Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

“Bear! Will you stop it?” Joshua shouted over the din of wild barks and whimpers. “She’s a nice lady. She isn’t going to hurt you.”

When he was finally able to wrap his arms around the dog’s neck to hold him still, Joshua heard Cassidy ask, her tone understandably and utterly incredulous, “Hurt him? He pushed me down.”

“Bear. Sit,” Joshua growled as the dog tried to backpedal away from Cassidy and Henry. “Are you all right?” he asked Cassidy, holding on to Bear and looking up from where he knelt next to the dog.

Cassidy brushed off her jeans and nodded. “Is he always so erratic? I’m not used to dogs but—”

Joshua chuckled. “Bear has two problems. He’s too friendly, which is all he was trying to be when he knocked you down. And he’s chicken. All it took to send him running was for you to scream. He’s yellow as they come. Don’t let the black coat fool you,” he said, ruffling that same pitch-black fur.

Joshua let out a laugh when Bear leaned into him, forcing him to sit in the mud again. Then Bear climbed into his master’s lap. A considerable amount of dog didn’t fit. But he kept trying, spreading the mud farther over Joshua’s clothes.

“Three. He has three problems, Josh,” Henry put in, deadpan. “He weighs a hundred and fifty pounds and thinks he’s a lap dog.” The old pastor frowned. “Well, we have to be honest. He also eats too much, is dumb as a post about what animals it’s not safe to chase, and as a guard dog he’d make a better ambassador of goodwill. Probably lick a burglar to death if one ever came ‘round. Guess that makes six faults. Major ones.”

“You’re a real mess,” Cassidy said as she reached out slowly to pet the soft black fur on the dog’s ruff.

Joshua took her wrist and put her hand on Bear when the dog started whining again. “This is Cassidy,” he told Bear, trying to ignore the feel of Cassidy’s fine-boned wrist beneath his fingers. “She’s a friend. Friend. But no jumping. Got it?”

Bear abandoned Joshua’s lap to sit at Cassidy’s feet. His tail thumping, he handed her his paw, his pink tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

Joshua chuckled at the stupid love-struck look on the dog’s face. “I think you’ve got a friend for life,” he said, and stood, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt. Mud streaked his clothes while Cassidy looked as fresh as a spring rain. Bear could be a real ego buster.

Cassidy looked up at him. “Oh, you’re a mess, too,” she sputtered, trying not to laugh.

Joshua looked down at himself and chuckled. “Yeah, I’m a mess, all right,” he admitted, shooting Bear a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sort of look.

“Son, you’d better run and clean up before Irma gets breakfast on,” Henry told him.

Joshua almost used the mud as an escape from eating with them, but then he looked at Cassidy. She was smiling down at Bear. And this time the smile was in her eyes.

Maybe he could help her get her life back on track. “I’ll see y’all at the table.”

Cassidy tossed the book she was reading aside and stared up at the ceiling above the bed. She was at loose ends, with nothing but a book she’d read as a child to occupy her mind. Joshua had gone to help a family whose roof leaked. She imagined Irma was running her diner and Henry had gone to the thrift shop after breakfast. She would have gone to talk to him, but he was working on his sermon for a Wednesday evening service.

She’d really stuck her foot in her mouth when that subject had come up at breakfast. She’d remarked that she’d thought people only went to church once a week—on Sunday. Joshua explained that many churches had a second Sunday evening service, and one on Wednesday night, as well. And yes, there were those who attended all three. He’d also explained that everyone referred to Henry as “Pastor Henry,” not Reverend Tallinger.

Joshua was a compelling man. He was physically a big man, yet he treated his parents with a visible gentleness that was both touching and heartwarming. He had a strength of character that he projected in everything he spoke about during the meal, yet he seemed to depend on his parents in some indefinable but very tangible way. And though he treated his parents with the utmost respect, he called his father “Henry,” which was the biggest contradiction about him of all.

Cassidy sat up and stared at herself in the mirror over the dresser. “Stop thinking about him!” she ordered herself. So his touch disturbed her. So he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. He was also a hayseed preacher who fixed roofs and had an ill-mannered dog. And since when was she so curious about an unsuitable stranger? she thought stubbornly.

She needed to do something to get her mind off him and onto the things she needed to think about. A walk. She’d take a walk. Commune with nature. That was it.

Irma was in the kitchen when she walked by, so Cassidy stuck her head in the door. “I thought I’d take a walk. Which direction would you suggest?”

