room left for anything else.”
Yeah, he got that. Only his mom hadn’t been interested in anything but booze and pills and men.
“And then Natalie got pregnant with Caitlin and Juliet really didn’t have time for a needy adolescent. I guess you were gone by then.”
Yeah. His mom had finally died of alcohol poisoning only a few months after Steve’s death. After making sure Melody had a good home with their aunt and uncle, Cooper had enlisted as soon as he could and left for basic training.
“Anyway, the point is I don’t really hate the garden center. In fact—” she looked around as if preparing to reveal a big secret “—don’t tell my mom, but these last few weeks have taught me a new appreciation for it. I never realized how satisfying it can be to help someone find exactly the right plant they need for a certain spot in their garden.”
She smiled. “Don’t get me wrong. It will never be my first love. But if my mom ever falls off a ladder again and I have to come back to town to help her, I won’t be completely miserable.”
“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” he said.
When she looked disconcerted, he realized what he had said. “That your mom falls off a ladder, I mean. Not you coming back. You can come back whenever you want.”
“Um. Thanks,” she said, leaving him feeling like a fumbling idiot.
“We should probably get the garden prepped before the boys get here,” she said after he couldn’t think of anything to say for several long seconds.
While Otis stretched out in a patch of sunlight, she went to work with a second shovel he’d brought out to the project. As they worked together, he could feel more of his tension trickle away.
The patch of ground wasn’t particularly large, only about two feet wide by six feet long, so it didn’t take them long to work in the bag of soil prep.
When they finished, she stepped away, setting the shovel against the wall of the building. “There you go. Ready to plant.”
“Now if only the boys would get here. I guess everybody’s running late tonight.”
As soon as they said those words, they heard children’s footsteps and the boys raced around the corner of the building. Otis jumped to his feet, wagging his little tail.
“Hey, Uncle Cooper. Hi, Olivia,” his oldest nephew, Will, said, gasping to catch his breath. “We ran all the way down the hill to here.”
“Where’s your mom? I thought she was bringing you down,” Cooper said, frowning.
“She said she has a migraine, so she called Caitlin and asked if she would come down with us.”
Cooper smiled at the girl, struck again by how much she looked like her mother.
Someone else he couldn’t save.
“Thanks, Caitlin. Nice of you to help out.”
“You’re welcome,” she said without meeting his gaze.
Odd. Her face was pink and she looked like she wanted to be anywhere else in town. To be fair, if he had just run down the hill after three little boys, he might feel the same.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Olivia said. “We only have about a dozen plants to put in the ground.”
“Do we have to pull any weeds? I hate pulling weeds,” Charlie said.
“That part, lucky for you, is done. You only have to do the fun part now—planting the garden, while I take pictures of you.”
He wasn’t dreading that as much as he had expected, Cooper realized, surprised to discover more of his dark mood lifting. His day had been hard, but there was undeniable peace in being here with the boys and Olivia and her niece, planting something in anticipation of a big reward at some future time, even if he had to have his picture taken.
25
CAITLIN
She was being so stupid.
Caitlin wanted to dig a deep hole in the corner of his garden and bury her head in it.
What was wrong with her? She couldn’t seem to put two words together. Everything she did say came out sounding backward and ridiculous.
Cooper Vance would never want to even speak to her again, let alone have a father-daughter relationship with her.
After a full day of trying to process the DNA results, she still couldn’t accept the idea that she had found her dad. None of it seemed real, like it was something she was reading about in a book, happening to someone else.
She had a father. And she couldn’t even say two words to him without fumbling and stuttering over her words.
She almost passed out when Melody called