Free Hearts Awakening by Delia Parr

help Ethan, especially, I wonder if you would answer a question for me.”
    He stiffened. He should have expected she would have questions about the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s death, but he had yet to come to terms with them himself. By all rights, he should have been totally honest with Ellie before she had agreed to marry him, but if she insisted on knowing now, he would simply have to tell her the entire ugly truth and hope she would not regret her decision to marry him. “I suppose that would depend on the question.”
    “Did Ethan stop talking as soon as he learned his mother had died, or did he always have difficulty speaking?”
    Relieved that her question was not about the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s death, he swallowed hard. “No, he spoke fairly well, when Daniel gave him the chance, but within the first week after his mother passed, he just stopped talking. Dr. Willows assures me there’s nothing physically wrong with Ethan, but the longer it takes for him to start speaking again . . .”
    “He’ll speak when he’s ready, or when he feels he needs to talk. I won’t rush the matter,” she reassured him.
    Jackson checked the road ahead, saw that it was clear, and looked down at his sons again before mentioning something that needed to be settled before they woke up. “I’m not certain how either one of them will take to calling you . . . that is, it might be too soon to expect them to call you Mama. It might be easier if they continued to call you Miss Ellie for now,” he suggested and urged the horses forward when they attempted to stop for a snack at a stand of young saplings.
    “I’ve waited many, many years for a child to call me Mama. A few more weeks or months wouldn’t matter, but perhaps you could answer another question for me, since the boys are still asleep and we have a few more minutes before we reach home.”
    He tightened his jaw. “If it’s about Rebecca—”
    “No,” she said, a bit too quickly, and her blush reappeared. “I grew up on a small farm outside of Philadelphia, but your farmstead is quite unlike anything I’ve seen before,” she noted and shifted in her seat.
    “Obviously, there’s not much different about the house itself, although it’s far bigger than what I’ve been accustomed to. I’ve been to the root cellar behind the house, and I suppose it isn’t all that uncommon to have to use an outdoor entrance, but other than the abandoned bake oven, a sadly neglected herb garden, and a small smokehouse, I didn’t see any other outbuildings. No barn or . . . or chicken house. No animals, for that matter,” she said, as if truly confused.
    “That’s because I need to spend all of my time with the orchards. Those were my father-in-law’s passion, I’m afraid. Now they’re mine, and someday, I hope, that’s where Daniel and Ethan will devote most of their energies.”
    She furrowed her brow. “Then you must depend on the Grants for most of what you need, since you obviously can’t purchase and store everything you’d have to buy at market in the city.”
    He pulled on the reins to halt the horses. “You really don’t know much about me or my life on this island, do you?” he asked, letting the horses nibble a spell.
    She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” she murmured.
    He set the brake, climbed down, walked around the back of the wagon, and helped her down from her seat after making sure the boys were still sleeping. “It’s probably easier to explain if I draw you a map. That way you’ll be able to see it and be better prepared, just in case the boys decide to wander off on an adventure, which they’ve been known to do from time to time.”
    Taking a stick he found lying along the side of the road, he stood next to her and brushed at the dirt in front of them with the side of his boot to make a blank slate. He outlined the shape of the island with the end of the stick and put an X on the southern tip of the