The tea was just right, hot and sweetened with a teaspoon tip of honey. Tension melted from Copper’s shoulders as she rocked. There was nothing more relaxing than nursing a baby. I’ll miss this. Lilly Gray’s a big girl now. She’ll turn two in November. I’ll have to think about weaning her before fall.
Could it have been just a month since she’d left Lexington and her life in that fair city to return to her mountain home? As the baby lay in the crook of her arm, Copper examined her palms. Calluses were forming where blisters had popped across her soft, tender skin. A little more time with the rake and the hoe, a few more wash days, a few more floor scrubbings and she’d have working hands again. Hands she could be proud of.
Shifting Lilly Gray to the other side, Copper let her mind wander—a dangerous distraction. Sometimes she wished she could go back in time to when she was a girl, innocent of pain and sorrow, happy to run wild up the mountain in search of whatever suited her fancy on any given day. She leaned her head back and laughed to herself remembering how her stepmother strove to turn her into a lady and how she fought against Mam’s desires, yanking her hair ribbons out and losing her store-bought shoes. Poor Mam, she tried so hard.
It turned out that Copper had needed every one of the lessons her stepmother so diligently taught, for she married a doctor and left her mountain home, ever grateful for Mam’s foresight.
“Still, I had much to learn,” she said as if Lilly could understand. “A hillbilly girl set down in the city, I was a sight. I don’t know how your father stood me.”
Lilly Gray glanced up. She looked so much like Simon. Copper didn’t know if she’d ever get used to seeing him there, locked in his daughter’s eyes. A little heartache started up, but she pushed it back down. She was tired of grieving. “Let’s climb the mountain, baby. Let Mama get her shoes, and we’ll go find some wild onions for dinner.”
Testing the path with a walking stick, Copper steadied herself as she climbed. It was difficult going with the weight of the child nestled in a sling pulling her backward. She’d lost her sturdiness since Simon died. Between that and nursing Lilly, she was as stringy as an old squirrel, no meat on her bones.
She pushed aside a leafy branch and peered into a quiet meadow lined on three sides by towering oak, beech, and ash. It had probably been a hundred years since they were acorn and seed. The early morning sun streamed through their leafy limbs, piercing the shadows. She could barely see a smallish tumble of water on the far rocky hillside. Even from a distance, the splash of falling water played a pretty song.
“Cow?” Lilly Gray asked.
Copper reached behind, her arms cupping Lilly’s bottom, taking the strain from her shoulders. “Shh. Mama deer and baby fawns, Lilly. They’re having breakfast.”