The next afternoon, Jeremiah picked up Ben from school. Casey, amazingly, had agreed to stay home with Adele, the new housekeeper, which probably had something to do with the chocolate chip cookies Adele had told him she was planning to make. The boy had a thing about cookie dough.
“I could have taken the bus home,” Ben said.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Ben made no response to that, but it seemed as if the temperature in the truck had gone down a few degrees. Talk was synonymous with yelling. With a grounding or extra barn work. Talk was a bad word at the Stone house.
Dr. Gilman would be ashamed.
“Where are we going?” Ben asked, when they didn’t turn left at the grocery store toward home, but instead went right.
“Rocky M.”
“Am I in trouble again?”
Ben kicked the dashboard and Jeremiah forced himself to count to ten. Pick your battles, he thought, remembering some old words of wisdom from Cynthia.
“You wanted to help Walter,” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah. But you said no.”
“Well, now I’m saying yes.”
Ben’s face wavered somewhere between happy and skeptical. Distrustful.
“Why?”
“Because you want to, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And it makes you happy?”
“Maybe.”
Ben looked away as if hiding his happiness, a secret he had to keep for fear Jeremiah would take it away. And how many times had he done that? Taken away the things that made Ben happy so that all that was left was unhappiness.
“I want you to be happy, Ben.”
“Yeah, right,” he sneered.
“I do. I liked seeing you happy last night, and if I had known that remembering things about your mom…talking about it…would make you happy, then I would have done it more often. I’m sorry.”
Jeremiah parked the car in silence, right in front of the Rocky M barn.
Walter, sitting in the shade just inside the barn door, glanced up. A miserable old man, sick, and getting sicker every day.
What the hell am I thinking? Annie would skin me.
But Annie wasn’t there and that was the problem.
“Do you believe me? That I want you to be happy?” Jeremiah asked, watching his nephew, knowing the question was so weighted that the boy would have to say yes or risk some kind of deep conversation about happiness or lack thereof.
Predictably, after a moment Ben nodded.
“Good.” Jeremiah popped open the truck door. “Now let’s go see if Walter still wants a nine-year-old nurse.”
Jeremiah and Ben got out of their truck but they didn’t head toward the house. They turned toward him, instead.
Uh-oh, was all Walter could think, but he kept rubbing the linseed oil on the old reins.
“Hello, Walter,” Jeremiah said, pushing his hat up with his thumb, revealing those dark curls matted with sweat. Lord knew the man put in an honest day’s work, between the boys and the ranch.
“Jeremiah.” Walter nodded. “Ben.”
“So.” Jeremiah cleared his throat. “About the ah…the nurse thing?”
“I don’t much like the word nurse.” Walter rubbed the reins with his thumb, harder than needed, but these days it was work hard or go back to drinking.
And today the work was only barely saving him. His head burned for a drink.
“Okay.” Jeremiah sighed. His patronizing air made Walter want a drink. “What…what would you call it?”
Walter shrugged.
“Helper,” Ben supplied. “That’s…that’s what Mom called me. Her helper.”
Walter couldn’t help but notice the way Jeremiah stared at Ben, as if he were some kind of exotic animal that had sidled up to him and started talking. And Ben saw the way his uncle looked at him and it hurt. It was right there on the kid’s face.
Jeremiah was a blind man when it came to the boy.
Walter nodded. “Helper works.”
“All right. We can all agree on helper.”
“Not sure why you need to be sarcastic,” Walter said. It was one thing when Mia was sarcastic; it was her mother tongue. She didn’t know how to talk without it. But he didn’t need it from Jeremiah. Not in front of the kid.
Jeremiah took his hat all the way off and looked up at the sky as if talking to God. Walter looked over at Ben and winked.
The boy almost smiled.
Score one for Walter.
“You’re right,” Jeremiah said. “I apologize. I have considered what you said and if you think Ben can help you and you want that help… I think it could work.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“But I’d want a couple of assurances.”
“Like what?”
“Like if your condition gets worse and you need real help, you tell me right away. No pride here, Walter. I won’t have Ben feeling overwhelmed or scared.”
Walter looked over at Ben and wanted to say he’d never scare the boy, but his pride was often a problem.
“I promise,” Walter said.
“And every day I get a report on his behavior—”
“I’m not a teacher, Jeremiah. The boy will work. If he doesn’t, he won’t come back. Past that, I don’t have much to tell you.”