I kind of ended up loving it. It was peaceful, and it gave me a chance to spend time outside by myself. I did a lot of thinking in that garden over the years, so the first thing I did when Stix left me the salvage yard—well, besides scrubbing the place down with bleach—was put in a garden.”
“Did your aunts keep chickens too?”
I laughed and scratched the back of my neck. It was kind of an embarrassing story. “No, that was an accident, really. I had a guy come to the yard looking for a new taillight casing for his truck. He didn’t have enough cash, so he wrote me a bad check. When I called him up to ask him to stop by with some cash, he brought the cash and a hen. He was obviously embarrassed about the bounced check, so he sort of shoved the bird at me and grumbled something about it being his best layer.”
After slowing down to take the turn onto my street, I continued. “I tried to refuse it, telling him I didn’t keep chickens, but he just kept insisting. Finally he blurted out something about not being able to afford to keep her. He lit out of there too fast for me to offer to help. That’s how I ended up with Talia. And, of course, it would have been cruel not to get her some company.”
Parrish’s smile was adorably toothy. “Of course. How many do you have now?”
“That’s not important,” I said quickly, pulling into my driveway. “What’s important is how much money I save on eggs. Besides, I sell them to people who come for salvage items too. Sometimes I have to give them away since the girls are such good layers, but I drop them off at the soup kitchen too, so that helps.”
Parrish’s eyes twinkled which made my face heat. “Do you think you save more on eggs than you spend on supplies for your girls?”
I threw the truck into park and hopped out, mumbling under my breath about hens having needs. The sound of his laughter was so sweet and unexpected, I blinked across the truck at him. The sunlight hit Parrish’s brown hair, lighting up some strands of honey in it I hadn’t noticed before. He was the opposite of me: clean-cut and put-together, but it only made me want to mess him up that much more.
“Will you show me the coop?” he asked with a giant grin. “Ava told me that Brooks told her that Mal mentioned it’s something special.”
Marigold started to fuss when I pulled her out of the car seat. Saved by the baby. “Later, I guess. This one needs a change and a snack.”
But later came sooner than I expected when Parrish helped make quick work of changing and feeding Marigold.
After he finished wiping off her hands with a wet wipe, he pulled her out of the high chair. “Want to go see the chickens?” he cooed to her as he sat her on one hip. “Huh? Let’s go see Daddy’s girls.”
I opened my mouth to correct him, to tell him I wasn’t her dad, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. She’d never had a dad in her entire short life. Beth’s pregnancy had been the result of a random hookup. If anyone was going to claim the title of this girl’s father, it was going to be me.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat and begrudgingly followed the two of them outside.
“The fence looks amazing,” Parrish said. “Better than that heavy orange gate.” He seemed to realize how that had sounded because he started stammering an apology. “Not that there’s anything wrong with orange, of course! It’s the color of safety. Of caution. Why… it’s the color of… of… Um, did you know that orange actually stimulates the appetite? We thought about using it in some of our branding at the Pit, but Brooks nixed it. I can’t remember why now…”
I wanted to kiss the concerned frown off his forehead and inhale the clean smell of his hair I’d noticed earlier when he’d leaned his head against my shoulder.
“Well,” I said teasingly, “if it stimulates the purchase of salvage parts, we’re in trouble. I didn’t take down the honk sign, though, because that’s too practical. Doesn’t look all that great. Maybe I can paint up a new one.”
I thought about adding it to Stewie’s chore chart that already seemed as long as Santa’s nice list. The caseworker’s visit