The Daddy Survey Page 4

  “And today?”

  “Today I was on my way home again.”

  Emily eyed him carefully. “And you just happened to get there in time for lunch again?”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? It must have been fate.”

  Emily didn’t know quite what to make of this man. “Why did you come back?”

  “I liked the company, the service, and, much as I hate to admit it now that I’ve met the cook, I liked the food. I don’t suppose you can make a chicken fried steak like that, can you?”

  “Is cooking part of my job?”

  “Yeah. Is that a problem?”

  “For how many?”

  “My grandmother, my two brothers and me. And you and the girls, of course.”

  “You don’t have any, what would you call them, cowhands?”

  “Sometimes, but they bring their lunch with them. They don’t live on the ranch. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What was the question?”

  “The chicken fry?”

  Emily laughed. “If you want your arteries hardened, I can accommodate you.”

  “You,” he said with a smile, “are an angel.”

  In the back seat Janie and Libby held hands, crossed their fingers and tried not to giggle too much. But holding back their excitement was next to impossible. They were going to Mr. Sloan’s ranch! Of all the men they had surveyed at the café, Mr. Sloan was by far the best daddy candidate ever, and both girls wanted a new daddy.

  Libby had been four when their daddy died. She had two memories of him. The oldest was naturally the most vague, that of a strong, warm pair of arms lifting her high in the air until she squealed with delight. It seemed so wrong to her that the laughing strong man had one day become the pale, thin stranger in that scary hospital bed, but Mommy said it was Daddy, so it must have been true.

  Libby’s only other memory of her father wasn’t really of him, but of her mother standing before a shiny metal, flower-covered casket next to a big hole in the ground. Mommy had been crying that day. Libby didn’t like to think of it because it made her sad.

  She wanted a new daddy, one who could lift her in the air and make her squeal with delight again. One who could make Janie not be so serious all the time. One who could make her mommy smile and laugh the way Janie said she used to.

  They made Amarillo by late afternoon. In the back seat the girls had been nodding off for the past hour. Sloan decided it was time to stop for the night. They would get a good meal, a comfortable night’s sleep, and make the Cherokee Rose by early the next afternoon. He found a clean-looking Best Western with a twenty-four-hour restaurant next door and ample room for him to park without having to unhitch the car from his bumper.

  Sloan booked one room for Emily and her daughters, and another for himself. Once in his own room he immediately called home. Justin answered.

  “I need a favor,” Sloan said.

  “Hello to you, too,” Justin said. “Where are you?”

  “Amarillo. I need you to do something.”

  “So you’ll be home later tonight?”

  “Uh, no. I’m staying here tonight.”

  “You becoming a man of leisure? Since when do you get four hours from home and stop for the night when it’s not even dark yet?”

  “Since I’ve got passengers.”

  “Passengers? You’re bringing the mare back? What happened?”

  Sloan heaved a sigh. Justin was hell to talk to on the phone. His mind was always on ten different things at once. It was easier to get his attention if you stood in front of him and got in his face.

  “No,” Sloan told him, “it’s not the mare. She’s home where she belongs, as mannerly as a charm-school graduate, thanks to Caleb’s training. Now, are you paying attention?”

  “Caleb’s training? What was I doing, standing around with my thumb up my—”

  “All right, you helped. Now would you just listen, for once?”

  “Okay,” Justin said with a laugh. “I’m listening.”

  “I met this woman.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “No, damn it, it’s not like that. She and her girls ended up in a tight spot and I’m just helping them out.”

  “Ah,” Justin said.

  “Ah? What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” Justin insisted a little too casually. “Nothing at all. It’s just you, playing white knight and rescuing another damsel in distress. I suppose she’s pretty.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Ha! I’m right, aren’t I? She’s— Wait a minute, did you say her girls?”

  “Daughters. Two of them. Are you through jumping to conclusions? I need you to go to town this evening and pay Earline a visit.”

