“Good or bad?” He hoped that woman hadn’t upset Jayden.

“All is good,” she told him.

“That’s great.” He stopped long enough to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek.

“PDA.” Novalene pointed at them.

“Yep, and after y’all all get gone, there’s going to be more of it.” He grinned.

Diana brought over a paper bag filled with food. “I’m very happy for both of you.”

“Thank you,” Jayden said. “It’s crazy how eight weeks have turned so many lives around.”

“That’s the gospel truth,” Diana agreed. “I can’t wait to get home and get on my new job. I’m so excited about it. If it hadn’t been for all y’all and the long talks we’ve had, I would have never decided to do this.”

“Wish you the best of luck, but I wouldn’t mind it a bit if you sent along some suggestions for ladies to take your place for the summer session next year,” Elijah told her.

“I’m already putting out feelers.” Novalene set down a plastic bag of bananas. “A couple of my friends are retiring at the end of the year, and they’re old dinosaurs like me who believe in discipline. They might be a good fit for this place.”

“Thank you!” Elijah said. “Here come the girls with the sticks we need to build a fire.”

“I thought that tow sack in the back of the truck was filled with firewood,” Novalene said.

“It is,” Elijah replied, “but they need to feel like they helped. Get ready to taste the best campfire beans in the whole world.”

Diana pointed to a huge can of pinto beans sitting on top of one of the coolers. “You can fool all those hungry girls that walked three miles to get out here, but I see where they’re coming from.”

“But you don’t know my extra ingredients,” Elijah told her. “A little salsa, some barbecue sauce, and a touch of brown sugar and bacon. They’ll be good with cowboy steak and potatoes rolled up in foil and tossed around the fire. It don’t get no better than this.” He slid a sly wink over toward Jayden. “Either food or company or girlfriend-wise.”

“Is that right? What about when we get home tomorrow?” Jayden whispered just for his ears.

“That, darlin’, is something altogether different than food,” he murmured.

“What’s different than food?” Tiffany asked as she dropped an armload of sticks into the firepit. “All right if I have one of those bananas? After that walk, I’m starving. Hey, Jayden, we picked wildflowers along the way and put them on Dynamite’s grave. They’ll be wilted in the morning, but we plan to put fresh ones on when we walk back. When we come at Christmas, we’re going to bring some artificial ones. They’ll last longer.”

“That’s great,” Jayden said. “And yes, all of you can have a banana or an apple or both if you’re really hungry. Dinner won’t be for a couple of hours.”

“You were pretty slick at avoiding that question,” Elijah chuckled. He still had trouble believing that Jayden would be there with him after everyone had gone home.

They would have to make a trip up there later to move her things to Alpine, but they had a whole month to do that. He had cleared out his cabin and moved over into the house Henry and Mary had left behind, but he hoped that Jayden would just move in with him.

“Guidance counselors do have their little tricks.” Jayden flashed a grin his way.

“Do tell,” he flirted. “Is there more I’m going to find out after everyone is gone?”

“Patience, my darlin’,” she told him with a wink. “Patience.”

Elijah got a glimpse of the future in that moment. Forty years down the road, he saw himself and Jayden turning the place over to their children and retiring like Henry and Mary had done. No matter how much technology came and went, there would always be children who needed to spend eight weeks in a place like Piney Wood Academy, and the Thomas family would fill the need for them.

What makes you think any of your children will want to do this kind of work? Henry’s voice was in his head so solid that he could see his uncle crossing his arms over his chest as he spoke.

We’ll have enough that one of them will, Elijah answered.

I’d say that you’d better do some proposing to Jayden before you start planning forty years down the road.

Elijah smiled and muttered, “All in due time.”

A four-person tent sounded pretty good until Jayden crawled inside it that night. She expected her girls to be snoring or at least sound asleep, but they were still whispering even though it was well past midnight.

“Now we can go to sleep.” Ashlyn sighed.

Had they peeked through the window flap and seen Elijah give her that good-night kiss? Jayden wondered as she stretched out on top of her bedding. Even as cool as the night air was, after that long, hot kiss, there was no way she could zip herself into a down-filled sleeping bag.

“Are you going to marry Elijah?” Ashlyn asked.

“Can we come to the wedding?” Carmella asked.

Tiffany raised her hand. “Can I be a bridesmaid?”

“I have no idea if I’m going to marry Elijah,” Jayden answered. “He hasn’t asked me.”

“When he does, can I be a bridesmaid?” Tiffany repeated her question.

“What makes you think he will?” Jayden answered her question with one of her own.

“Because he loves you, and y’all are so cute together, and he’s so dreamy when he looks at you.” Ashlyn sighed.

The drama of teenage girls had often irritated Jayden, but that night, it amused her. “Well, what do y’all think I should say if he ever does propose?”

“Yes!” they all said at the same time.

Jayden checked her phone. “It is now almost one o’clock. We get up at five, and y’all have to walk three miles back to camp, take a shower, and get dressed to go home. I think what we’d better all do is get some sleep.”

“Going home is still scary,” Tiffany said.

“Staying here is a little scary for me, too,” Jayden told them. “But we are four strong women. We are the Daydream Cabin girls. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Tiffany yawned.

Jayden stretched out on her back. Through the window flap she watched the clouds drift across the moon. She closed her eyes and gave thanks that she’d found Piney Wood and Elijah.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The two vans bringing the girls back to the airport parked next to the hangar. To Jayden, it seemed like they got out even slower than they had gotten into the vans eight weeks before. She looked out over the vehicles at three stretch limos, three Cadillacs, and two extra airplanes on Saturday morning, the first of August. Eight weeks before, the same vehicles had delivered the girls to Piney Wood, and now they were taking them home. The girls wore basically the same clothes that they’d arrived in, but somehow they all looked different in them that morning. They’d been given all their personal things back, but very few had put on makeup. Now they were all smiling and calm and far more interested in making sure they had the paper with everyone’s phone numbers on it than anything else. Right up until their adult drivers began to stow the luggage.