Page 15 of When the Sun Rises
She blinked a few times before her shoulders dropped. “Tucker told you?” she repeated as though she wasn’t sure she’d heard me right.
I nodded, not wanting to share the only reason being that I’d been wearing Raleigh’s cologne. Logically, I knew no one would blame me since I had no way of knowing, but the anguished look on Tucker’s face as he’d told me his husband’s story had been enough punishment.
Tallie brought the tips of her fingers up to her lips, and to my horror, her eyes began to shimmer with the formation of tears. It must have been evident on my face, because she flapped a hand.
“I’m fine. I hadn’t expected it, ’s all.” Tallie cleared her throat and continued. “We’ve always kept a chair open for Raleigh at the table. At first, none o’ us could bear filling it. But Tuck really couldn’t. The heads of the table are always meant for the hosts, you see, ’cept Conrad and Millie preferred sitting together. So no one has ever taken the foot. We tried encouragin’ Tuck to, but he shot the idea down. Said he wasn’t the owner of the farm yet. But with you here, there were only two options for you to sit, and if you’d been raisedwith any manners, we knew you weren’t going to be takin’ the end of the table.”
“So no one has sat there for three years?”
Tallie’s lower lip quivered before she pulled it into her mouth, and she shook her head. “Tuck’s struggled with Raleigh’s passin’ hard,” she said, voice shaky. “But if he’s tellin’ you about Raleigh, and lettin’ you sit there, then I hav’ta believe he’s finally ready to heal.”
I walked away from the conversation feeling more out of sorts than I had before I’d spoken to Tallie. The sensation haunted me all through my nighttime routine, and even as I laid in bed trying to drift off to sleep. It kept poking and prodding, making something sick swirl in my gut, because I couldn’t get a nagging thought out of my head. It was stupid though.
An enterprise like Juniper Grove could definitely make do with eight hands to maintain the horses and grounds, but it wouldn’t be easy work. I was fine with that—it wasn’t like I enjoyed being idle anyway. It was how I’d earned my nickname. Always wanting to be in the action, always in motion. But after walking the property and seeing everything, it was clear that eight men was the bare minimum needed.
So it was stupid to think I was Raleigh’s replacement. Because a place like this wouldn’t run the risk of being short on hands… right?
CHAPTER NINE
TUCKER
Ifinally reached the point of exhaustion from my insomnia that when I hit the pillow the night of Jackson’s arrival, I fell into a dreamless sleep. It was the abyss of nothingness that I sometimes needed, but I still woke before the sun with blood on the sheets from the hole inside me. Raleigh’s face hadn’t been the first thing I saw after opening my eyes, sleep crumpled and cradled perfectly on the pillow beside me, and it hadn’t been in my dreams either. The darkness of my own mind had been all I’d seen, so Nighttime laughed, her cackles ringing in my ears as I slowly rose.
It followed me as I went through the motions of showering, brushing my teeth, and getting dressed for the day. Like an earworm I couldn’t rid myself of, her incessant laughter stayed perched in my mind as I made my coffee, poured it into a thermos, and then drove to the main farmhouse. It didn’t stop until I walked into the kitchen, intent on helping Tallie cook as I always did when I was up this early, and came face-to-face with a pair of blurry, bloodshot green-brown eyes.
“Mornin’,” Jackson drawled, sipping at a steaming mug of coffee as he leaned back against the kitchen island.
“What are you doing up this early?” I asked, glancing around the kitchen. “Where’s Tallie?”
The cook had practically been a second mother to me growing up, and sometimes I still found myself turning to her for the sagely advice only a mom could offer. Other times, she’d settle me up with a bowl of something warm and a little sweet as her source of comfort. Either way, I could do with a little bit of some Tallie lovin’, but she was notably missing from her domain this morning. I checked my watch, just to be sure I hadn’t misread the time and stumbled in during the middle of the night.
“She said she was going to get eggs from the chickens. Did y’all have chickens? I don’t remember seeing any on our tour,” Jackson responded, rubbing at one of his eyes with a wide yawn. He clearly hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
“They’re Tallie’s chickens. She has a cabin on the property, and she keeps them in a coop nearby,” I said absently. “That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here so early.”
“Weston snores like a fucking freight train,” he grumbled around another sip of his coffee, but then he sighed. “I figured if I’m not sleeping, I might as well be working, and the only one up this early working would be Tallie, so here I am.”
Jackson gave me a pointed look over his coffee mug. “What areyoudoing here this early?”
For a moment, I considered telling him how sadistic Nighttime was to me, but how I craved her sweet torture, nevertheless. How she made my dreams the worst and best place to be because they were the only times I could see Raleigh without reliving the moment my soul ripped to shreds. That was until I woke up. I contemplated telling him how avoiding sleep was the only way I’d learned to cope because the dark chasm of my mind was no better than the scripted reels that starred Raleigh or the very real memories replayed back to me just to twist the knife deeper. Nighttime had turned him into a demon to plague me because she knew I’d never be able to exorcise myself of him.
But that was more complicated than a farmhand on his real first day of work needed to know.
I shrugged a shoulder. “I’m an early riser.”
Jackson gave a short huff of laughter. “I find it hard to believe you’re actively choosing to be awake at this time.”
Instead of saying more, I brought my thermos of coffee to my lips and took a long sip. He raised an eyebrow, but the sound of the mudroom door slamming had him glancing over his shoulder to greet Tallie as she came back in from the frigid predawn air.
“Good thing we ain’t feedin’ everyone off my girls ’cause they—” Tallie’s words cut off as she rounded into the kitchen and spotted me. For a split second, I thought I saw a flash of something almost crestfallen in her eyes, but it was quickly replaced by resigned acceptance that I was once again slinking in from the dark. At least I’d slept some this time, even if I maybe didn’t look it.
She let out a slow sigh before walking over to the sink and dug out the eggs from the basket she carried to begin washing them off. “Jackson, if you’re awake enough, gimme a bowl so I can start scramblin’ these. Tuck, hon, there’s a carton in the fridge. My girls only laid six this mornin’. While you’re in there, grab the bacon, milk, and butter.”
Jackson glanced back at me, and I tilted my head toward a cabinet near his left leg where all the large mixing bowls were kept. He gave me a sleepy smile as I passed to get the items Tallie requested from the refrigerator, and I worked my jaw against the rumbling in my chest at the sight of it. He was nothing like Raleigh.
Tallie put Jackson to work cracking both sets of eggs into the bowl as she heated up the griddle and a pan. We both moved around seamlessly, following Tallie’s direction as we prepared the meal for the incoming hoard of hungry hands and farm occupants.
“Seems like a waste to be mixing in fresh eggs with store bought ones,” Jackson murmured as he watched Tallie flick her wrist with practiced precision.
