Forever Yours (Nebraska Series Book 9) Read online

  Her face lit up. “That’s a good idea!” She took the bowl before he could take three cookies out of it. She reached the bottom of the porch steps then ran back up to him. She picked out three of the biggest cookies she could find then handed them to him. “Here!”

  Dave thanked her and then watched as she ran for the barn in unbridled enthusiasm. He chuckled then ate the cookies.

  ***

  A week later, Joel sat across from Dave in the parlor. He stared at Dave for a long moment then glanced at Mary, Isaac, Rachel, and Adam who were all gathered around them. Isaac had also brought the bird with its bandaged wing into the room to witness this moment.

  “Are you sure you want this splint off?” Joel asked Dave. “I mean,” he glanced at the others again, “no one seems all that excited about it.”

  “Just do it,” Dave said. “I’m sick of this thing.”

  “Alright, alright.” Joel put his hands up in the air. “You’re such a grouch these days. I don’t know how Mary can put up with you.”

  Dave let out a frustrated sigh. “You try being stuck in a chair all day and tell me how much you want the doctor to make jokes about keeping you in a splint.”

  Joel shook his head as he started to remove the splint. “I have to say that you aren’t a very happy patient.” He glanced over at Isaac. “I hope your patient is in a better mood than mine is.”

  “Richie’s in a good mood,” Isaac said. “He’s on the mend.”

  “Richie?” Joel asked, glancing at Mary.

  “He named the bird after Richard because he’s proud of his uncle for getting a mention in the newspaper,” Mary said.

  “Ah, I should have known,” Joel replied. “It is pretty exciting to have a family member who gets mentioned in the newspaper for something good. I heard Richard will be interviewed next week from that man in Chicago who writes for a magazine.”

  Isaac perked up. “When will the magazine be out?”

  “I don’t know,” Joel said. “I’m sure he’ll tell us when he finds out.”

  Dave tried not to stare at Isaac who was practically brimming with excitement, but it was hard not to. He couldn’t recall a time when Isaac had ever looked that excited over anything he did. Even when Dave had taught Isaac how to ride a horse, Isaac didn’t go on and on about it for weeks.

  Joel removed the last of Dave’s splint. “There you are! Everything is back in place like it should be.” He pressed his fingers along different points of Dave’s leg. “Do you feel any pain?”

  “No, but I am itching.” Dave leaned forward and scratched his leg. All at once, a wave of relief washed over him. He would never take the ability to scratch an itch for granted again.

  Joel stood up. “Make sure you take it easy. I brought this cane over for you. If you start feeling sore or tired, use it. Remember what I said about taking things slow.” His sympathetic gaze went to Mary. “You’ll still have to deal with having him around all the time until his leg gets its strength back.”

  Mary shook her head but smiled. “I love having Dave around.”

  “Ten years of marriage, and she still hasn’t discovered what a pain you can be,” Joel teased Dave.

  “Oh, stop teasing him, Joel,” Mary kindly admonished. “I love Dave. He’s never been a pain.”

  Joel’s eyebrows rose in a challenge. “Are you telling me that he hasn’t once gotten on your nerves these past few weeks?”

  She hesitated to answer then said, “Obviously, he’s had restless moments.”

  “I thought so,” Joel interrupted before she could continue. “Look, I know you two are happy together. I, myself, am a happily married man, but if I were to stay around the house all day without doing anything, I’d wear April out. The key to a good marriage is to be absent just enough to make the other person miss you. That way they’ll be happy when you return.” He turned his gaze to Isaac and Rachel. “And you two are helping your parents by being good, right?”

  “I help Ma cook,” Rachel said.

  “And I milk the cow and bring in water,” Isaac added. Though he addressed the comment to Joel, he was smiling at the bird and patting its head.

  Adam walked over to Joel and held his hands up to him.

  Joel chuckled and picked him up. “I didn’t forget about you, Adam. You’re probably the most behaved of them all.” He ruffled the boy’s hair, and Adam laughed.

