Two

      “Whatcha doin’?”

      Harley glanced up, then straightened when he saw the little Reynolds girl standing on the other side of the fence watching him. He lifted his arm to wipe the sweat off his brow, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. She was a cute little thing with a little button nose and wide innocent blue eyes sparking with curiosity. “Mending fences. What are you doing?” he asked in return.

      She dug the toe of her tennis shoe in the ground dejectedly. “Nothin’. Just watchin’ you.” She ambled closer, careful to place her hand between the barbs on the wire as she peered up at him. “Mama said I could watch you work as long as I didn’t get in your way. Am I in your way?”

      He chuckled, hunkering down on one knee to put himself at eye level with her. “Now how could you be in my way when you’re on that side of the fence and I’m on this one?”

      She screwed up her mouth like she had to think about that, then grinned. “So I can watch?”

      “You can even help if you want.”

      Her eyes brightened. “I can?”

      “You betcha.” He stood and stretched his arms over the top wire. “Grab ahold and I’ll haul you over.”

      Her arms laced with his and he lifted her clear of the barbed wire, then set her down at his side. He nodded toward a sack of staples on the ground at his feet. “You can hand me staples as I need them.”

      He stooped and picked up his hammer. As he squatted down in front of the post again, he held out a hand, palm up. “Staple, please.”

      Smiling proudly, she dug in the sack and dropped a staple on his palm, then watched as he positioned it over the wire. He swung the hammer, quickly burying the staple in the post in two strokes.

      “Wow!” she said. “You must be pretty strong to do that.”

      Harley shot her a wink. “Strength helps, but a careful aim is just as important.”

      “Mama doesn’t aim so good,” she confided. “She smashed her finger a while ago.” She giggled and dipped her hand into the sack again. “She said an ugly word.”

      Harley couldn’t help chuckling at the idea of Mary Claire letting loose on a cussword. “I’ve said a few myself when my aim wasn’t right. Hurts like hel—heck.”

      Obviously unaware of his slip, Stephie sifted through the nails and let out a long sigh. “Mama and Jimmy are fixing that little fence that goes around our house. I wanted to help, but they said I was too little and would just get in the way.”

      Harley heard the disappointment in her voice and remembered a time or two when his own daughter had suffered the frustrations of being too little to do things her brother was allowed to do. The memory made a cloud of sadness drift across his heart. “You’re helping me, though,” he reminded her.

      “Yeah, I guess.” She crossed her ankles and sank down cross-legged on the ground, pulling the sack to her lap. She dug out another staple and handed it to Harley. “Do you have any little girls?” she asked, squinting up at him.

      Harley froze, his fingers fumbling with the staple he’d just pressed to the post. “One, but she’s not so little anymore,” he murmured. “She’s sixteen.”

      “Does she baby-sit? Mama was saying just this morning that she was going to need to find a babysitter for us when she starts working.”

      Harley had to close his eyes against the pain. Even after ten years, it still hurt to think about his daughter and son and all that he’d missed in their lives. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. She doesn’t live with me. She lives in San Antonio with her mother.”

      “You’re divorced?” she asked, cocking her head.

      “Yeah. For about ten years now.”

      “My mama and daddy are divorced, too. My daddy lives in Houston, but Mama didn’t want us living there anymore because it’s so dangerous.” She leaned back on her elbows and stretched her legs out, pointing the tips of her tennis shoes toward the sky while she balanced the sack of staples on her stomach. “Jimmy got beat up on his way home from school and Mama cried. She said she couldn’t take it anymore, so she moved us here.”

      Harley wanted to ask, “What couldn’t she take anymore? Houston? Jimmy getting beat up? Or living in the same city as her ex-husband?” But he decided it wouldn’t be right to press the child for information. “I’d imagine that’d be tough,” he said vaguely.

      Stephie sighed again. “Yeah. I heard my mama’s friends talking, and they said guilt is what drove Mama to move.”

      “Guilt?” Harley said before he could stop himself.

      “Yeah. When Mama and Daddy were married, she didn’t have to work and she could stay at home with us. She told her friends that if she hadn’t divorced Daddy and had been at home like she was before, Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten beat up.”

      Though Harley had his own opinions, bitter as they were, about divorce and its ramifications, he only shook his head. “Some things you just can’t prevent.”

      Stephie pressed her lips together and nodded her agreement. “That’s what Mama’s friends said. But Mama wouldn’t listen. So she moved us here to Aunt Harriet’s house so we’ll be safe.” She stared off into the distance at the two-story frame house that was now her home. “Jimmy says our house should be condemned, but Mama says it’ll look prettier when we get it all fixed up.”

      Harley followed the line of her gaze, taking in the peeling paint, the rotten boards and the choking weeds. “I’m sure it will,” he murmured, but his mind wasn’t on the condition of the house. He was busy replaying that scene in front of the feed store when he’d peeled the child’s mother off his back—and maybe understanding a little better the reason behind Mary Claire Reynolds’s attack.

      “Hi, Mama! I’ve been helping Harley mend fences.”

      Mary Claire looked up and saw Stephie skipping across the overgrown lawn. She bit back a groan when she saw that Harley followed a few steps behind.

      “You have?” she asked, forcing a smile for Stephie’s benefit.

      Stephie skipped to a stop in front of her mother. “Yeah, and he said I was the best help he’d ever had.” Stephie beamed a smile at Harley over her shoulder. “Didn’t you, Harley?”

      He stopped behind Stephie, laying a hand on her shoulder, and grinned down at her. “Without a doubt.”

      He glanced Mary Claire’s way just as she pushed to her feet, and he had to lock his knees to keep from falling over backward. There ought to be a law, he swore silently. A woman shouldn’t be allowed to walk around half-dressed like that. Wearing the same cutoffs