by Jillian Hart
“Mores?” Jonas asked, and was rewarded with Tyler’s explanation of the huge s’mores they’d made together, the biggest ones in the whole world.
Danielle heard Katherine behind her.
“It’s going well,” Katherine whispered, and there was a smile in her voice as she padded by on the way to the dining room table.
It was going well. She took one last look at her husband and son, side by side on the couch, already buddies again. No matter what they’d lost, and with the remaining challenges of Jonas’s injuries still standing between them, they had a little bit of their normal family life back.
Lord, this means everything. Thank You.
Danielle straightened Madison’s pink rhinestone tiara before she opened the closest cabinet door and counted out enough plates for everyone. Madison stood in place, watching her father with wide staring eyes.
“Want to go in and see your daddy, sweetie?”
She shook her head, still staring.
Katherine returned from the dining room and took the plates. “She’s still shy around him?”
“I suppose that’ll eventually stop.” Danielle pulled out knives and forks and then closed the drawer with her hip. “Pastor Dan said to not force anything, especially with her so young, but—”
“It will be just fine. Look at Tyler.” Katherine scooped the bags of food from the counter. “He’s practically floating he’s so happy.”
“He is.” Danielle smiled across the width of the house, where Jonas had gone back to watching her again. “This is Katherine.”
“Katherine,” Jonas repeated. “The older sister.”
“Yes, that would be me.” Katherine began passing the plates around the table. “I’m not staying for very long,” she told him. “Tomorrow you’ll meet all of us. Are you ready for that?”
“Ready.” Jonas nodded once with his lopsided smile.
“We’re a scary bunch, but not dangerous.” Katherine smiled at him. “Jack, my husband, is looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Jack. Jack from up the street in Glendale.” Jonas smiled. “I was the new kid in third grade and he let me play basketball with him. I can remember going to high school and driver’s education and all kinds of things like that. But not this.” He looked around him.
Danielle saw the pain in his eyes when he turned toward her. “It’ll come, Jonas. One step at a time. I have faith you will remember everything. You just can’t push it. You’d better come to the table, both of you. Do you need help?”
“I can do it.” He put down the photo album and began to struggle with his walker.
Tyler, such a good little boy, grabbed the walker by the handle. “Let me help, Dad. I’m real strong.”
“Real strong,” Jonas agreed, kind even when pain lined his pale face. “Thanks, buddy.”
Danielle’s vision blurred and she finished setting the table. The man toiling with his walker, scooting forward one slow step at a time, reached the table exhausted.
“I’ll let myself out,” Katherine said quietly from the kitchen. “Jonas, I’m going to keep praying for you.”
“Th-thank you.” He looked weary as he eased into the chair.
When she laid her hand on his big shoulder, Danielle could feel the tension corded up like hard ropes. How difficult this had to be for him, coming to a home and a life and a family he could not remember. He was weak and wounded and not the man he was. He must have been able to see that, she realized now, seeing himself in the photo album.
A downside she hadn’t anticipated.
Aching for him, she left her hand on his shoulder and kept the contact between them. “Goodbye, Kath, and thanks again.”
Katherine glanced over her shoulder as she snagged her designer purse from the counter. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. Good night, and, Jonas, it’s so good to see you home.”
Danielle felt her husband nod in acknowledgment, but her heart was too full of emotions too complicated to sort out. Tyler was climbing into his chair at the table, and Madison was mutinously—although adorably—running after her departing aunt, then looking at her parents, who were not acknowledging her mutiny, and her lower lip stuck out farther.
“All right! Mexi-fries!” Tyler pumped his fist in victory. “I getta say grace. Can I? Please?”
“If it’s all right with your dad.” It felt fantastic to say that again, but Jonas only looked at her bewildered, as if he had no idea why it would or wouldn’t be his call. So she answered in his place. “I guess it is. Let me get Madison to the table.”
“No.” Madison looked pretty determined as she studied her father. She clutched her cell phone tightly.
“C’mon, ple-eeeeese.” Tyler was about to burst with so much excitement. “Daddy, she’s been like this a lot. I’m tryin’ to be a good big brother, but it’s hard.”
“I can see that,” Jonas said quietly with a wink.
Not willing to scoop the child up and risk a meltdown, Danielle knelt to size up the situation. “Don’t you want Mexi-fries?”
Madison bobbed her head once in a serious nod. Her tiara winked as it caught the overhead light.
“Then come to the table, princess.” Danielle held out her hand, palm up, hoping for a little toddler cooperation.
Madison turned her serious gaze to her daddy on the far side of the table. “I wanna sit by yew, Mommy.”
Over the top of their daughter’s head, she could see the hurt on Jonas’s face. As little as Madison was, she knew there was something different—much different—about the father who’d come home to them. Tyler was too excited to truly notice, but would his security be blown apart when he did?
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, she reminded herself. Prayer, tonight, would help as it always did. With the Lord’s grace, perhaps Jonas would recover quickly enough that Tyler wouldn’t realize it. Jonas had already defied the doctor’s dim prognosis so far. Yes, she decided, steeling her spine, she would rely on her faith. God would make this right.
“I’ll scoot your chair closer to mine, how’s that?” Danielle waited for Madison to consider this. When the toddler placed her sticky little hand on hers, Danielle sighed with relief. One tantrum avoided. “Good girl. Let’s get you up. Look at Tyler. You’re making him wait.”
“Hurry, Maddy,” Tyler added, helping out. “We’re all gettin’ shorter. We need Mexi-fries now!”
A family joke, but Jonas’s forehead furrowed as if he were trying to make sense of that. She’d tell him later about the joke of how the deep-fried Tater Tots kept a person from shrinking, she thought, as she buckled Madison in.
