Her Second-Chance Family

He added smart-ass to his mental list of things he knew about Willow. Thief, hard worker, loyal to her friends...and smart-ass.

She shook her head. “No, mowing your yard today isn’t enough. Maybe you got all your stuff back, but it’s the sense of violation. Bea got into my stuff the other day. She went in my room looking for paper and found a picture of mine. She took it and showed it to Audrey. I was so pissed—I mean, upset.”

“Audrey doesn’t like swearwords?” he asked.

“She says English is an amazingly complex language and I’m smart enough to find other words to use. Then she gave me a thesaurus.”

Sawyer found himself chuckling.

“It gets worse. She went through the thing and highlighted alternatives.”

“She sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, she’d say that interesting is a nicer word than crazy, so I’ll politely agree.” She finished her water in one long gulp. The ice tinkled against the glass as she set it down. “I’m just about done. I’ll be back next week. She’s coming to get me so I can clean up before we go out to dinner to celebrate.”

“Someone’s birthday?”

“Nah. Audrey’s always looking for a reason to celebrate. When you said I could come mow, it was the last day of school for the kids, so we celebrated...by watching a sunset on the peninsula and listening for the hiss.”

“Hiss?”

“Yeah, Bea has some dumb story about if you sit quiet enough and wait for it, you might hear the sun hiss when it hits the water. It’s some stupid fairy tale some stupid woman Audrey knows told them. She should teach the kid to face reality, not live in some fantasy world where kids use rainbows for slides, and wishes do come true.”

Sawyer didn’t know what to say to that, so he settled for asking, “What are you celebrating tonight?”

“Her firm got some educational building job that she really wanted.”

“What does she do? What sort of project?” he asked before he could stop himself. He thought he might have asked too much, but Willow didn’t seem to mind.

“She’s an architect and does all this funky green crap, uh...stuff. She’s all LEED certified—and before you ask, that means she makes the houses environmentally friendly—and this is some city project with the school district.” Willow shrugged. “I don’t know much about it, but she and the kids are majorly excited, so we’re going out to celebrate. I don’t know why you celebrate getting awarded a job that doesn’t pay you anything.”

Willow’s phone pinged and she scanned the message. “She’ll be here in a few minutes. I gotta run.”

She pushed the lawn mower to the front of the house, then came back and moved the barrels to the garbage bin. He grabbed one and followed.

“Hey, you don’t have to...” she started to protest.

“I’m just carrying a barrel, Willow. Your karma’s intact.”

She shrugged and went back for the third barrel while he grabbed the fourth.

A horn sounded out front. “That’s her,” she said.

Sawyer found himself following her out to the red SUV. The driver’s door opened and a woman got out.

He wasn’t sure what he expected in Audrey Smith. Willow had told him that her guardian was only a dozen years older than her, but this woman looked too young to be pushing thirty. She had dark, curly hair, caramel-colored skin and a quick smile. “Mr. Williams?”

He nodded. “Ms. Smith?”

“The one and only. Call me Audrey,” she added. She turned to her charge and asked, “How’d it go Willow?”

“Fine from my perspective.” She jerked her finger at Sawyer. “You’d have to ask him to see if he’s of the same opinion. I think he’d count it a success since I didn’t steal anything this time.”

Sawyer ignored Willow’s snarky comment. “She did great work,” he assured her guardian.

“I’m going to get the rest of my stuff,” Willow said, and bolted to the back, leaving them alone.

“Thank you for giving her a chance,” Audrey said. “I thought about talking to you myself, but I decided that it was more important for Willow to make it work on her own.”

“She was insistent. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a choice.”

There was a slip in Audrey’s smile as she said with far more seriousness than his words merited, “Everyone has a choice. It’s simply sometimes we make the wrong one.”

The moment passed so quickly that he thought he’d imagined it, because in the next blink of an eye, Audrey’s smile was firmly back in place as she added, “And sometimes we make the right one. Giving Willow a second chance was the right one.”

“And what if she screws up?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Then we’ll just give her another chance.”

“That’s what Willow said you’d say,” he told Audrey.

Her smile grew broader, if that was possible. “Then maybe I’m reaching her...at least a little.”

“She really doesn’t have to do more than this. She busted her hump today. I finally took pity on her and helped carry the garbage cans. She didn’t even want that much help.”

“You throw your grass clippings out?”

Too late he remembered Willow’s warning and he waited for her to lecture him on saving the planet, but she didn’t. She simply nodded.

“The county composts the clippings,” he added, though why he was defending himself he wasn’t sure.

Willow reappeared and Audrey said, “Let’s put the mower in the car.”

“I’ll help,” he offered.

Audrey shook her head. “We’re two capable women. We can manage. But thank you again for allowing Willow to come today.”

“I’ll see you next week,” Willow said.

As they got in he heard Audrey say, “Ready to party?”

Willow shrugged, but she looked at him and waved, and beneath her veneer of indifference, he thought he saw excitement.

He needed to get some work done, but rather than head back up to his office immediately, he watched until the red SUV disappeared around the corner.

“Hey, Sawyer,” Mrs. Wilson called from her driveway.

He waved back. She took it as an invitation to walk across the street and ask, “Did you fire your lawn service? I use them, too, and if you had a problem...”