Free Coming Up Roses by Catherine Anderson Page B

story began, and Kate was swept back through the years to the innocence of her childhood, to a time before the death of her parents, when she had been safe and loved and fiercely protected. The memories made her long to regress from adulthood, to become that child again. She yearned for her mother's arms, for the feel of her pa's whiskers scrubbing playfully at her neck.
    Oh, yes, to be that child again. And to take Miranda with her. Not to have to deal with the reality in which they found themselves entrapped. Kate knew that Miranda, in her own way, was also trying to escape, not into memories but from them, by separating herself from the world around her. What terrified Kate was how successful the child seemed to be at it. What if, during one of these spells, Miranda became lost in her unreality and never found her way back?
     

Chapter 7
     
    T he next morning, Miranda awoke bright-eyed and smiling, as though the visit from Ryan Blakely had never occurred. Kate watched her daughter closely throughout the day, but as the hours wore on, she detected nothing unusual in her behavior. It was as if the child had erased the previous night from her mind.
    Alarmed on the one hand, relieved on the other, Kate could only be thankful that this spell hadn't lasted. A few months back, Miranda might have stayed hidden within herself for days, staring at nothing, constantly rocking, her eyes reflecting the nothingness into which she had taken refuge.
    At noon , Marcus Stone came up to the house to eat. To avoid any possible conflict, which she feared might send Miranda into a relapse, Kate fed her daughter early and sent her upstairs for her nap so she wouldn't see Marcus when he came.
    Usually a quiet man, Marcus surprised Kate by growing chatty while he ate. He updated her on how the sow's seven new piglets were doing, asked how much wool her sheep had yielded during the spring shearing, mentioned that the carrots were coming up in the garden, and then complained a while about the fickle weather, which had been sunny one day and raining buckets the next.
    In kind, Kate filled Marcus in on his boss's condition. "He seems to be asleep, now," she said as she turned from the sink. Still clutching a half-peeled potato, which would go into their soup for supper, she waved her hand to convey her lack of words. "I can't describe the difference, exactly. But I don't think he's still actually unconscious. I keep expecting him to jerk awake, but he doesn't."
    Marcus seemed to ponder that for a moment. "Nothing to fret over, I reckon. He almost died. His body must need the sleep to heal itself up."
    "But to never awaken, not even once? It worries me."
    "Maybe he has—just for a minute or two—when we wasn't around."
    Kate considered that. "I suppose that's possible."
    Marcus swirled the dregs of coffee in his mug and took a slow sip. As he lowered the mug, he regarded Kate with a quizzical expression. "I'd think if anything would've woke him up, that fella raisin' sand in here last evenin'
    would've."
    Kate turned back to the sink and said nothing, not because she wished to be rude but because she didn't know how to reply.
    "It ain't none of my concern, but I'm gonna ask anyways. Who in hell was that man?"
    "Please don't swear, Mr. Stone," Kate chided softly. "I have a child upstairs."
    "Where I come from, there's a difference between cursin' and swearin'." She heard his chair scrape across the planks. "I take it you don't wanna talk about it."
    "Not really," Kate admitted.
    Marcus sighed. "I heard him out on the porch, there. Yellin' like a wild man. I seen you close the door behind him, so I knowed you was all right, and I didn't reckon I should come up and stick my nose where it wasn't wanted."
    Kate dug the blade of her paring knife deep into the potato.
    "Just the same, I thought I oughta say somethin'. You bein' alone and all, sometimes it's nice to know you got friends." He cleared his throat, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him