Watermelon Wishes

Chapter 7

He wasn't sure what had come over him. It was just a simple sprained ankle, no big deal. But he'd felt an instinctive urge that he didn't quite fully understand take over and a need to help her, to protect her had won out over his typical instincts to want her, this woman intent on buying his family's home, to feel the deep heartache that he felt over it.

Instead, somehow he'd ended up perched at the edge of her bed, listening to her as anguish creased her pretty face while she poured her heart out about the tragic death of her parents. He found himself wanting to pull her protectively into his arms and caress the pain away, to heal her memories of the past and protect her from anything new that threatened her the carefree smile on her face. Instead, he'd sat quietly, nodding as she talked, knowing full well what it felt like to be an orphan.

They had that in common, he said to himself. Just one thing. But it was somehow a powerful connection. Watermelon Cove was in many ways, a Norman Rockwell town. Picture perfect, just like many of the citizens who resided in it. Very few children that Brady went to school with and grew up alongside had divorced parents, yet alone deceased parents. Everyone, especially Becca, had felt sorry for him but no one understood him. His mother's mom, Grandma Cora had been more than he could have ever asked or wished her to be. His newly-widowed and very pregnant mother had moved in with Grandma not two months before she went into labor, not wanting to raise the baby all alone. When she died at the hospital, the staff somberly presented Cora with several options. But there was only one that she would consider. Raising Brady herself had been a challenge, he'd known that. He wasn't perfect with a capital T and he knew it. He'd had a slight period where he had rebelled as a pre-teen but for the better part of growing up with Grandma, had seemed a dream to Brady. He was convinced that there was no better place to grow up than the farmhouse and back then, it had various animals, a donkey named Clyde, dogs, cats and fat hens who roamed the grounds as they pleased and would provide fresh eggs for Cora to cook up for Brady "the big, strapping lad" as she called him. She'd done her best to be both a mother and father to him although she was supposed to either and technically was neither. But she was supportive and caring and nurturing to him. And Brady was forever grateful to her for that. He'd had plenty of excellent male role models in his life. And while all of that took the sting out of both his parents being gone, he still carried a dull ache in his heart for the fact that they were gone, that he never had even had the chance to meet them.

Unbelievably, he'd spilled this to her, this incredible-looking woman who sat up on her bed as he talked and knitted her brows in concentration as the pain he'd been carrying tumbled out before him. She had sat up from her resting position with no apparent regard for any pain that she was obviously in, her eyes shining with concern and understanding.

"That must have been so hard," she had said. "What are the odds that both your parents would be taken away from you before you were born? You must miss them both so much."

He had liked hearing her say that, it was better than what most people had said to him at Father Son Day at Little League or at the Mother Son picnic, Grandma attending all of those with him. "At least you never met them so you can't miss them," well-intending people would say. They just didn't understand how it felt. But Grandma had understood. And so did this woman that he hardly knew.

"You would feel like you were losing your family all over again," she had quietly remarked, saying more than asking, a look of recognition in her face. "The last piece of your family that you can hang onto."

He had nodded solemnly in agreement, his back ramrod stiff. Was he really trusting this woman he'd seemed to despise only hours earlier?

"Cora always made it very clear to me that the house needs to stay in the Casteel family," Brady said, shocked that his brain was allowing his heart to push the words out of his mouth. "It was so important to her. She told me so many times that it must always remain in our family. That's why it came as such as shock to me that the house wasn't set up in a trust, that the taxes were overdue. Of course, I should have done more due diligence to check but -" he took a deep breath and looked out of Evey's window. "I wasn't ready to deal with reality."