Can you still get TJ from school today?she sent.
It didn’t take long for him to respond.Yes.
One word, and Beth frowned at her phone. She didn’t know what to say.Thanksseemed appropriate, and she sent that. She hadn’t had time that morning to think about dinner, so she hadn’t taken anything out of the freezer to thaw.
Will you be home for dinner?She stared at the words for a good ten seconds before she sent them, and this time, Trey’s answer didn’t come flying in instantly.
Beth got back to work, sweeping out the barn and moving onto the stables and the horses that needed fresh bedding and fresh water.
“Beth?” a man called, and she looked up, surprised.
“Here,” she said, exiting the stall where she’d been working. Jake stood in the doorway down the aisle, and a smile sprang to her face. “I didn’t realize what time it was.”
“I’m a little early,” he said. “Is now okay?”
Beth set the shovel against the wall. She’d moved Draconian next door to Harold’s stall, and the two horses got along great. “Sure,” she said, already moving toward him. “How are you? How’s Sapphire?”
“She’s great,” he said. “I’ve been training her to roll over, and she doesnotlike it.” He chuckled. “I sure do miss Danny and his way with dogs.”
“So do I,” Beth said, but her emotions didn’t surge to the surface. She reached Jake and embraced him. “It’s so good to see you, though I wish we were meeting for one of those salty breakfast sandwiches and not that I’m about to show you a major plumbing problem.”
He laughed too and stepped back. She looked into his eyes, searching his face for any sign of Danny. They’d been best friends growing up, and Jake had been a good friend to Beth once she’d married Danny.
He’d come to take TJ to a baseball class at the recreation center once after Danny’s death, but Beth had never called on him again. At least not for personal help. If she had a plumbing issue, yes, she called Jake Harguss.
Looking at him now, she wasn’t sure why she’d cut him out of her life. In the next moment, she realized she hadn’t done that. Not intentionally, the exact same way she hadn’t meant to ignore Trey or make him feel like he wasn’t important to her. Of course he was, just like Jake was.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should’ve kept in touch with you better.”
Jake ducked his head. “I’m fine,” he said. “Things are going fine.”
“Nobody special in your life yet?” she asked, linking her arm through his as they stepped out of the stable.
“I actually started seeing someone just before Christmas,” Jake said. “Don’t ask me her name,” he added quickly. “I’m not going to tell you. It’s still very new. I think we’ve gone out three or four times.”
“In a whole month?” Beth asked. “Six weeks, Jake. Why so slow?” She must not be that special if he wasn’t anxious to see her every night.
“She lives in Louisville,” Jake said. “That’s all I’m going to say. Come show me the ice skating rink.” He grinned at her and they made the trek over to the coops. She just gestured toward the sheet of frozen water, which had shrunk in the past few hours.
He circled it, nudging it every few feet with the toe of his boots, as if that would tell him where the leak was located and how to fix it. When Jake returned to her side, he said, “We’ll go through the drain in the coop first. Work out from there.”
“Okay,” she said, turning to lead the way into the little shed next to the henhouse. It was pretty cramped in there for even one person, as Danny had built it as an attachment to the henhouse simply as a mudroom to clean up in before he continued into the farmhouse from the muddy outer fields.
Jake lifted his case to the sink, balancing it on two edges to open it. “Oh, Henri said to say hello.”
“That’s nice,” Beth said. “How is she handling Georgie being in school?”
“I think her exact words were ‘I’ve died and gone to heaven.’” He laughed, and Beth joined in.
“I think I felt the same way,” she said. “Though the drive definitely adds time to my day.”
“Yeah.” Jake bent over his case to get out the equipment. “I heard you have help now.” He lifted his eyes to hers for a moment, pure curiosity there. He quickly looked away, back to the long cable he began to feed down the drain.
He tapped the screen in the top of the case, and something gray and garbled came up.
“Uh, yes,” Beth said. “Trey Chappell and I got married.”
“I heard,” he said.