Emily held out her hand to Clay, who promptly slipped his into it. “Come on,” she said, glancing back at Wade. “I’ll show you around.”
Wade had already seen the living room, of course, though Emily paused there to give him a chance to look it over again. Clay headed straight for the table that held all the framed photographs. “Who are all these people?” he asked.
“Clay, we’re here to see the house, not Miss Emily’s personal things,” Wade reminded his son.
Emily ignored him. “Those are all photographs of members of my family,” she explained to Clay. “The oldest picture is of my grandparents, Josiah and Anna Mae McBride. The others are all photos of their descendents.”
“What are descendents?” The boy stumbled a little over the word.
“People who have descended from them—their children and grandchildren,” Emily explained patiently. “These are all pictures of my aunts, uncles, cousins, my parents and my brother.”
Giggling, Clay pointed to the photograph of the Irish setter that Wade had noticed on his last visit “Is that a descendent, too?” the child asked impishly.
“No,” Emily answered with a smile. “That was my dog, Reilly. He was the smartest dog in the world.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died a few years ago. He was very old.”
Clay gazed soulfully up at Emily. “Do you miss him?”
Wade noted a touch of sadness in Emily’s eyes when she nodded. “Yes. I still miss him sometimes. But I had a wonderful time with him while I had him.”
Was it loneliness that Emily was running from by selling her house? Wade couldn’t stop trying to understand an action that just didn’t seem to fit the woman he was slowly coming to know.
Still holding Clay’s hand, Emily took them through the kitchen—which, as Wade had suspected, was large and well-appointed but in need of some general maintenance. Then they looked into a formal dining room with fading wallpaper. At the back of the house were four bedrooms, three furnished as bedrooms, one as a home office. The last bedroom they entered was obviously Emily’s own. Done in dark greens and maroons, it had a cozy, lived-in look. A retreat, Wade thought. A sanctuary.
It wasn’t the master bedroom. She’d already shown him that one, which was larger, and furnished in a masculine style that suggested it had been her father’s room, though it had apparently been stripped of any personal effects after his death. Emily’s room was probably the smallest of the three bedrooms. But it had the largest windows, which she’d filled with healthy houseplants.
“Is this where you sleep?” Clay wanted to know.
“Yes, this is my room,” Emily confirmed, avoiding Wade’s eyes.
“Is this where you’ll sleep if my daddy and me move in?”
Wade took pity on her, stepping in before she was forced to explain. “If we buy Miss Emily’s house, she will move out,” he told his son.
Clay frowned. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “You can stay, can’t she, Daddy?”
This time it was Wade who groped for words, “Er—”
“I have fresh pastries in the kitchen,” Emily said quickly. “Would you like a snack, Clay? And there’s coffee if you’d like some, Wade, before we go outside to look around.”
“Sounds good,” Wade agreed, seizing the excuse. “Clay? Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry,” Clay said with a matter-of-factness that brought Emily’s smile back.
As the three of them headed back to the kitchen, Wade thought of Clay’s innocent question. And he tried to block out the images of Emily living here with them—though not necessarily sleeping in her own room.
6
CLAY TOOK ONE LOOK at the old tire swing hanging from a massive oak branch in Emily’s backyard, and he was gone, sprinting toward the tree with the enthusiastic determination of childhood.
“It’s safe,” Emily assured Wade. “I have the rope checked frequently, since my youngest visitors always love to play on that swing.”
“Fresh-baked cookies and a tire swing in a big backyard,” Wade murmured with a smile. “I bet you get a lot of young visitors.”
She saw no need to tell him how often she was asked to baby-sit. Since her married friends with young children generally expected Emily to be home on weekends, they didn’t hesitate to call. Even when her father had been alive, they had asked—after all, Josiah had been confined to his bed for years and hadn’t kept Emily so busy that she couldn’t keep an eye on a few children. Unless her father had been having one of his difficult days, Emily had usually said yes. She loved children. And she rarely had other plans.