  “Earline? What for? She was just here.”

  “I want you to send her on a vacation. Her and Jeff. A paid vacation. Two, no, three weeks. They’ve been wanting to take their grandkids to Disney World. Now’s the time.”

  Nothing but the echo of silence came over the phone line for a long minute. Then, “You want me to what?”

  “You heard me. I promised Emily a job, and I told her Caleb would fix her car. She was really up against it, Justin. What else could I do?”

  Justin asked slowly, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I’m just helping out a woman in need.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “O ye of little faith,” Sloan said. “Just because I’m helping her out doesn’t mean I’m going to fall for her. She’s only staying long enough to get her car fixed.”

  Justin’s only response was a low hum of doubt.

  In the room next to Sloan’s another phone conversation was taking place as Emily spoke first to Sandra back at the motel at The Corner to assure her that Sloan hadn’t murdered them all and dumped their bodies in a ditch, then to her cousin Brenda in Fort Smith.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” she told Brenda.

  “So you hopped into the car with a total stranger?” Brenda shrieked. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Probably.”

  “There’s no probably to it.” Brenda’s voice raised another octave. If it got much higher, glass was going to shatter. “You’re not seriously going home with the man. Tell me you’re not that stupid.”

  Emily sighed. “I thought in the morning I’d take a cab to the bus station. I’ve got enough money to get us to Fort Smith, but it means leaving my car. I don’t know how I’ll replace it.”

  “Oh, Em. I don’t know what to tell you. You know I’d help if I could, but with this damn three-year drought, Tommy says we’re not going to have enough of a crop to make our balloon payment on the land this fall.”

  “I know, Brenda. I don’t expect you to bail me out of this mess. Maybe I should take Sloan up on his job at the Cherokee Rose.”

  “What’s the Cherokee Rose?”

  “It’s his ranch in Oklahoma.”

  “Hey, Tommy,” Brenda called to her husband. “You ever hear of a ranch in Oklahoma called the Cherokee Rose?”

  There was a lot of mumbling in the background and a muffled squeaking sound as Brenda put her hand over the phone. Then Tommy came on the line.

  “What’s this guy’s name?” he asked.

  “Sloan,” Emily told him. “Sloan Chisholm.”

  “Sloan Chisholm of the Cherokee Rose in Oklahoma.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Well, I saw his driver’s license and his Web site, and Cherokee Rose is painted on the door of his pickup.”

  “Honey,” Tommy said, “you couldn’t be in safer hands.”

  Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody who’s anybody in the horse or cattle business in five states or more has heard of the Chisholms and the Cherokee Rose.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re good people. Their horses and ca
ttle are always the best. Rose Chisholm is like a legend. There won’t be any funny business going on under her roof.”

  “Straitlaced, is she?”

  “No, I don’t mean that,” Tommy said. “It’s just that she’s a nice lady and everybody likes her, respects her, trusts her. If you ask me, you’d be better off working on the Cherokee Rose than staying in Amarillo to get your car fixed.”

  Emily’s head reeled from all Tommy told her. She had pretty much made up her mind to abandon her car and take the bus to Fort Smith. She hadn’t wanted to, but it seemed to be the more prudent of her options.

  Now, accompanying Sloan to his ranch, working there, didn’t seem so outrageous. Not outrageous at all, if she believed Tommy.

  In the bed nearest the window, Janie lay curled against her little sister with her back to the room. She was supposed to be asleep, but her mother’s voice, as she spoke on the phone, had wakened her. Now Janie squeezed her eyes shut tight and crossed her fingers.

  Please, Mother, please don’t take us to the bus. Please let us go with Mr. Sloan to his ranch.

  Janie didn’t know if she had ever wanted anything so much in her entire life as she wanted this. Except for her daddy to get well. But that hadn’t happened. Her daddy had died. Nothing had been the same since. They needed a new daddy.

