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have to agree.”
    He didn’t sound like he felt too lucky or even like he was
in the mood for company.   She
wondered if she’d overstep her bounds by asking why he seemed so glum.   But when she considered the fact that
he’d invited her to join him, she thought maybe he wanted to talk.
    “So how was your day?”
    Cal looked a bit surprised at her question.   “Good.   My day was good.   Did some work on the other cabin.   Had a pipe burst this winter and messed
up the floor in the laundry room.   Just about got it all back to rights.”   So that explained the smell of
turpentine she’d whiffed earlier.   “Caught the last half of Ty’s baseball game.   Look’s like they may make the playoffs
again this year.”
    “Ty?”
    “Oh, cripes, I forgot you don’t know all the players around
here.   Ty’s my grandson.   You’ll meet him soon enough.   He’s fourteen, almost fifteen now.   He helps me out around here when he’s
got the time or, more accurately, when he needs cash.”   Cal pointed to the sky.   “Just look at the way the sun’s glow
sets the mountains in relief.   Looks
like a painting, doesn’t it?”
    Lita rocked and sipped, lulled into relaxation by the
kaleidoscope of colors in the sky and Cal’s melodic voice.   She could hardly remember being quite so
content.   “So do you have other
children, besides Jesse?”
    “No, just Jess.   Ellie and I tried for years and never did have much luck.”   He gave Lita a sly grin.   “We sure had fun trying, though.   We never got caught up like people
today, with all the fancy tests and whatnot.   Figured if God wanted us to have another
baby, he’d have given us one.   Course, we practically raised Ty when he was a baby, so I guess he was
saving us.”
    Lita’s mind was doing quick calculations as the sun slid
slowly toward the earth.   Jesse
couldn’t have been over thirty, but if he had an almost fifteen-year-old son,
he had to be.    She could have
sworn he was no older than her twenty-seven.   “Jesse has a son?”
    Cal’s laugh brought Lita to attention.   “Hard to believe, having met him the way
you did, that he’d be somebody’s father.   But yes, he was only seventeen when he got Kerri Ann pregnant.   Boy, Ellie and I were spitting mad.   Jess had scholarship offers trickling in
already, both for baseball and football.   That all went by the wayside.   Course, when we got a look at the little guy, couldn’t say God didn’t
have a plan.”
    “So that makes Jesse what, thirty-two?”
    “Just,” Cal said as the sun dipped below the mountain in the
distance.   He reached over and
turned on an old lantern Lita hadn’t noticed earlier.   “I’d come in from his birthday lunch the
day you called.”
    Seventeen.   That
was the same age Lita had been when she’d gotten pregnant.   But her baby hadn’t lived and she still
couldn’t see God’s plan in that.
    “It must have been hard, for all of you.”
    Cal sighed.   “Hard,
yes.   But nothing worth having’s
easy.   He’s a good boy, Ty, and
having him around is one of the purest joys of my life.”
    She couldn’t ask any more questions about the boy.   It was too much like the flip side of
what her situation had been, in more ways than one.   He had lived and thrived in the bosom of
his family.   Her baby had died,
alone except for his grieving mother.   She blinked away the threat of tears and tried to focus on Jesse.   This was a side of him she hadn’t
anticipated.   “So is Jesse married?”
    “They were, for a bit.   Fought like cats and dogs, he and Kerri Ann.   Too much alike to be together.   I think they were waiting for college to
put an end to their romance, but her pregnancy changed everything.   They married not long after they told us
about the baby and divorced eight very long years later.”   Cal stood up from the chair and turned
to Lita.   “It’s gotten chilly since
the sun went down.   I’m