A Hope for Hannah by Jerry S. Eicher Page A

ours.”
    “Ha. That’s what I thought,” Roy said in mock bitterness. “Women become useless in Montana, it seems.”
    “That’s an awful thing to say,” Kathy said, teasing him back. “You’re talking to your daughter, you know.”
    “I was talking about you,” Roy said.
    “That’s even worse,” Kathy retorted.
    Jake then emerged from the bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
    “No food services this morning,” Roy announced in his direction. “We men are on our own. It’s make do or starve.”
    Jake was up to the humor. “When we hunger, they too hunger sooner or later,” he said in warning.
    “That’s a man,” Roy said, chuckling. “You tell ’em!”
    “Oh, all right,” Kathy said, rolling her eyes but smiling. “The pancakes are made. Now we’ll fix your eggs. The rest you have to do yourself. Hannah and I have eaten already.”
    “They don’t like us. Just like that, we’re cast aside,” Roy said with a straight face, “after all these years.”
    Jake had to grin as he followed Roy into the kitchen. With the eggs ready in minutes, Kathy and Hannah left the rest of the breakfast items on the table and the men alone to put things together for themselves. The two women retreated to the living room.
    “They don’t love us no more,” Roy said, his voice mournful as he piled pancakes on his plate. “At least the syrup is still sweet. But hey, maybe that too gets bitter in Montana.”
    “Watch yourself!” Kathy hollered from the living room. “I heard that.”
    All her life Hannah had enjoyed listening to her parents gently tease each other. It only made her all the more glad they were here now—and all the more wishful that it could be permanent. If she and Jake moved back to Indiana, they would have more times—lots more times—like this. She glanced at her mother who read her daughter’s look unmistakably. “We must cherish the time God gives us,” Kathy said. “It goes by soon enough.”
    The men finished breakfast and Kathy told them about the plan to walk to Mr. Brunson’s and then on up the mountain a ways.
    “Well, Jake,” Roy said, “they not only make us eat by ourselves, now we have to walk up the mountain too.”
    “Well, it is a nice walk,” Jake said.
    “Jake, don’t you know we men are supposed to stick together?” Roy looked hard at him. Jake only grinned and got his coat from the closet, apparently as ready as the women to get out of the house.

Fourteen
     
    Hannah and Kathy led the way as they walked toward the mountains and Mr. Brunson’s house. Jake and Roy seemed to be deep into some discussion. From the snatches of conversation Hannah heard over her shoulder, it sounded like they were talking about Mr. Howard’s furniture-making offer. Her father sounded enthusiastic, which Hannah wasn’t sure she liked.
    Kathy kept gushing over the sight of the mountains, all the more so the closer they got.
    “I know I’ve seen them before,” her mother said. “Maybe it’s the view from here.”
    “It’s even better farther up,” Hannah said. “I’ve been there once with Jake after we purchased the cabin. I would imagine you can see them even better behind Mr. Brunson’s cabin. I’ve never been that far.”
    A thirty-minute walk up the slight grade brought them in sight of the man’s cabin, two stories high and made of little more than boards nailed upright with mismatched tin on the roof. Some of the edges even stood higher than the others.
    Behind the cabin and farther up the slight slope was the barn, its structure in even worse shape than the house.
    “For all its looks, the house is well-insulated,” Jake said because obviously something needed to be said in Mr. Brunson’s favor.
    “And clean,” Hannah added, remembering her brief look inside the house.
    “He’s a real nice gentleman,” Jake said as he led the party up to the front door and knocked. Mr. Brunson, clean shaven as usual and with a smile on his face, opened the door almost