Victoria Austin - Family Of Convenience

He was a good boy. Actually, they were both good children. Millie had settled into life with them fairly easily. Compared to most of the children in The Home, Caty and Genie were amazingly well behaved.

Millie walked over to the kitchen table and eyed her notebook with disgust. No, it wasn’t the children’s fault that she was not getting things done. They took up some of her time, of course. But, they were not demanding children. And the time she spent with them was a joy.

She was the problem. Millie had been around women who were expecting before. She knew about the sickness that could plague the first few months of pregnancy. Or, she thought she knew.

It seemed that knowing and seeing were nothing like actually experiencing. Millie was past the first few months of her pregnancy. This feeling of illness should be over, but it wasn’t. Millie was tired. Really, really tired. And she was still getting physically sick every day.

The result was that notebook full of failed plans and more than one night spent obsessing about her failure. Just seeing it on the table made Millie want to go back to bed, pull the covers up over her head and hide from the world.

But, that wasn’t going to help anything.

Instead, Millie went into the kitchen and began cutting vegetables for the stew she planned for supper. She listened to Genie’s noises, pictured a sleeping Caty and looked at the main room of the house. Despite all her shortcomings, she had made her way to a nice place. A safe one.

The house was as charming as those two rocking chairs on the front porch had promised. The kitchen and family room were combined in one large room. At first, Millie had been surprised by the lack of privacy in the kitchen. She’d never worked in one that wasn’t enclosed in its own separate space.

But, she’d come to think the design was pure genius after only a few days with the children. Millie was able to work in the kitchen or sit at the table and still see exactly where Caty and Gene were and what they were doing.

Beyond the main room, the house had three bedrooms. Three seemed like a lot for this part of the country, and Millie felt almost spoiled. Adam had a bedroom, the children shared a room, and the third one was Millie’s.

Millie had never had her own bedroom before. She still felt a sense of wonder at the thought. Adam’s letter had made clear that he was seeking a mother for his children and someone to help with his home. Not for more intimate companionship. Even so, Millie never considered she would have a room of her own. At best, she’d hoped for a separate bed in with the children.

Even now, weeks later, Millie sometimes found herself standing in the doorway and staring at it. Making sure it was real. The room had a bed and a chest of drawers and too many small, comforting details to count.

The bed was covered in a gorgeous quilt. The care and love with which it was made was only enhanced by the softness that came from many washings. A vase of flowers sat on top of the chest. They had been there that first day, and Millie had kept fresh ones there ever since. The current assortment had been picked by the children. Especially for her. Curtains hung at the windows, sheer lace that let the light dance across the room early in the morning. A hooked rug lay on the floor next to the bed. And there was a rocking chair.

Millie had her own rocking chair in her own room.

When she’d commented on how beautiful it was, Adam had blushed. The man’s cheeks actually turned pink. He’d said that Edith was responsible, that it was all her doing. But, when Millie thanked Edith the next time she came out to visit, Edith had said it was all Adam’s doing. That he had requested a room for Millie that was both feminine and comforting.

Regardless of who did it, Millie loved her room.

She also loved this house. And these children. Really, it would be hard not to love Catherine and Eugene after spending more than five minutes with them.

Yes, things were going well. By anyone’s standards—with the exception of her failure to follow through on her carefully wrought plans for each day. Somehow, she could never seem to catch up...or escape the feeling of being on the edge of some sort of precipice.

Part of the problem was Millie’s sense of unfamiliarity with what was outside her front door. Inside the house, life was not too different from life in Saint Louis. Once she figured out where to find water, wood and food that was. But, outside was very different from anything Millie had ever encountered. And it intimidated her beyond belief.

Adam had tried to teach her what she needed to know. But he was busy every day. Between the fields from the farm aspect of the land and the livestock from the ranch aspect, he worked fifteen hours each day, coming home only for supper and an hour with the kids before bedtime. Edith said that was normal for this time of year. That things would slow down in late fall and winter and then they would have plenty of time together.

Millie didn’t know how she felt about that.

But, that was a worry for another day.

Despite his busy schedule, Adam had made sure Millie was comfortable gathering eggs and milking the cow. So far, those bare necessities and laundry had been the only reasons Millie had left the house. Until today.

Feeling like she had things inside the house under her control, today’s plan had included tackling the vegetable garden out back. It was in deplorable shape, largely due to inattention. Now that she was here, though, she wanted to get it back to its full glory. It wasn’t just aesthetic—they needed that garden for food.

Millie had some experience with small gardens, but had never tended anything as large as the monster out back. Of course, gardens in the city were meant to supplement food purchased from merchants. Here, though, the garden was supposed to be one of their primary sources of food. That made it a priority.

Millie glared at her notebook again. The one with the plan for her to work peacefully in that wreck of a garden while the children were napping. Too late for that now.

Well, it seemed that Millie was going to learn how to tend a garden and keep an eye on two small children at the same time. There was simply no other choice. Besides, the fresh air would probably do the children some good.

Two hours later, Millie found herself on her knees in the dirt. The plants here were definitely struggling, but they were not dead. Adam’s attempts at keeping the garden going around all his other duties had been enough to sustain life. Millie felt certain—okay, she really, really hoped—that the plants would flourish now that she was here to tend them regularly.

Oddly, the prospect excited her. Much like her room, this was a piece of earth that Adam had said was all hers. And, she wanted to do something with it. Make these dying plants and dark earth turn into a bounty of food that could feed them all year long.

“Am I doing it right, Millie?”

Caty and Gene had not hesitated to get down in the dirt with her. Genie’s chubby little fists were almost a blur in the beginning as he had just started pulling anything growing and tossing it in a pile. Vegetable or weed, if it was in his path it was yanked and thrown, all with an accompanying grin and nonstop chatter.

But, he was where Millie could see him, and was trying. Good enough. Besides, it took less than five minutes for Genie to decide playing in the dirt was more fun than dealing with pesky plants anyway.

Unlike her brother, Caty was taking her job very seriously. She spent long minutes considering the plants in front of her, fingering the leaves with solemn eyes and an intensity that almost made Millie sad. The girl looked so terribly fearful of getting anything wrong.