An Accidental Woman Read Free Page B

were woefully sad and knowing, and they were watching him.
    His heart lurched. It wasn’t that he had stronger feelings for Star, just that he worried more. She was a more serious child than Melissa. And introverted. Whereas Missy said what she thought, Star was quieter. She had been an infant when her mother had left—“left” being the word he used in place of “skidded off the road, went down a ravine, and burned up in the cab of her truck.” He knew that Star couldn’t possibly remember Marcy, still he was convinced that she sensed the loss. Heather was wonderful with Star. Heather was wonderful with both of his girls. And now Heather had left, too.
    Hunkering down, he caught up the child. Her arms and legs went around him as he straightened.
    Not knowing where to begin, he simply said, “Everything’s okay, baby,” as he carried her down the hall to the room the girls shared. He set her on her bed. Like Missy’s, it was a mess of gingham sheets, pillow, and down—Missy’s pink, Star’s green—all of which, again, was Heather’s doing. “And everything’s going to be okay. But you can help me out now, baby. I need you and your sister to get dressed while I make some calls. Then we’ll have breakfast together.”
    â€œWe won’t wait for Momma,” the child said in a sure little voice.
    â€œNo. She’ll have breakfast in town.”
    â€œWhat’ll she eat?”
    He thought for a minute. “Eggs? Waffles? If we eat the same thing, it’ll be like she’s with us. What do you think?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œOatmeal,” Missy announced from close by. “Oatmeal’s her favorite. She’d be having that. But I can only eat it if it has lots of maple sugar on it.”
    â€œWell, we have lots of maple sugar, so we’re golden. Help your sister dress?” Micah said and, with a return of the urgency he had felt when the FBI van disappeared with Heather inside, he headed for the kitchen. Halfway there, he did an about-face and went back down the hall, this time to the room opposite the girls’. He had added this room soon after Heather moved in, hoping it would be for a child they would have together, but they’d been too busy, it seemed, growing the girls, growing the business. The floor of the room was covered with the dollhouse village he’d made for the girls and which they had arranged during a recent spate of snowy days. He had to step over the town hall and the library to reach the closet, then had to push spare clothes aside to get to the shelves built in behind.
    The knapsack was on a shelf out of reach of the girls and far to the right, well hidden by clothes and boxes of Christmas decorations that had only recently been taken down. A drab brown thing, the knapsack was small and worn. Micah didn’t know whether it had belonged to Heather herself or to someone else. To his knowledge, it was the only relic she had of her pre–Lake Henry days.
    He pulled the knapsack from the shelf and shifted the boxes on either side to fill the space. Tucking the sack under his arm—and refusing to consider what was inside—he went through the kitchen to the back hall. Jackets of various sizes hung from hooks at all heights, as did hats, lanterns, picks, and shovels, as well as a coil of plastic tubing that Micah was repairing. An assortment of footwear was lined against the wall, crowded in by the snowshoes that they’d been using each day when they trekked up the hill to the sugarbush to clear away winter litter and to check the mainline for damage in anticipation of sugaring time.
    But he wasn’t going to the sugarbush now. Stepping into the largest boots in the pile, he pulled on a jacket and stuffed the knapsack inside. For good measure, lest anyone be watching from the woods, he grabbed the plastic tubing and went out, down the back steps and over the well-packed