“I am being real.” He stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Water? You have to be parched after that speech.”
Molly had been coming around the farm a lot for the past month or so. She’d found the deed from the county that showed the property lines, and she’d asked Matt to work with her on the proposal for a children’s equine therapy center. He hadn’t seen Hunter much, but he knew Molly was working with Hunter on the project.
She’d been doing all the research, designing all the blueprints, and gathering all the applications and information. She’d gone to Three Rivers, Texas, to visit an equine therapy unit there, and she’d come back with pages of notes.
Hunter had been quite busy downtown, at least according to his texts, and Matt had been helping Molly with anything she needed around the farm, as she designed the space for the new program, based on things she’d learned from the cowboy in Texas. She’d stayed for dinner a time or two, and Matt could admit he missed having a female presence in his life.
He told himself as he pulled a couple of bottles of water out of the fridge that he did have a female presence in his life—his daughter, Brittany.
“You know,” Molly said as Matt put the bottle on the table in front of her. “I was thinking of bringing a cake out for Keith.”
Matt sat down where he’d been a moment ago. “You don’t need to do that.”
“He’ll be fourteen, right?” Molly asked. “Even fourteen-year-olds like cake, and I’m a really good baker.” She gave him a kind smile, and Matt’s soul sucked it right up.
Life had not been kind to him lately, and he could use as much joy and happiness as he could get.
Keith could too, he thought, though he’d already turned her down. “All right,” he said. “He does love chocolate cake.”
“My specialty is chocolate cake,” she said. “Saturday? I’ll make sure Hunter comes, and once I have a name for this thing, I think we might be ready to present it to him.” She looked down at the blue binder, her brow furrowing.
“Saturday’s fine,” Matt said. “I’ll talk to Hunter’s grandparents. They love birthday parties.”
Molly smiled and nodded, her thoughts clearly starting to wander.
“You can tell Hunter about everything in that binder now,” Matt said. “You two could come up with a name together.” He watched Molly, but she never gave away anything about her and Hunter’s relationship.
Matt remembered the two of them going out years ago, as kids, and he thought back to when he was fifteen. He hadn’t dated anyone in high school, because girls scared him. He’d grown up and gone to farrier school, only to drop out before he’d finished because his father had fallen and broken his hip.
He’d needed help with his small operation, and Matt had worked that until Daddy had died. A sense of sadness filled him, and it was amazing to Matt how easily the darkness and depression could sink into his soul. It seemed to take ten times as much light to drive that darkness back out, and he hated that.
An image of his girlfriend in Sugar Pond flashed through his mind, and he could just remember her soft, wavy blonde hair, her freckled cheeks, and those pink lips.
He’d married someone else, and while he wished he and his two kids had been enough of a pull for Janice to make the necessary changes in her life, in the end, they hadn’t been. He’d spent many nights on his knees, begging the Lord on behalf of his wife. Begging that she wouldn’t return to the bottle.
In the end, she always did, and Matt had finally had to make a decision to take the kids and leave. It was his job to protect them, especially with Britt’s condition, and he couldn’t be home all the time to make sure Janice didn’t say or do something to damage the children.
Molly said something he didn’t catch, but Matt nodded anyway. The back door of the cabin opened, and Matt turned that way to find Keith entering the cabin. He wore a surly look, as he had ever since they’d returned to the Hammond family farm in Ivory Peaks at the beginning of June.
Matt knew it was hard on his son to leave Sugar Pond every summer and come live hundreds of miles away from his friends or anyone else he knew. He hadn’t