by Gail Sattler
Josh also stood. “Right, Miss Klassen.”
Briefly she glanced at him. Unless it was her imagination Josh’s voice sounded a bit strange, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Bradley. Good-bye.”
And with those words, Melissa did the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.
She walked out of the McMillian house, knowing she could never go back.
❧
Josh sat at the kitchen table, staring at the clock, watching the second hand move in its circular path with jerky little movements, the checkbook in front of him not any more balanced than it had been an hour ago.
Numbly, he laid the pen on the table and buried his face in his hands.
He blew it. He’d never blown anything so bad in his entire life. He knew before he kissed her that once he did it, he could never go back. He’d kissed her anyway, and now, it was too late. She was gone from his life, and it was all his fault.
When Theresa left him, he didn’t miss her. Instead it had left him feeling stupid and manipulated that he hadn’t seen her selfishness for the entire time he’d known her.
He’d soon put thoughts of Theresa aside, but he thought of Melissa night and day. He may have been fooling himself into thinking they could only be platonic friends, but he’d managed to make it last for awhile before he’d stepped over the line. Even though their relationship was as one-sided as he vowed it would never be, the loss of her friendship and everything that went with it felt like a piece of him had been ripped apart, stomped on by a herd of buffalo, and flushed down the toilet.
Even the boys had been affected.
They hadn’t had a fight in a week.
Their rooms were all picked up.
Their homework was done. On time. Every day.
Josh had never been so miserable in his life.
❧
“Class dismissed. Please tuck your chairs in neatly, and proceed quietly to the back for your coats.”
Melissa didn’t have the energy or the desire to stand at the back and smile and parrot cheerful platitudes. Today she simply remained at her desk at the front and watched the children file out.
Instead of going to the back with his classmates, a somber Bradley appeared in front of her desk.
“Yes, Bradley?”
“I thought you said that you were still going to be friends with Uncle Josh.”
For a second, Melissa’s heart stopped, then pounded in her chest. “We’re still friends, Bradley.” However, for a while, until she could get used to the gaping wound in her heart from missing him, she couldn’t see him or talk to him. Every time she did, it would feel like she would be again ripped in two.
“Then why is Uncle Josh so sad all the time?”
The back of her throat tightened, and the backs of her eyes burned, but she managed to control herself. She didn’t want to cry in front of Bradley. She’d shed enough tears from missing Josh to last a lifetime, and it had been just a little over a week.
“I don’t know why he’s sad, Bradley. Shouldn’t you be going to Darlene’s house? She’ll be worried if you’re late.”
“I’m not getting baby-sat today. Uncle Josh is home, and I have to go home to look after him.”
Melissa’s hand froze, and the pen skidded a red line across the paper she had been marking. “What do you mean, look after him?”
“Uncle Josh was barfing his guts out in the middle of the night, and he tried to go to work this morning, but he had to run back to the bathroom to barf up some more. He never went to work. He had to stay home all day all by himself.” Bradley’s eyes opened wide and he frowned, like he thought that was a bad thing. “Me and Kyle and Ryan gotta look after him until Andrew and Tyler get home.”
Melissa didn’t know if having the three youngest boys attempting to care for Josh while he was down with the flu would make things better or worse.
It didn’t take a lot of imagination for her to picture Josh trying to look after all the kids, even sick.
“Come on, Bradley. I’ll give you a ride home. Have your brothers left yet?”
She found Ryan and Kyle waiting for Bradley outside the classroom door, so she hurried them to her car and drove as quickly as she could to their house without getting a speeding ticket.
The door wasn’t locked. She ran in and found Josh lying on the bathroom floor. She could only imagine what it cost him to go unlock the front door so the kids could get in.
“What are you doing here?” he groaned.
Melissa dropped to her knees. “You’re burning with fever. Let me get you to bed.”
“Can’t leave the bathroom.”
“I doubt you have anything left in your system. Have you been drinking any water? You don’t want to get dehydrated.”
“No,” he groaned.
“Kyle,” she called out over her shoulder, knowing the three boys were standing in the hall, watching through the open bathroom doorway. “Go downstairs and get the bucket, and put it beside Uncle Josh’s bed. Ryan, pour your uncle a glass of water, not too cold.”
She turned to Josh and wrapped her hands around one of his arms. “You belong in bed, not on the floor.”
