Maybe she’d been too quick to take such a long sabbatical. No, she couldn’t have handled teaching in the fall, but now that months had passed, she itched at times to have a schedule, to have things that needed doing. A point, a purpose, beyond wallowing in grief and taking care of her health and the child in her womb. Johnny’s death had inalterably changed her life, but she had managed his absences before by keeping a busy, full life. These days she’d all but cut off her friends. And Ryker. He intrigued her. She felt the hardness in him at times, but she felt more there. As if he were reaching out for something, too. He’d helped her with the crib, and he said he wanted to fix her basement stairs. God, she hated those stairs. For years now she’d stood at the top of them and thrown her laundry down because she couldn’t safely carry it. It would be nice to get them fixed, but his words had struck her even more: Ryker had said he wanted to build something for a change.
