Finally Home by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online

always made it difficult to eat . . . or breathe. Sophie Jaegar was not the kind of girl who made life easy.
    â€œSo you think her siblings are okay?” Casie asked and glanced at the box that sat on the floor in front of the oven.
    The “lambing box” was nothing more than a corrugated container that had once housed some kitchen appliance long ago forgotten. It was frayed at the top and bent at one side, but newborn lambs were not known for their wild attempts to escape, and dozens had been warmed in that same crate just as this one was now, tiny head nestled into the terry cloth towel that cushioned the bottom, knobby legs folded under its angular form.
    â€œThey seemed to know which end was up,” Ty said.
    â€œSo they were nursing?” Casie asked.
    â€œYeah.” Their tiny tails had been twitching merrily while their smaller sibling had stumbled around blindly searching for a meal. But unlike cows, who had four plates at the dinner table, sheep only had two. It made no sense, since the former would almost invariably give birth to a single offspring, while ewes were known to produce three with disturbing frequency. Neither did it make sense that they would, more times than seemed logical, refuse to take one of those offspring while accepting the other two. That had been the case today. He glanced at the lamb, which, to his eyes, possessed all the charm of her siblings, and wondered why some mothers could love with selfless charity while others . . . He winced, mind jolting back to the present.
    Casie was staring at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Her voice was soft, as was her heart. There was no reason to bother her with the fact that the ewe had knocked this particular baby to the ground more than once. No reason to debate why she found this infant so patently detestable.
    â€œNothing,” Ty said and glanced at the soup bowl in front of him.
    â€œIs there something wrong with the stew?” Emily asked. She was different from Casie. Not so soft, but her heart was good as gold. She was loyal as a hound, tough as a screw. If someone asked, he might be able to admit he thought the world of her. After all, they’d been cut from the same tattered cloth.
    â€œNo. Course not. It’s real good,” he said and took a bite, though thoughts of mothers always put him off his feed.
    â€œShe’ll probably eat when she warms up a little,” Emily said.
    â€œSure. I ain’t worried,” Ty assured her, but it was an out-and-out lie. He worried about a whole lot of things and they all knew it. The crazy thing . . . the thing that still baffled him was that they cared. Oh sure, Casie would . . . she was the kind of person who’d take a kick in the head to save a June bug from a tornado, and Emily . . . Emily was his friend, had been ever since she’d refused to mind her own business in the foster home where they’d both been dumped years before. But Sophie . . . He chanced a look at her, but she was watching him out of the corner of her eye, so he yanked his attention away just as she did the same, heart beating a raucous cadence like it always did when she was near.
    â€œIs everything okay with Angel?” Casie asked.
    Ty zipped his gaze to her, already fretting even though the flea-bitten mare was doing as well as could be expected considering her advanced age. “She’s doing real good,” he said.
    â€œChesapeake didn’t get in trouble again, did he?” In the past couple months Casie had become increasingly attached to the bay stallion Colt had delivered months ago with several other half-starved horses. It was a fact about which no one was particularly thrilled; Chester was as unpredictable as he was handsome.
    â€œNope,” Ty said.
    â€œIs something wrong with Free?” Sophie asked.
    â€œShe’s fine, too.” Freedom was no Angel. Goofy as hell and flighty as a songbird, she wasn’t the kind of animal