Melissa guided him to bed, and when Kyle returned with the bucket, she went for a wet face cloth to cool his forehead. “Have you been like this all day?” she asked as she dug a couple of headache tablets out of her purse. “Take these, they’ll help with the fever. And if they don’t stay down, that’s what the bucket is for.”
“My mother used to do this for me,” he mumbled as he sipped the water with the pills, then collapsed back onto the bed. “I don’t want you to see me like this. I’ll be fine.”
“Right. You look fine.”
He didn’t comment further, so she simply sat on the edge of the bed and watched him lie there, unmoving.
She prepared herself for him to protest about her staying, but he remained silent, which was good. She didn’t want another self-sacrificing speech from him about how it was wrong for him not to put anything into their relationship. She’d been thinking about everything he said for over a week, and the more she thought about it, the more she disagreed with his conclusion.
It wasn’t his fault he needed to put everything he had into the boys first and foremost. What he was doing was good and right, and she loved him even more for it. For now, if he had to pay more attention to his nephews than her, she didn’t care.
Gently, she rested the backs of her fingers against his unshaved cheek. “You’re not as hot as you were fifteen minutes ago. I think those pills are starting to work. Bradley said you were up all night. Have you slept at all today?”
“No.”
“The water is staying down. Want to try some juice?”
“I dunno.”
In the background, Cleo barked, and then the front door slammed. Within a minute, Andrew appeared in the doorway. “Uncle Josh, are you feeling bett. . . ?” His voice trailed off. “Oh. Hi, Miss Klassen. Is Uncle Josh better?”
“Not yet, Andrew. Can you go get him a half a glass of juice?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Before Andrew returned, Cleo barked, and the door slammed again.
“Uncle Josh?” Tyler hollered. “Is that—” Tyler appeared in the doorway. “Miss Klassen’s car in the—Oh, hi, Miss Klassen. Is Uncle Josh better?”
Andrew appeared behind Tyler, holding a glass.
“Not yet, Tyler,” she said.
She helped Josh lean up while he swallowed one small sip of juice, then sank back down. “I can’t drink that. You can go. The kids are all home now.”
“No. I’m staying. And I want to stay around for a long time. Not just until you’re better. I want to stay with you forever.”
He turned his head to the side and froze for a second, making Melissa wonder if she should make a grab for the bucket. His eyes focused somewhere behind her. “Don’t you two have someplace else to go?”
Mel
issa turned around just in time to see Andrew and Tyler disappear through the doorway.
His focus returned to her face. “What do you mean, forever? You’re talking to a guy with five kids to look after. If you want to do forever, you’ll have to be prepared that by the time you get really attached to the kids, their parents will come back and we’ll lose them, and then we’d have to go find and live in some empty, quiet apartment.”
“I have a duplex. I could rent it out until we needed it. And nothing would stop us from visiting the boys often, or the boys from coming to visit with us either.”
He winced, rolled to his side, drew his knees up a little, covered his stomach with one hand, and closed his eyes.
“Poor baby,” Melissa whispered, and covered him with the blanket.
After the wave of nausea passed, he opened one eye. “About this forever stuff. I’ve been thinking about that thing with your principal. It won’t be that long before Bradley is out of grade one, so this problem is temporary.” Both eyes opened, but she could see that the exhaustion was finally starting to claim him. “We could invite him to the wedding, and if he doesn’t come, report him to the union. That is, if you really would marry a guy with all this extra baggage.”
Melissa ran her fingers through his hair and brushed a stray lock off his forehead. “I would in a minute. If that guy asked me.”
He looked up at her, and the combination between his pale and drawn face and the circles under his glassy eyes nearly brought her to tears.
He made a short cough and shivered. “This isn’t right. Can I propose properly tomorrow?”
Melissa smiled. “You’d better. I’m going to go make supper for your family. Promise me you won’t go anywhere.”
A weak smile flittered across his face for a brief second, and his eyes closed. “I love you, Miss Klassen,” he murmured, and his breathing became shallow and even.
“I love you too, Uncle Josh,” she whispered and tucked the blanket under his chin.
The bedsprings creaked as Melissa stood. Before she took her first step, from the hall she heard a whispered “yippee!” as ten feet and four paws scampered away.
About the Author
Gail Sattler lives in Vancouver, BC (where you don’t have to shovel rain) with her husband, three sons, dog, and countless fish, many of which have names. She writes inspirational romance because she loves happily-ever-afters and believes God has a place in that happy ending. Visit Gail’s website at http://www.gailsattler.com.
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