parenting alone.
He kind of thought that she was saying that they were together and no one could beat them. It was a good feeling.
Chapter 11
Emerson stood at the pencil sharpener, sharpening pencils. Not that she was using a pencil, exactly, she just wanted to get a little closer to the boys by walking around the kitchen table and moving behind them to where the pencil sharpener was located on the windowsill.
She could hear them say something about the shed.
There was a shed on the property, and in days gone by, she thought it had been a smokehouse and a place to store meat because there were no windows and the door sealed tightly with a strong lock.
It was the only such building on the property, strongly built and tight.
Hmm, were the boys hiding something out there?
She didn’t want to forget this information, so she pulled her phone out and texted Reid.
They’re talking about the shed.
She considered just flat-out asking them what they were thinking, and maybe if they had all been together all the time, she would have.
But this was new.
She’d only ever had one child at a time, and they spent pretty much all of their time together. There had never been any of this whispering, and conspiring, and sneaking. If that’s what it was.
Maybe she and Reid needed to realize how having two children was different than one.
She didn’t want to jump the gun and accuse them of doing anything they weren’t really doing, and she didn’t want to ask them and alert their suspicions.
She agreed with Reid. If there was something going on, it was best to nip it in the bud.
Her phone dinged, and she looked down.
Maybe we can check it out later. I don’t keep it locked.
She was done sharpening her pencil and walked behind the boys. As soon as she started to move, they quit talking.
She’d figured. Definitely there was something up.
It was nice to have someone to share the parenting duties with. Maybe she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that. But she pulled up her phone and texted Reid again.
I just went behind them, and they quit talking. I definitely think there’s something up.
His text came back right away.
Do you need me to come home?
That was actually kind of tempting. Not really because she needed him, but because she liked it when he was around. Still, she wasn’t going to make him leave his meeting.
No.
Okay. Let me know if anything else happens.
She stared at her phone, relieved that he seemed to be taking this seriously. He didn’t act like she was bothering him.
Reid had faults, but one of them was not that he was not a good dad. He’d always been very serious about being a good dad. She could admire that. And she also knew that he’d help her get to the bottom of this, no matter what.
Just like they seemed to be able to do supper together, almost naturally, with their different strengths, they could figure this out with their kids.
REID TOOK A DRINK OF his water. Zane had brought sweet rolls that Waverley had made and was somewhat famous for. People flew in from California just to get them.
Reid had already set some back to take to Emerson and the boys.
Loyal, another of Reid’s brothers, had brought some kind of twelve-layer dip that was absolutely fantastic. The remnants were still on his plate, along with a few crumbs from his tortilla chips. Clark, yet another brother, had even shown up tonight, and he hadn’t come to a single dads meeting in a year or more.
Reid highly suspected the reason all of his brothers were there was because they wanted to know what was going on with him and Emerson. Gossip traveled fast in a small town, and everyone knew that she was staying at his house.
They were definitely fishing for more information. He hadn’t answered most of their questions and had been vague about others. Finally, they’d gotten tired of pressing him and were now talking to Andrew, the fire chief and single dad of two boys.
“It’s hard to get motivated. It’s not like you don’t want a wife, you just don’t want to have to go through all the work that it seems to take to find and get to know someone anymore. I want someone I really know that I feel comfortable with and that doesn’t get mad at me every three seconds.” Andrew put a chip loaded with dip in his mouth and crunched down.
Deacon, Reid’s