Page 39 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
I
flipped the lock, threw open the door and knelt in front of Rowen.
“What’s up, baby girl? Are you okay?” Certainly there must be something wrong if she was up this early.
“The sun is coming up, Mommy. That means I can get out of bed.”
When she was three, I’d instituted a rule that she couldn’t get out of bed until the sun was up. She had developed a bad habit of getting up in the middle of the night and coming into my room to sleep with me. Well, she slept. I got kicked in the face, stomach and ribs.
I twisted my neck to the windows. The sun was definitely not up.
“Uh, sweetie, the sun isn’t up yet. It’s still dark out. You need to get back into bed,” I said.
She ignored me completely because when I turned to look at the windows, her eyes caught a glimpse of Jess.
“Did Jess have a sleepover?”
It was way too early to have this conversation.
“Yeah, Roe, I had a sleepover. You okay with that?” he asked, picking her up.
“Yep,” she said, giving him a once-over.
Her eyebrows came together in the middle. “Are those your jammies? Why do you sleep in jeans? Mommy won’t let me sleep in anything except my jammies. She says if I sleep in my dresses, they will get wrecked.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Roe, sweetie, how about we save the questions until after Mommy and Jess get some coffee. Okay?”
“But, Mommy—”
“No ‘buts,’ Rowen. Let me get a sweater and we’ll go down and start on breakfast, okay? And then you can ask all the questions you want.”
“Ohhh-kaaay,” she pouted.
“We’re all up early and it’s a Sunday. Only a few weeks left to enjoy the summer. How about we head to Wade Lake and go fishing?” Jess asked.
I grumbled, “Fishing?” at the same time Roe shrieked, “Fishing!”
Both of them looked at me with big smiles on their faces.
I guess we were going fishing.
I met Jess outside when he returned to the farmhouse with his boat. Behind an older blue truck was a shiny silver aluminum boat with rods and oars sticking out the sides.
The boat wasn’t a surprise since obviously we had to have one to go fishing. The truck was a bit of a shock but only because I’d had no idea he drove anything other than the bronze behemoth. But I was totally taken aback by the big black dog he’d brought too.
“Oakley,” Jess called. The dog took a flying leap out of the truck and walked to Jess’s side.
“You have a dog?” I asked.
He didn’t get a chance to answer. Roe walked through the door, carrying her little pink backpack, and froze at the sight of Oakley. She immediately darted behind my legs, clutching them for dear life.
“Mommy, is that a nice doggie or a mean doggie?”
There were a lot of dog owners in Spokane and I’d seen my fair share of bites in the ER, so I had taught Roe early on that some dogs were nice and others were not. She needed to ask me before approaching a strange one.
“This is Oakley,” Jess told her. “He’s nice. You want to come say hello?”
