Loving Bailey by Evelyn Adams

gratitude maybe – passed
between the two men. “We all want to be with Travis, but we can’t.
And he needs you and Momma. We’ll take care of you so you can take
care of him.”
    “Until you can bring him home to us,” said
Taylor. Her brothers and sisters nodded their agreement.
    “Well,” said their mother, standing. “Then
we’d better go pack.”
     
     
    Travis was coming home. Bailey held onto the
thought, trying to push everything else out of her mind. Jude
seemed calmer, too, now that they were together and he’d gotten
more information on Travis’s injuries. If he was feeling positive,
she would, too.
    She looked around for Trace and found him
standing in the doorway, watching her. She was going to stay until
her parents got off the ground tomorrow, but there was no reason
for him to hang around. He must want to get back to the farm and
the work he’d left behind. She tried not to think about him going
home to the skinny blonde or how much she liked having him here
with her family.
    She stood, intending to tell him she could
get a ride home with Taylor or one of her other siblings. When he
saw her coming toward him, his eyes lit with what last week she
would have sworn was pleasure. This week she had no idea.
    Before she reached him Jude’s friend, Andrew,
pushed into the kitchen loaded down with plastic grocery bags and
juggling cardboard buckets of chicken. Trace hurried to help him
set the food on the table and then Andrew grabbed her for a hug.
She’d known him since she was a little girl. He and Jude had been
friends for as long as she could remember and she thought of him
like another annoying big brother.
    That wasn’t how Trace was looking at him.
    “Bailey, where the hell were you?” Andrew
asked playfully, looking around to make sure her parents and
brothers weren’t within listening range. “Whose bed were you in or
do I want to know?”
    Bailey felt her face flush, but it was the
anger rolling off of Trace in hot waves which worried her. Not that
it should. Skinny blonde after all.
    “None of your damn business, counselor,” she
said, swatting him.
    He laughed and she wriggled out from under
his arm.
    “Hey, Trace,” he said, extending his hand.
“It’s good to see you, man. Wish it was under different
circumstances.”
    For a moment it looked like Trace might leave
the other man hanging, but eventually he shook Andrew’s hand and
muttered, “me, too.”
    “Chicken!” Taylor came flying into the
kitchen and planted a smacking kiss on Andrew’s cheek.
    “What makes you think I got any for you,
brat?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
    “Because you love me,” Bailey’s sister said
matter of factly. “You know you do.”
    Something flashed across Andrew’s face but
before Bailey had a chance to decide what it was, it was gone, and
the rest of her family was piling into the kitchen and digging into
the bags and buckets. Taylor snagged a drumstick and stood eating
it at the counter, not bothering with a plate or napkin.
    “Heathens,” Bailey said with affection. She
went to the cupboard to get plates, grateful for something tangible
to do. When she turned, Trace was standing beside her with his
hands out, waiting to help her.
    She handed him the plates and reached for the
serving bowls. “Could you grab the silverware?” she asked,
motioning to the drawer behind her. She put pole beans dotted with
bits of salty pork and cooked until they barely held together and
gooey scratch-made macaroni and cheese into bowls, swatting her
brothers when they tried to get at the food.
    “Wait. You know Momma hates to eat out of
cartons.”
    They didn’t look happy about it, but at the
mention of their mother, they backed off enough to let her finish
putting the fried chicken and biscuits onto plates. Trace piled the
silverware next to the plates and Bailey grabbed some napkins.
    “Save some for Momma and Daddy,” she said as
her brothers descended on the food.
    “You’re likely to