  Not that Mother didn’t take good care of them. She took great care of them. They didn’t go hungry or barefoot, like poor little kids on TV. But when Mother laughed, which wasn’t often, her eyes didn’t mean it, not the way they used to.

  Janie and Libby had surveyed every man who came into the café whom they thought might make a good daddy. Janie had learned about surveys at school, so she knew how to do it. But only one man had seemed right for them, and that was Mr. Sloan.

  As her mother spoke with Cousin Brenda and Cousin Tommy, Janie squeezed her eyes even tighter and prayed as hard as she had ever prayed in her young life. Please let us go with Mr. Sloan. Please let us go with Mr. Sloan. Please let him be our new daddy, and let him be a good one and make Mother laugh again.

  Chapter Three

  Janie’s wish, at least the first part of it, came true the next morning as they loaded up into Mr. Sloan’s pickup and headed for Oklahoma and the Cherokee Rose. Her grin was so wide, it made her cheeks hurt, but she didn’t care. Libby’s was just as big.

  “What are you two so happy about this morning?” Emily asked from the front seat.

  The girls just giggled and said, “Nothing.”

  Emily faced forward again and stared at the miles of Interstate 40 ahead of them. And worried. They seemed so eager to go with Sloan. She didn’t understand why. They had never taken to strangers much before.

  Oh, sure, Libby didn’t really know a stranger. Everyone ate out of the palm of her tiny hand. Janie was more reserved, especially during these past two years since their father died. But it worried Emily that they seemed to be so eager to be with Sloan. They would only be at his ranch for as long as it took her to earn enough to get her car fixed. She didn’t want them getting too attached to the man.

  She still wasn’t certain she’d made the right decision in coming with him, despite Tommy’s glowing recommendation. She wasn’t sure if she was sitting in the front seat of this Cherokee Rose pickup because Tommy said she should, or because, despite herself, she really wanted to be here.

  A sobering thought. That she might want to take off with a stranger. Her? Ordinary Emily Nelson? Having an adventure?

  Who would have thought it?

  “You want to let me in on it?”

  At the sound of Sloan’s voice Emily gave a start. “Pardon? Let you in on what?”

  “On whatever is so amusing,” he said. “You’re smiling like you just heard a good joke.”

  Emily chuckled. “The joke must be on me. I was just thinking how crazy this is, the three of us hopping into your pickup and taking off with you.”

  “Hey, you’re safe with me.”

  She looked over at him. “Now there’s the really crazy part. I actually believe you.”

  They reached the turnoff to the Cherokee Rose at two o’clock that afternoon. Sloan had thought to be there by noon, but he hadn’t counted on how long it took for three females to get ready in the morning. By the time they’d had breakfast at the restaurant next to the motel, then loaded everyone up, it had been after nine.

  But he wasn’t complaining, not when he looked at the three females in question. Every one of them adorable.

  “Is the ranch named after your grandmother?” Emily asked, nodding toward the sign ahead that arched over the gravel road.

  “Other way around,” he said.

  “She was named after the ranch?”

  “That’s right. She was born here.”

  “Look,” Janie cried from the back seat. “Are those Cherokee Roses?” She was pointing at the sign.

  Sloan pulled up before the sign and stopped. “That’s right,” he said.

  Emily hadn’t paid much attention to anything other than the words on the sign. Now she looked more closely. On the left there appeared to be a clump of red rocks—actual, small rocks, not merely a picture or painting—shaped like roses. On the right, white roses were painted.

  “Which ones are the Cherokee Roses?” she asked.

  “All of them,” Sloan replied.

  Janie leaned forward as far as her shoulder strap would let her. “The rocks are roses? Are they petrified?”

  “Why would rocks be scared?” Libby wanted to know.

  “Not scared,” Janie said. “Old. So old they turn into rocks.”

  “Golly. Is that true, Mr. Sloan?”

  Sloan couldn’t help but smile. These girls could come up with the darnedest things. “It’s true that petrified can mean old enough to turn into rocks, but that’s not where these rocks came from. These rocks came from tears.”

