The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(88)

Lucy had a few ideas about that, but she kept them to herself.



BREE LOCKED UP THE FARM stand for the night. The frames in the hives were heavy with honey. Earlier today, she’d cleaned Myra’s old hand-cranked extruder, and at dawn tomorrow, she’d start this year’s harvest. The work would be backbreaking, but that didn’t bother her as much as the implications of harvesting honey for next summer. She’d accepted the fact that she had to stay on the island, but she was far from sure she had enough money saved to survive the winter until she could sell this new crop.

She gazed around at what she’d created—her little fairy castle farm stand with its carousel ribbon trim and Easter egg Adirondack chairs. It shocked her how happy this world she’d created made her. She liked watching her customers settle into the painted chairs and enjoy samples of her honey. She enjoyed seeing them testing her lotions, sniffing her soaps, and pondering her candles. If only she could live in a perpetual summer, with no threat of winter, no obsessing over money, no worries about Toby. She sighed, gazed at what she could see of the sunset through the trees, and headed for the house.

The first thing she noticed as she stepped inside was that the kitchen smelled delicious, like real food. “Toby?”

He wore his favorite jeans and T-shirt along with a baseball cap and a pair of red oven mitts with the batting coming out of one thumb. He took a casserole dish from the oven and set it on the stove next to a pair of wrinkled baked potatoes. “I made dinner,” he said.

“By yourself? I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Gram taught me some stuff.” Steam rose from the casserole as he pulled off the aluminum foil. “I wanted Mike to come eat with us, but he had business.”

“He has a lot to do,” she managed, without sarcasm. “What did you fix?”

“Cowboy casserole, noodles, and baked potatoes. Plus we have the bread Lucy made today.”

Not exactly carb light, but she wasn’t going to criticize. She washed her hands, avoiding the pan of cold, soggy noodles in the sink, then took two plates from the cupboard. She pushed aside a copy of Black Soldiers in the Civil War to set them on the table. “It smells delicious.”

The cowboy casserole turned out to be a concoction of ground beef, onion, pinto beans, and, judging from the empty can on the counter, tomato soup. Six months ago, she’d never have eaten anything like this, but despite some undercooked onions and overbrowned ground beef, she had seconds. “A great meal, Chef,” she said when she finally put down her fork. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Anytime you feel like cooking, you go right ahead.”

Toby liked having his work appreciated. “Maybe. How come you don’t cook?”

Exactly when was she supposed to add that to her schedule? But the truth was, she’d never liked to cook. “I’m not much of a food person.”

“That’s why you’re so skinny.”

She gazed around at the kitchen with its dated pickled oak cabinets and yellowing vinyl floor. How odd to feel more comfortable in this shabby cottage than she’d ever felt in the luxurious house her cheating husband had bought. As for the money she’d once spent so freely … Not a penny of it was as precious as what she was earning for herself with her own hard work and imagination.

“Your mother liked to cook, too,” she said.

“Really?” Toby stopped eating, fork poised in midair. His eagerness made her feel petty for not talking to him about Star. Just as Mike had asked her to.

“Gram never told me that,” he said.

“Sure. She was always trying out new recipes—not just cookies and brownies, but things like soups and sauces. Sometimes she’d try to get me to help, but mainly I just ate what she made.”

He cocked his head, thinking that over. “Like you’re eating what I made.”

“Exactly.” She searched her mind. “She wasn’t crazy about bees either, but she loved cats and dogs.”

“That’s like me, too. What else about her?”

She stole the man I loved. Or was that merely what Bree wanted to believe because it was easier to think bad of Star than to admit that David had never really loved her?

She made a play out of pleating her napkin. “She liked to play cards. Gin rummy.” Star cheated, but Toby had heard enough negatives about his mother. “She loved Janet Jackson and Nirvana. All we did one summer was dance to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ She stunk at softball—none of us wanted her on our team, but we always let her because she made us laugh. She liked to climb, and when we were younger, she’d hide from me in that big old tree in the front yard.”

“My tree,” he said with so much wonder that her heart ached.

She told him what she should have understood from the beginning. “Your mom wasn’t perfect. Sometimes she didn’t take life as seriously as she should, but I can tell you this. She never intended to leave you. She always meant to come back.”

Toby dipped his head so she wouldn’t see his eyes filling with tears. She reached out to touch him, then thought better of it. “Let’s go to Dogs ’N’ Malts for dessert.”

His head came up. “Could we?”

“Why not?” She was so stuffed she could barely move, but just once, she wanted to be the fun person in Toby’s life.