  “Would you like a slice of apple pie before you go?” Mary offered.

  Joel’s eyes lit up in interest. “You made an apple pie?”

  “I thought this was a special occasion,” Mary replied. “And I wanted to thank you for helping Dave with his leg.”

  “Ah, so you are happy to get Dave back out to the barn.” Joel winked at her. “Want to join us, Dave, or do you have her pies so often that you’re tired of them?”

  “I’ll never tire of her pies.” Dave moved his leg off the ottoman. It was strange to have full use of it again.

  “Take it easy when you stand,” Joel said. “That leg is going to be weak.”

  “I know.” Dave put his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself up. When he realized he was standing primarily on his good leg, he balanced his weight on the other leg. Right away, he noticed that it lacked the strength he was used to. He took a step forward.

  “What do you think?” Mary asked.

  “I think my leg is like a wagon wheel that is stiff,” he replied.

  “Yeah, that’s going to be the case for a while,” Joel said. He turned his attention back to Mary. “So about this pie…?”

  She chuckled and waved for him to follow her to the kitchen. “I also made one for you to take home.”

  “Mary, you’re an angel.” Joel hurried to the kitchen, tickling Adam as he did so.

  Dave noticed that Rachel followed them but Isaac was still petting the bird. “Don’t you want a slice of your mother’s pie?” he asked his son.

  Isaac looked up at him. “Can Richie have some of it?”

  “No. Pies aren’t good for birds,” Dave replied.

  Isaac frowned. “In that case, I’ll just take him outside. Maybe we can find a worm for him to eat instead.”

  Dave waited until Isaac was out of the house before he rolled his eyes. He didn’t know what was worse: Isaac having him read the article several times a day or the way Isaac kept fussing over the bird he’d named after Richard.

  “Are you coming?” Mary asked as she came back into the room.

  “Yeah, I’m coming.” Dave grabbed the cane but took a tentative step forward without it. His leg wobbled a bit, so he decided to use the cane to walk over to her.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, but it’s shaky.”

  “I suppose it’s like when the children learned to walk. They had many falls before they could walk with confidence.”

  “Let’s hope I don’t end up falling like they did.”

  She put her arm around his waist and kissed him. “If you take it easy like Joel said, you should be fine.”

  He didn’t know if her intention was to help him walk to the kitchen, but he found himself leaning more into her than the cane. When they reached the kitchen, Adam was in a high chair, and Rachel was giving him a cookie to eat. Dave glanced over at Joel and saw that he had already finished one slice and was working on another one.

  “Feel free to leave some of that pie for the rest of us,” Dave joked as he sat in the chair across from him.

  Joel shot him a pointed look. “You get her pies whenever you want them. I only get them when the family gets together or when you break a leg. I think I’m entitled to stuff myself silly.”

  “Are you going to share the pie you’re taking home with your family?” Dave asked as Mary put a slice of pie on a small plate and gave it to him.

  “Sure. Why do you think I’m eating as much of this one as I can?” Joel replied.

  Mary poured coffee into a cup and put it in front of Dave. “Don’t give your brother a hard time. It�
��s always good to see a man with a good appetite.”

  “Dave, Mary is your best quality,” Joel said. “I’m forever thankful you married her.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.” Dave accepted the coffee from her. “The day I married her was the best day of your life.”

  “Don’t be silly. The day I married April was the best day of my life. Having my children were the second. But, the day you married Mary was the third.” He glanced around the room. “Isn’t Isaac coming?”

  “No. He’d rather be outside with his bird.” Dave tried to hide the resentment in his voice, but he didn’t quite succeed.

  “And that bothers you because…?” Joel asked.

  Dave sighed. “We got the newspaper with Richard’s interview weeks ago. He should have forgotten it by now.”

  “You’re not jealous of Richard, are you?”

  “No, I’m not jealous of Richard. I have no desire to design and build houses or businesses. I’m happy working with the land.”

  “But you are jealous. You don’t like all the attention Isaac is giving Richard.”

  “Are Nora or Hannah talking nonstop about Richard?”

