A House United Book 1: The Hardest Goodbye

Chapter Eight

Exhausted from the day's adventures and blood loss, Little Joe had no trouble falling asleep early, but Josie lay awake staring at the ceiling. Try as she might, sleep refused to come. After an hour of counting sheep, she heard footsteps outside the door. A small shaft of light spread across the floor as the door opened a few inches. Josie shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. She heard someone enter the room and slip over to the bunks.

"Faker," a familiar baritone whispered in her left ear.

Josie sighed and rolled over. "I have been trying, Adam, honest I have."

"I know."

"I'm sorry we can't go on our ride tomorrow," Josie said sadly. "I spoiled everything."

Adam reached up and brushed Josie's hair off her face. "Only half," he assured her, smiling wryly. "Little Joe spoiled the other half. He's good at that."

Josie smiled back, but a tear trickled down her cheek.

"Enough of that," Adam said, wiping it away. "Tomorrow's shot, but Sunday we'll have another picnic down by the lake, just like your first day here. How does that sound?"

"Good." Josie smiled a little wider now. It seemed fitting that her visit would end the way it had begun.

"It's settled then." Adam kissed her forehead. "Now go to sleep." He stooped down to lift Little Joe's legs back onto his lower bunk—how did that child manage to sleep like that?—and slipped back out of the room.

Hop Sing worked Josie and Little Joe nonstop the next day. Immediately after breakfast, he set them to washing the dishes. Once they finished, they set the table for lunch and headed outside to feed the chickens. Josie thought this was great fun. She had never had chickens, and their sassy clucking and the way they shoved each other to get the feed made her laugh. Little Joe rolled his eyes. Feeding chickens wasn't so great.

After lunch, they washed the dishes again and then got to work scrubbing the floors. Little Joe tried to reason that he couldn't scrub floors with a lame arm, but Hop Sing reminded him that he was left-handed and it was his right arm that was laid up. Scrubbing the floors took the rest of the afternoon, and Josie gained a new appreciation for all the hard work her family's cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Crenshaw, performed.

Once Hop Sing was satisfied the floors were clean, he had the children set the table for supper and then allowed them thirty minutes' of closely supervised play before the rest of the family came home. Because their visit was nearly over, Ben had taken Jacob and Hannah on a last buggy tour of the ranch. Hoss and Adam had chopped down the old oak tree and then finished digging the foundation of the new house, which would be about half a mile from the old one, next to the new bunkhouse and barn.

"Next time you visit, we'll put you up in style!" Adam announced proudly to Josie.

Josie smiled, but she and Adam shared a sad gaze. They'd both been trying to ignore how very little time they had left together, but now that they were down to their last thirty-six hours, it was hard to push to the backs of their minds.

Adam and Josie both slept fitfully that night and woke the next morning pale and bleary-eyed. Ben, Jacob, and Hannah watched in concern as the two cousins pushed their breakfasts around their plates without eating much. Josie had trouble swallowing around a stubborn lump in her throat, and Adam felt a weight on his chest that was somehow familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Finally, as Hop Sing cleared the breakfast dishes—frowning at Adam's and Josie's nearly full plates—Adam finally realized it was the same weight he'd felt when Marie died.

"Don't be daft, Cartwright," he told himself. "No one's died." But try as he might to convince himself otherwise, the impending loss of Josie felt the same.