“There’s a nice trail through the woods out behind the house. Joshua marked it and keeps it cleared. When you come to the fork in the trail, follow the sign that points to town. It’s written right on the sign. The other way is to our cabin, and that’s not a walk. It’s a six-mile hike up the mountain.”

“Town sounds perfect. Did Josh mark it for your summer guests?”

Irma chuckled. “Goodness, no. We don’t get that many. He marked it for himself. That boy has no sense of direction whatsoever.”

“Did he go to school in the south?” Cassidy asked, and could have bitten her tongue. What was wrong with her?

Irma frowned. “What’s that got to do with his sense of direction?”

“Nothing. Forget I asked, please.”

“But why would you think that?” Irma pressed.

Now she was really sorry she’d let her curiosity get the better of her common sense. “’Y’all.’ He said ‘y’all’ earlier,” she explained. “It’s a southern expression.”

Irma walked to the center island and started shelling peas, a worried and thoughtful expression on her lined face. “He does say that now and again, doesn’t he? Hmm. Now there’s food for thought.”

“Thought about what?” Cassidy asked before she could stop herself.

“Oh, about where he’s from,” Irma said matter-offactly. “He could have heard it in a movie or on TV, and it might have felt familiar on his tongue.”

Now it was Cassidy’s turn to frown. How could his own mother forget where Joshua was raised? Irma was up there in years and she seemed hale and hearty, but perhaps her mind wasn’t as sound as Cassidy had assumed. She walked over to Irma, leaning her elbows on the island so she could watch Irma’s expression.

“Josh is from Mountain View,” Cassidy replied carefully, and waited for a reaction.

Irma smiled and shook her head. “Oh, no, dear, he isn’t. Joshua didn’t grow up here. He isn’t our blood son.”

Cassidy’s eyes widened. “But he calls you ‘Ma.’ I will admit his calling your husband ‘Henry’ surprised me but—”

“Joshua is the child we never had. He’s become our son since he came to us, but we never laid eyes on him till almost five-and-a-half years ago.”

“He came here to be your husband’s assistant, and you still don’t know where he grew up?”

Irma patted her hand, then pushed the bag of peas to rest between them. “No, we found him, dear. He was lying beside the road in a ditch, all broken and beaten. Henry and I—we just couldn’t forget that face of his once the ambulance came and took him to the hospital. We went to see him and just kept going back. He had no identification on him, you see. We were all he had. I’ve never prayed as hard for anything in my life as I did that that boy would live and wake up whole. The doctors didn’t give him much of a chance, but we just kept praying over him. He’s a miracle, that boy of ours.”

“You got your wish,” Cassidy said, smiling.

Irma shook her gray head. “It wasn’t a wish, child. It was a prayer. And no. I didn’t get all of what I asked for. I got more and less. The Lord works in strange ways. Joshua’s proof positive of that. You see, when he finally did wake from the coma six months later, he couldn’t talk or walk. We all soon realized that he had no idea who he was or where he’d come from. It was gone—his whole life. The doctors guessed that between twenty-five and thirty years were just…gone. And he was completely alone in the world.”

Cassidy felt as if a hand had reached into her chest and had a choke-hold on her heart. She looked down and realized that she was automatically opening the pea pods and dumping the peas in a bowl that Irma must have put in front of her. “But he doesn’t seem brain damaged.”

“The doctors thought that he was at first, but he relearned language so fast that they decided he had severe amnesia.”

“And his past has never come back?”

“Just little impressions and vague knowledge that he doesn’t remember learning.”

“But his past could still come back to him?” Cassidy asked.

Irma pursed her lips and shook her head. “After this long, that isn’t likely according to his doctor. He came to live with us when he was discharged. I was a teacher and I was the most qualified to teach him all he needed to know. Besides, we loved him already.”

Then his attachment to the Tallingers was almost like that of a child for his parents. “So he calls you ‘Ma’ because you became his mother, but why doesn’t he call Henry ‘Dad’ or ‘Pa’?”

“Joshua isn’t sure. He said it doesn’t feel like a compliment to him. Maybe he didn’t have a good relationship with his real father. It’s one of those vague feelings Joshua gets—and Henry doesn’t care what Joshua calls him. He just loves his Josh the way he is and is grateful to have him with us.” Irma picked up both bowls, moved toward a pot on the stove and dumped in the peas for cooking. “Besides,” she continued, “he didn’t start out to call me ‘Ma.’ He just couldn’t get his tongue around ‘Ir-ma’ at first, and it came out ‘Ma.’ He laughed. I laughed. And he just kept calling me ‘Ma.’”