Meet Me At The Chapel. Joanna Sims

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СКАЧАТЬ thing I need to do is find out from Brock if the roads are even passable now so I can check on the truck. I don’t think he’ll mind taking me all the way into Helena if it saves you a trip.”

      “Call me as soon as you know the plan. Promise?”

      “Of course. I love you, sis. Give Penny a kiss from me. I’ll see you soon.”

      Casey used the restroom and then joined Hannah at the table. Hannah was looking at a large diagram of a ladybug’s anatomy. Like many children diagnosed with autism, Hannah had become fixated on a topic, and that topic was ladybugs. The bathroom was decorated with ladybugs—ladybug shower curtain, ladybug toothbrush holder, ladybug towels. There was a ladybug on Hannah’s shirt and Casey had spotted a ladybug backpack hanging on one of the hooks in the foyer. Their dog was named Ladybug. One of the ways she had distracted Hannah from being scared in the cellar was to redirect to conversations about ladybugs. Once Hannah got started talking about the topic that interested her most, she forgot about the storm and talked at length about the insects. Although Brock was impressed with her ability to pinpoint Hannah’s interest, it wasn’t rocket science. All she had to do was pay attention to observable details, which was part of her job as a special education teacher.

      “What else do you have on your iPad?” she asked, curious to see Hannah’s reaction.

      “Stuff,” Hannah replied without looking up from the screen.

      Brock’s daughter wasn’t interested in showing her any other apps on the iPad—not in the middle of looking at ladybugs.

      The door to the house swung open. Brock peeled off his wet rain slicker and tossed it onto a rocking chair just outside the front door. He stepped into the foyer, stomped his feet on the rug and slapped the rain off his hat by hitting it across his thigh a couple of times.

      “How’s it looking out there?” Casey asked.

      Brock shook his head as he closed the front door tightly behind him. “It’s a mess.”

      He joined them in the kitchen—it wasn’t a tiny kitchen, but with Brock in it, it seemed to shrink before her eyes. He had been a tall, lanky young man the last time she had seen him. Now he was a large man, taller than most and burly. He was active and strong, but he had developed a bit of a paunch around the middle. A lumberjack. That’s what he reminded her of—a Paul Bunyan lumberjack. Not many of those running around Chicago.

      “I got ahold of Taylor.”

      Brock had just downed a glass of water and he was filling it up again. “Good. She doing okay?”

      “Penny’s sick again and Clint broke his collarbone, so he’s heading back from Texas. She said that she weathered the storm okay, though. Just a couple of small branches in the yard. Nothing major.” She noticed that Brock’s demeanor didn’t change at all when she mentioned that his stepbrother had gotten hurt. “What’s the chance of you getting me into Helena tonight?”

      “Zip.” He put the empty glass on the cluttered counter. “Downed trees are blocking the major roads into town.”

      “You’re not serious?” Casey said with a frustrated sigh. “You are serious.”

      “I can take you to Bent Tree or you can bunk with us tonight,” Brock said. “Hannah—it’s time to feed Lady. Turn off the iPad.”

      Hannah didn’t respond.

      “Hannah.”

      “Just one more thing.” Hannah didn’t look up—her entire focus was on the screen.

      Brock was tired and she could see that he was losing patience.

      “Here—let’s do this, Hannah. I’m going to set my timer to one minute and when the timer goes off, you can turn off the iPad.”

      The timer on her phone was set, the one minute ran out and Hannah, albeit reluctantly, turned off the iPad and tended to Lady’s needs.

      Brock didn’t say it with words, but there was a definite thank-you in his eyes when he looked at her.

      “I don’t know if I have the energy to face my aunt and uncle right now. But are you sure it would be okay if I crashed here tonight?”

      “It’s no problem. You can take my bed upstairs and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

      “No—I’ll take the couch.”

      “No—you’ll take my bed. I sleep on the couch most nights, anyway.”

      Sleeping in a bed instead of on a couch sounded like a much better scenario. If the bed were usually empty anyway, what would it hurt to take him up on his offer?

      “All right—but only if you’re sure.”

      He didn’t respond to that comment, but instead moved the conversation forward. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, have breakfast and then we can stop off and check on the truck on our way to Helena.”

      “Oh.” Casey groaned the word. “Geez. The truck. I hope the Beast is okay.”

       Chapter Three

      By nature, she was a light sleeper. Always had been. But the night she had spent in Brock’s massive California king-size bed had been one of her deepest sleeps on record. Perhaps it was the fact that she had been flat-out exhausted, or maybe it was the silky-soft material of the sheets. Either way, she had awakened from her sound sleep in the dead center of the bed, surrounded by a pile of plump pillows that had to be Brock’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s doing, feeling happy and content. She didn’t even scramble out of bed, as was her usual practice. Instead, she opted to linger a bit, staring up at the ceiling with the comforter pulled all the way up to her nose.

      “Dad says get up!” Hannah burst into the room without knocking.

      Shocked out of her random, drifting thoughts, Casey popped upright, her long auburn hair a mass of tangles. Hercules was vaulted forward, but he landed on all four paws. He waggled his tail and yapped at Hannah.

      “If you want to come into someone’s room, what is the polite thing to do?” Casey asked.

      “Knock.”

      Casey gave the preteen two thumbs-up. “Okay—try it again.”

      “What?”

      “Knocking before you come in. You knock, wait for an answer and then you come in. But only if I say it’s okay. Okay?”

      “Okay.”

      Hannah slammed the door shut, causing Hercules to yap wildly. Casey heard a knock on the door, but she waited for a couple of seconds before she answered just to make certain Hannah wouldn’t burst in without getting the green light.

      “Come in!”

      Hannah flung open the door again with a laugh. “Breakfast!”

      “Thank you, Hannah. Nice waiting, too.” Casey smiled at the СКАЧАТЬ