  Joel swallowed a piece of his pie. “No.”

  “Then how can you know what it’s like to hear about Richard all the time?”

  “I don’t think Isaac means any harm in it,” Mary interrupted as she sat next to Dave.

  “I know he doesn’t mean any harm in it,” Dave replied. “He’s too young to know what he’s doing.”

  “So why are you worried?” she asked.

  Dave shook his head. He really didn’t want to talk about it. He should never have even mentioned it. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” He put his fork into the pie, and for the first time since he’d had one of her pies, he didn’t even taste it.

  “He’ll grow out of it,” Joel said. “He’s a kid. He’s going through a stage. All kids go through a stage where they admire someone. It’s part of growing up. I remember when the circus came through here, and I saw the ringmaster. I thought of little else but him for the longest time.” His gaze went to Mary. “I imagined what it’d be like to do the same thing he did. Get up in front of an audience, tell them jokes to make them laugh, introduce new acts…” He grinned. “I even stood in the middle of the barn once and pretended the cows and horses were my audience. I even pretended that Tom was the clown.”

  “You didn’t!” Mary laughed.

  “He did,” Dave said. “And Tom was milking a cow at the time.”

  Mary shook her head in amusement. “Why do you give Tom such a hard time, Joel?”

  “Tom goofs up so much that I have to do it,” Joel replied. “I mean, he squirted milk in his eye that night. How could I not comment on it?”

  Despite himself, Dave felt a chuckle rise up in his throat. “Tom went to the well screaming that he was going to go blind.”

  Mary laughed harder. “Oh, poor Tom. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”

  “You should have been here when he was courting Jessica,” Joel said. “He was tripping all over himself to impress her.”

  “That’s sweet,” Mary replied.

  “Yeah, maybe it was,” Joel said. “But you’ll never get me to admit that to him.” He finished the second slice of pie then stood up. “I should go. I promised my assistant I’d be back by three.”

  Mary got up and gave him the basket with the pie in it. “Thank you for coming. It’s nice to know Dave’s leg is alright.”

  “It is. Now things can get back to normal around here. But,” he gave Dave a pointed look, “don’t overdo it. I know you, and you like to push your limits. Don’t do that with your leg.”

  “I’ll be good,” Dave said.

  “And don’t let Isaac worry you,” Joel added. “You’re his pa. Richard can’t take that away from you.”

  Dave watched as Joel left the kitchen. Mary hurried to see him out. Dave put his fork into his slice of pie then glanced at Rachel and Adam. Adam had finished the cookie, and Rachel was getting another one for him.

  Rachel glanced over at him and said, “I didn’t make these. You got the best ones.” Then she broke it in half and gave it to Adam.

  Dave smiled. He didn’t know how much Rachel understood from the conversation he’d just had with Mary and Joel. She was only five, so he assumed she didn’t understand much of it. But it was nice she wanted him to know she’d given him what she believed to be the best cookies. He gave her a pat on the back and then ate his pie.

  Chapter Nine

  A few days later, Dave felt strong enough to ride a horse. He found Isaac collecting eggs from the henhouse.

  “After you take those in to your ma, do you want to go for a ride through the cornstalks?” Dave asked. “They’re tall now.”

  As he hoped, Isaac perked up. “You mean it? We can go to the fields?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t mean it.”

  “Can Jasper come?”

  “Sure. You can take him out of the fence.”

  Isaac hurried to put the four eggs into the bowl and then ran for the house.

  Dave grinned at the boy’s enthusiasm before he went into the barn. While he was getting the saddles, he heard a bird chirp. He went to the corner of the barn. He hadn’t noticed that the wounded bird was over here. He knew Isaac had been taking care of it with Mary’s help, but he hadn’t thought to ask where they put it. He saw that it was in a wooden crate on one of the shelves. A couple of clean rags had been bunched up to look like a nest, and next to that were seeds and water.

  The bird looked up at him and chirped.

