Rebel with a Heart

Lilleth sat on the rug and broke off small pieces of cinnamon bun, feeding them to Mary. Clark, with his glasses perched low on his nose, completed the circle. He sat beside her with his ankles crossed and his knees sticking out. He didn’t seem to notice that his left knee bumped into her right one.

Any other man would get a swift boot in the... But this was Clark, and chances were he was oblivious to where his limbs ended up.

“I have good news,” Lilleth announced, scooting beyond reach of Clark’s knee. “I’ve found us a place to live!”

“Why, that’s... Well, it’s...” For some reason it took an instant for his smile to reach his eyes. “Truly wonderful news. Where?”

“We’ll be neighbors, Clark. I’ve rented the cabin in the woods, just down the path behind the lending library.”

He choked on cinnamon and honey.

“That’s just...” He managed to catch his breath despite the crumbs still lodged in his throat. “I’m pleased as can be.”

But he wasn’t. And that was as clear as could be.

* * *

Trace stood on his back porch watching Lilleth and her brood, valises in hand, walking down the path that led into the woods. Cold sunshine winked on the snow and glinted off his fake glasses. He’d have to keep them on, though, even though the glare was making his eyes sting.

At the tree line, Lilleth turned and waved. The confident smile on her face wouldn’t last long. In another five minutes she would discover that her cozy, furnished cabin was barely fit to live in.

Trace waved back, but watching while she vanished among the trees made him feel off-kilter. As if something precious had been given, and then snatched away before he’d even had time to blink at the wonder of it.

Trace was a man grounded in reality. Facts were what he lived and breathed.

Still, it couldn’t have been an accident that his long-lost Lils had spent the night under his roof. It couldn’t have been pure chance that put them both on the same train platform at the same instant in time.

Letting her walk away now felt like an act against their common destiny.

Or could it be that their destinies weren’t common? Maybe letting her walk away was fulfilling that.

It was all just a bunch of fancy thinking, anyway, fate and destiny.

Facts, on the other hand, were what they were, no guessing or wondering involved. It would serve him well to keep them in mind.

Here was a hard and cold fact: Lils was walking into a bad situation and taking her children with her.

Another fact was that Trace was honor-bound to protect the inmates at Hanispree, and the safest way to do that was to let Lilleth take that path into the woods and deal with her problems on her own.

And the last fact on his mental list...he would not do it.

Trace picked up the ax leaning against the woodpile beside his back door and followed Lilleth’s footprints into the woods.

He grinned, considering a fact he had just added to his mental list. It didn’t have a thing to do with fancy thinking; it was as hard as facts go.

Clark Clarkly was going to kiss Lilly Gordon.

Chapter Four

A ray of sunshine filtering through bare tree branches dappled fingers of light on the roof of the small cabin. Close by, Lilleth heard the welcome rush of a creek.

In the event that the cabin did not have an indoor pump, it would be an easy task to fetch water.

“What do you think, Jess?” Lilleth went up the stairs with Mary in her arms. The third step cracked under her weight. “Be careful, this one might need to be replaced.”

The broken step was a minor problem, but for the rent she was paying she would make sure the landlord had it repaired by this afternoon.

“The place seems safe, Auntie Lilleth, way back here in the woods.” He grinned up at her. “Maybe I can explore later.”

Looking safe and being safe weren’t necessarily the same thing, but the boy needed to be out, running and playing. Poor Jess had been confined to trains and secrecy for much too long.

“Let’s settle in now, and we can explore together.”

“You like to climb trees and stuff, Auntie Lils?”

“Let me tell you, when I was your age, you couldn’t keep me out of a tree.” Not that anyone had ever tried to. “I suppose I can still manage.”

Blazes, if she wouldn’t make this time as easy on the children as she could. Hiding out in the little cabin for a month might be made into an adventure.

She turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

The very fingers of sunshine that dappled the roof dappled a broken kitchen table. It shone on a floor with layers of dusty things scattered about. It filtered over a lumpy bed where a family of raccoons was suddenly startled from sleep.

Mary squirmed and reached for the floor, but there was not an inch of space that was clean enough to set her down.

“Take Mary outside, will you?” Tap, tap, tap. Lilleth fought the urge to kick a crushed pail that she had come close to tripping over. It was best to get the children outdoors for a moment. It wouldn’t begin their cabin adventure well to see Auntie in a fit of despair.

“Stay close by,” she called after Jess.

He, at least, seemed happy enough, galloping around to the back of the house with his sister giggling in his arms.

But what was Lilleth going to do? Dusty spiderwebs sagged across shredded curtains at the windows—which, by God’s own grace, were at least not broken. The bed was not fit for the raccoons that had just scurried into a back room.

There was a nice stone fireplace, if one ignored the giant mound of ashes spilling out of the hearth. Hours of scrubbing from now, it might be cozy with a couple of chairs set before it.

Naturally, there were no chairs.

No chairs, no indoor pump, not a decent bed. There was the dining table, but one would have to sit on the disgusting floor to make use of it.

And thanks to the family of raccoons, the place smelled. No doubt it also had fleas.

She gathered the hem of her skirt into the crook of her arm.

“We’re going to the creek, Auntie Lilleth,” Jess called through a cracked board in the wall. “It’s real close by.”

That was a mercy. It would take endless buckets of hot water to make the place decent enough even to put Mary down.

“Blasted raccoons.” Lilleth would start by getting rid of them. “You better have found an escape hole back there. I’m coming in!”