she’d suddenly want a relationship with the woman who’d had no qualms about disappearing from her life.
Did Lila feel that way about Dad? She’d been even younger when Mom and Dad had divorced, so at six she’d gone to live with Mom and had next to no contact with Dad. Did she wonder what was wrong with her that Dad hadn’t wanted to have a relationship with his own daughter?
“Rowdy!” Lora screeched, almost upending her chair with how quickly she jumped out of it. She ran off the porch, Ellie at her heels.
“Who’s Rowdy?” JJ asked, glad for the distraction from her depressing thoughts as the girls scrambled through the overgrowth in the back corner of the yard.
“Stray cat. Grandma June or the girls feed him whenever he comes around. He’ll let them love him, then break their hearts and disappear for weeks at a time.”
“Then why do you let them feed him?”
“I didn’t let anyone do anything. Grandma June did what she did.” He nodded toward the girls as he polished off his second sandwich. “Besides, we live on a ranch. Animals come and go. And sadly, those girls already know people do, too.”
“They shouldn’t know that yet,” JJ murmured, watching them enthusiastically pet the gray cat that appeared through the weeds. She hadn’t thought about Cade hearing it, even less him responding.
“We both did. My mom died when I was in between Lora’s and Ellie’s ages. Your parents divorced when you were what? Ten?”
“Eight,” she replied.
“Grandma June always made it sound like you don’t have much to do with your mom.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then maybe that’s why she picked you.”
JJ blinked, coming back into herself—a herself that was horrified they were having this conversation. “Huh?”
“Your mom walked out on you. Their mom walked out on them. Maybe she thought you’d understand.”
“It’s... It was different.”
“I’m sure it was. That doesn’t mean you don’t understand.”
JJ didn’t know what to do with that. It made sense, and yet... She didn’t want to understand her own pain, let alone anyone else’s.
“Sorry. You didn’t sign up for us hijacking your lunch, and you certainly didn’t volunteer for conversations. I’m just used to making it.” He pulled the straw off a juice box. It should look ridiculous, this man eating crustless PB-and-Js and drinking out of a juice box.
The corded muscles of his forearms didn’t seem ridiculous. At all.
JJ turned her attention back to his words. “You used to eat lunches with Grandma June,” she said carefully. No doubt Grandma June made Cade and the girls sandwiches herself, offered Cade a listening ear, sage advice, and he left feeling better. He probably loved summers because of Grandma June, just like she always had.
“Sure. That doesn’t mean—”
“We should talk, then,” JJ decided. “I’m stepping into her role for the summer. Whatever she did, I’ll do.” She was a doer. She helped people, and maybe that usually meant work at the greenhouse, and now it would mean...people things, but she could do it. Grandma had entrusted her with this task. She had to do it.
“So we’re...friends?” he asked, not so much as if he didn’t believe it, but with a certain amount of cautiousness that made her double down.
“Of course we’re friends.” She didn’t have all that many, but she could be Cade’s friend for the summer. Just like all those old summers. With less tree climbing.
“I bet I could beat you in a footrace now.”
Her mouth twitched. The problem was she’d always liked Cade. He had an easiness about him, and that hadn’t changed with his circumstances. He never made her feel awkward or out of place.
He was hot now, though, and that was awkward in and of itself.
“You know, I have a list of things I’ve been dying to fix around here,” Cade said, eyeing the house behind them.
It’s got nothing on my list, buddy.
“Maybe you’d let me come out in the evenings and fix up some things. After the girls are in bed, my brothers can sit at the house. I’m usually up for a while yet anyway. Might as well be doing something worthwhile.”
“Well, yeah, I guess that’s...” Cade here by himself. Fixing things. She honestly didn’t know how to respond to that.
He shrugged. “Up to you.”
She was used to doing things on her own, and for everyone around her, for that matter. But the farm had always been her respite from that. Instead of JJ taking care of Dad, Grandma June had taken care of her.
So maybe she’d let Cade take care of a few things here. What could be the harm? “I guess if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“None at all.”
“Okay, then.”
He finished off the juice box and called the girls back over. They grudgingly finished their lunches while chatting excitedly about Rowdy. Cade left again, making sure to say goodbye to both girls and reminding them to be good.
When he left, JJ didn’t let herself feel out of sorts. She jumped right into the parts of her list she could do with the girls.
They walked through the overgrown garden together and while JJ instructed Lora on the difference between weeds and the vegetable plants Keira must have planted during her spring, Ellie moved through the opposite side of the garden adeptly pulling weeds without JJ’s instruction.
Lora faded quickly, long before JJ and Ellie were done with the garden. She started to whine about the dirt, the heat, the bugs and how much she hated every vegetable growing.
JJ stood from where she’d been instructing Ellie on how much water to give each plant, though Grandma had clearly taught Ellie plenty.
“I’m hot,” Lora whined for the millionth time.
“I can fix that,” Ellie said cheerfully, turning the hose on her sister. Since JJ wasn’t standing too far away, the frigid blast of water sprayed against Lora and splattered onto JJ, as well.
Lora let out a primal scream and ran for her sister. Ellie was smart enough to run out of the fenced-in garden, still holding the hose and occasionally pointing it back at Lora.
Once the shock had passed, JJ scrambled after them. Lora was alternately yelling at Ellie to stop, and letting out little sobs of frustration, while Ellie laughed like a maniac.
JJ didn’t know what to do, except catch up with Ellie and take back the hose. Of course, by the time she got the hose in her possession they were all soaked.
Both girls, bedraggled and sopping wet, stared at her with big blue eyes—just like their dad’s, except instead of Cade’s usual humor, she saw solemn worry as they watched her.
JJ didn’t feel here exactly. She felt like she’d fallen back in time, to summers under the hose. Grandma would set up a sprinkler or a plastic pool, and her, Keira, Lila and Bella would splash around. When Keira had gotten too mature and elegant for such things, JJ had once taken the hose to her.
A chase much like the one she’d just witnessed had ensued. Except Keira had wrestled the hose away from JJ and laughed as she’d gotten JJ back. Then Lila had run into the fray, and Bella.
JJ wanted to forget those happier days, the way childhood memories cut with a pain that was matched only by the warmth of joy that seemed to echo across the time between then and now and shimmer in the late-afternoon sun.
“Are you mad, Ms. JJ?” Lora was brave enough to ask.
“No,” she retorted without even thinking it through. How could she be mad at two little girls having fun? Here, of all places. She did almost say something about their dad being upset, but then she remembered what Cade had said about secrets. She knelt into the now squelchy grass so she could be eye to eye with them. “In fact, it’ll be our secret. How does that sound?”
Lora grinned, and Ellie didn’t scowl, so JJ decided then and there that her first day of babysitting was a success.
So she turned the hose on both of them to their screeching delight.