  Janie frowned. “How can that be?”

  Sloan glanced at her in his rearview mirror. “Did you ever hear of the Trail of Tears?”

  The girls shook their heads, but Emily said, “I have, but I don’t remember much about it.”

  “My grandmother can tell you all about it.” Sloan didn’t talk much about Nunna dual Tsuny, “The Trail Where They Cried.” His grandmother made her peace with that portion of the Cherokee past long ago. For the most part, so had Sloan. But his was a fragile peace. If he thought too much about the cheating and lies that sent his Cherokee ancestors walking more than a thousand miles from Georgia to what is now Oklahoma, he sometimes became swamped with anger and sadness. Not to mention irony, since half his ancestors made the walk, while the other half—the white half—essentially prodded them along every step of the way.

  But he couldn’t leave the girls hanging, and the flowers and the rose rocks were things he could easily speak of. “A long time ago—”

  “How long?” Janie wanted to know.

  “Hmm. Well, let’s see. It was 1838, so that’s about a hundred and sixty-five years ago. That’s when seven clans of the Cherokee nation were forced to walk from Georgia all the way to Oklahoma.”

  “Is that far?” Libby asked.

  “It’s real far,” Sloan told her. “It took months to walk that far. It was a terrible trip.”

  “It must have been horrible,” Emily said.

  “And that’s putting it mildly,” Sloan said. “A lot of people died along the way. It’s said that the mothers of the tribe were so sad over losing their children, their families, their friends, that the chiefs prayed for something to make them happy and strong enough to care for the children who still lived. From that day on, everywhere a mother’s tear fell, a white rose bloomed.”

  Janie’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

  “Truly,” Sloan said. “It’s that white flower painted on the right end of the sign there. It’s called a Cherokee Rose, and it’s now the state flower of Georgia. It grows wild all along the trail the Cherokee walked.”

  “Golly,” Libby whispered.


  “But what about the rocks?” Janie asked. “You said they were Cherokee Roses.”

  “I sure did. When the Cherokee finally made it to the end of the journey, right here in this part of Oklahoma, God decided to honor them for their courage. Whenever a drop of blood or a tear fell from a Cherokee, it turned into a small stone in the shape of a rose. So the red rose rocks are also called Cherokee Roses.”

  “Golly,” Libby whispered again.

  Sloan smiled. He put the pickup in gear and drove under the sign.

  “But wait,” Emily said. “Are you sure your grandmother isn’t named Cherokee Rose? Is she named for the flower, or the rock?” Her lips twitched.

  Sloan chuckled. “She looks as delicate as a flower, but she’s strong as a rock. But she’s not named for either. As I said earlier, she’s named for the ranch. She was born here.”

  A few moments later they pulled up before a large white house with dark green shutters. Sloan’s description of his grandmother, Emily thought, had been accurate. The woman standing on the porch appeared as delicate as a rose. Until you looked into her dark brown eyes. Those eyes didn’t give away much about the woman. All Emily saw there was a mild curiosity, presumably for her and her daughters, and an inner strength that was more felt than seen.

  Once again Emily questioned her decision to accept Sloan’s job offer. Cherokee Rose Chisholm might want help around the house, but would she want a stranger her grandson had dragged home? A stranger with two little girls who were bound to be underfoot more often than not?

  Emily squared her shoulders. She would simply have to make certain that Cherokee Rose Chisholm found no cause to regret her grandson’s hiring of her as their housekeeper.

  By the time she had helped the girls gather their toys and stuff them into the mesh bags they used to keep from scattering everything all over the car, Sloan had climbed out of the pickup and rounded the hood to open the door for her. When he held out his hand, she paused.

  “Welcome to the Cherokee Rose,” he offered.

  Emily summoned up a smile and what nerve she could. “Thank you.” She accepted his hand and stepped down from the pickup.