Page 54 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Grace blinked. “That’s... liquor.”
“Just a drop. Won’t hurt her none.”
“You sure?”
Rafe eased himself into the chair by the stove, working the stiffness out of his knees the way he always did, one at a time, like he had to negotiate with each joint separately.
“Mason teethed like he was tryin’ to grow a full set of horse teeth. Two weeks of screamin’. Miriam,myMiriam, liked to lose her mind over it. Tried everything under the sun ‘til old Doc Farley told her to rub a bit of brandy on his gums.”
“And it worked?”
“Like a charm. Mason quieted down inside of five minutes. Thomas, now, Thomas was worse. Boy teethed for amonth. We went through half a bottle of Kentucky bourbon on that child’s gums alone.”
Grace looked at the handkerchief with the amber stain spreading through the white cotton.
Miriam let out another wail, one so shrill it hit a pitch that made Grace’s teeth ache. That settled it. She took the handkerchief, twisted the corner into a tight point the way Rafe had said, and eased it between Miriam’s lips.
The baby clamped down.
For a second, nothing changed. The wail continued, if muffled around the cloth. Then Miriam’s jaw worked. She chewed the handkerchief corner, rolling it across her gums, and the crying thinned. Dropped from a scream to a cry. From a cry to a whimper. From a whimper to a low fuss, like a storm blowing itself out over the ridge.
Then quiet.
Miriam sucked on the handkerchief, and her body unclenched against Grace’s chest, one muscle at a time, until she sagged into the sling like a little sack of flour.
Grace exhaled.
The breath shook on the way out, rattling through her ribs in a way that betrayed more than she’d intended. She pressed her lips to the top of Miriam’s head and stood in the quiet kitchen with the clock ticking and the stove cooling and the sudden absence of screaming so total it buzzed in her ears like a sound of its own.
“There.” Rafe nodded from his chair. “See? Just needed the right trick.”
Maybe because of the quiet, or the relief, or the four hours of noise that’d ground her down to something thinner than she’d realized, Grace’s eyes filled up. She turned toward the window so Rafe wouldn’t catch it. But the man had raised three boys, so, of course, he caught it.
You couldn’t get anything past somebody who’d survived that much fatherhood.
“Grace.”
“I’m fine.” She blinked hard. The window blurred and re-sharpened. “Just tired, is all.”
“Sit down.”
“I should get the stew on. It’s past three, and if I don’t start the potatoes now, they won’t be—”
“Sit.”
She did. Miriam dozed against her collarbone, breathing those slow baby breaths that timed themselves to Grace’s heartbeat.
Rafe leaned forward, bracing both elbows on his knees.
“What’s eatin’ you, girl?”
She opened her mouth to saynothing. To deflect, pivot, change the subject to potatoes or stew or anything that lived on the safe side of her chest where the ugly voice couldn’t reach.
But the voice had teeth today.
“I don’t know what I’m doin’.” It came out small. Smaller than she’d meant. “I don’t know the first thing about babies, and I can’t work the ranch, and the horse sneezed on me, and I brokethe well pump, and the only thing I’m actuallygoodat around here is cookin’, and even that I learned from a one-page recipe book my mother left behind before she died.”
She swallowed.