  Dave didn’t want to be upset by seeing the thing. It was, after all, just an animal. It hadn’t asked to be called Richie, and it hadn’t asked to have ‘Richie’s Company’ written on the side of the crate in Isaac’s handwriting.

  Dave turned away from the bird and focused on getting Susannah and Jack out of the stalls. He had Jack saddled up by the time Jasper came into the barn, barking with the joy of being free to run around.

  Dave patted the dog’s head. “If you could learn to leave the hens alone, I wouldn’t have to keep you caged up. Those hens aren’t the same as rabbits, you know.”

  Jasper barked and wagged his tail.

  Dave scratched him behind the ears. “You’re getting better about it, though. I suspect in another couple of months, you won’t have to go back to that fence again.”

  Isaac ran into the barn. “Ma wants to talk to you.”

  Dave frowned. “Does she need something?”

  Isaac shrugged. “She just said to stay here until she talks to you.”

  “Alright.” Dave turned his attention to getting Jack ready for the ride, and he was almost done when Mary came into the barn. “Is something wrong?” he asked, turning to her.

  “Isaac, why don’t you take Jasper on out?” she said after she gave Jasper a pat on the head.

  Isaac did as she wished, and she closed the distance to Dave before she asked, “Are you sure you feel up to riding a horse?”

  “I feel fine.” Dave rubbed Jack’s neck. “It’s not Jack’s fault I fell. I’ll be riding him, and Isaac will ride Susannah. I’m taking Isaac to the field. The ground is level there.”

  “Yeah, but what about your leg?”

  “I’ve done everything Joel said. I’ve been taking it easy. I’m not going to be the one walking. Jack is. I’ll just be sitting.”

  “You’ll need to use your leg to help keep your balance. It’s been a while since I rode a horse, but I remember how physically demanding that was.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m not pushing myself too hard. And I owe this to Isaac. Before I got injured, he asked me to take him to the cornstalks when they got high enough, and I promised him I would.”

  She let out an uncertain sigh. “You really feel fine?”

  “Yes. I admit my leg still isn’t as strong as it used to be, but it’s doing better than it was a few days ago.”

  “If your
leg starts to hurt, you’ll turn around and come back here, won’t you?”

  “Having my mother around has rubbed off on you. You don’t usually fuss over me like this.”

  “I’m not trying to mother you, Dave. I just want you to be careful. It scared me when you broke your leg. Things could have been worse.”

  He kissed her. “I’m glad you care about me.”

  “I do more than care about you. I love you.”

  “And I love you.” He rubbed the small of her back. “I’ll be fine. I won’t push myself further than I’m able to bear. You have my word.”

  She relaxed. “Alright. I’ll tell Isaac he can come back in.”

  Isaac came back into the barn, and soon, he and Dave were out in the field. This time, the cornstalks were just as tall as Isaac wanted them to be.

  “Don’t get too far ahead of me,” Dave called out as Isaac rode for the cornstalks. “It’s easy to get lost in the rows of corn when they’re like this.”

  “I won’t get lost,” Isaac promised. Then he stopped at one of the stalks and studied it. “Can I take one?”

  Dave scanned the rows of corns and figured missing one wouldn’t do any harm. “Alright, but just one. We’ll need to gather these during the harvest.”

  Judging by how well the crop was doing, this year might yield a nice profit. That would be nice after all the time he’d spent just sitting. He’d like to think the summer hadn’t been a complete waste.

  Isaac pulled up the stalk and grinned. “I’m reaping, Pa!”

  Dave chuckled. “Yep. That’s pretty much all there is to it.”

  “When can I help with the harvest?”

  “I think when you’re twelve, you should be old enough to handle a scythe.”

  “I’ll never be that old.”

  “You’re already nine. You only have three more years to go.” Noting that this didn’t seem to make Isaac happy, he added, “Just wait. When you’re reaping, you’ll be out in the hot sun all day. Sweat will be trickling down your back and over your face. Flies will be buzzing around you. You’ll spend most of your time hunched over. The scythe is heavy. At that time, I bet you’ll wish you were nine and able to stay with your ma.”