The instant she dropped into her own seat, she could feel the exhaustion in her muscles and bones. She folded her hands and bowed her head just in time, for Tyler was already saying—or more accurately, shouting—grace.
“Thanks for the eats, Lord! God bless us every one!” Tyler, proud of himself, added, “Amen!”
“Volume, kiddo,” she reminded him after she’d added her own amen. “You don’t need to shout. God can hear you just fine.”
“Yeah, but He’s all the way up in the sky. When Uncle Spence was on the roof cleaning the gutters, remember how loud I had to talk so’s he could hear me?” Tyler helped himself to the tub of Mexi-fries. He dumped a generous portion on his plate. “The sky is really far up.”
How could she argue with that? She took the tub from him and added Mexi-fries to her and Madison’s plates, before she realized Jonas’s plate remained empty.
“I’ll help you, too,” she said quietly. “Let me get the kids dished up.”
He looked away, his eyes veiled, his face like stone. Tyler was chatting away, trying to decide from the options of tacos and nachos and burritos. Madison talked over the top of him, wanting her “taccas.”
As she unwrapped Madison’s chicken soft taco and cut it into quarters, and then helped Tyler search through the bags for the tacos that were his, she tried to keep the sadness from her heart. She’d known
it would be like this. The doctors had been clear and had been warning her through the long journey of Jonas’s recovery.
Everything had changed. There were no more loving looks across the table between them, and no more knowing looks that meant they were storing up cute things the kids were doing to be talked about and laughed over afterward. There were no mutual conversations about his day at work or hers at home with the kids, the way there always used to be. There was just silence and the typical noises that came from having two small children at the table.
She hadn’t realized the depth of their love, and the importance of the meaningful bond that linked her spirit to his, until it was gone. Until there was nothing but silence between two strangers, with their children between them. That meant the love they’d shared was gone, too.
She quietly circled the table and unwrapped the two chicken burritos for Jonas and added a heap of Mexi-fries to his plate. Her footsteps echoed in the silence as she retraced the path back to her chair.
“No! No! No! No—ooooooo!” Madison’s declaration of independence rang in the main bathroom at high enough decibel levels to break city ordinances. “I kin do it!”
Danielle slumped onto the closed lid of the toilet, dripping wet from helping her daughter with her bath. The steam had frizzed her hair, and she felt wilted as she rested her face in her hands. Steam swirled around her, driven by the current from the door swinging open and a half-clad Madison pounding across the hall to her bedroom. There was a yanking sound as she dragged open the lower drawer in her little white dresser.
“Mom? Are you okay?” Tyler asked from the doorway.
She pasted a smile on her weary face and rose to her feet. “Absolutely. It’s your turn, tiger. Would you fetch a clean towel and washcloth from the laundry room for me?”
“Okay!” He ran out of the room and down the hall.
“Don’t run in the house,” she reminded him and listened for his stampede to slow a bit.
She forced her feet forward, wondering how the rest of the evening would turn out for her and Jonas. They would be alone for the first time, and she was feeling nervous about being with him. It made no sense, and she didn’t like the way she was feeling. But there it was, the hard ball of anxiety stuck in her midsection.
The evening had passed pleasantly with Tyler’s little-boy energy and Madison’s cute chatter. Jonas had sat in the living room with the kids while she’d cleaned up the kitchen. The kids were so busy and active, they’d unwittingly filled up the first half of the evening. But now, the last half was looming ahead of her and she was at a loss as to how to face it.
She turned on the bathwater and adjusted the temperature before adding Tyler’s blue-colored bubble bath to the rising water. Madison shrieked with glee across the hall, and while Danielle hesitated in the hallway wondering about Jonas, the sight of her half-dressed daughter digging out every last item from her bottom drawer took precedence. “You are troubles, bubbles.”
Madison grinned, showing off her dimples. “I want my Ella pants.”
“Sweetie, you definitely need pants.” Danielle knelt and gave the pink Cinderella pajama shirt a tug at the hem to straighten it. “You got that on all by yourself?”
“Yip.”
“You’re a good dresser.”
“Yip.”
Danielle sorted through the items on the floor, folding them as she went. No sign of the matching pajama pants, so she tried the middle drawer. There they were, right on top, in all their pink glory among the folded-up socks. She chased Madison, caught her and helped her into the ruffly pink bottoms. There. One kid almost done for the day.
First, she had to turn off the bathwater, then she began turning back Madison’s bedcovers, not sure if Madison was going to give an argument or not.
Tyler’s footsteps preceded him down the hall. He poked his head into the room. “Daddy’s sleepin’,” he said, then thundered into the bathroom.
Sleeping? She knew Jonas hadn’t made the trek down the hall to their bedroom yet. He would have had to pass by the bathroom and the kids’ rooms. Did that mean he’d fallen asleep on the couch? “Okay, prayers, cutie.”
Madison bent to her knees and steepled her little hands. Her tiara slipped forward—yes, it appeared she was still wearing it—and Danielle removed it as she knelt down beside her. She listened while Madison said her prayers and tucked her in with a kiss.
“My story, Mommy?” Madison used her puppy-dog look, rendering her completely impossible to say no to.
“Let me check on Tyler and your daddy first. You stay right there, okay, bubbles?”
“Yip.”
A quick glance into the bathroom told her that Tyler was safe and sound, covered with bubbles and busy playing with his floating fire tanker that shot water all over the tile. She reminded him to remember to wash before padding down the hallway, where she found Jonas stretched out and sound asleep on the couch.
The poor man. He had to be exhausted. Danielle hit the power off button on the TV remote and circled around to lift the warm fleece blanket off the back of the couch. He didn’t stir. She’d wake him up later, after she got both kids put to bed. For now, she shook the blanket out and gently covered him.
Help him find his way back to me, please, Lord, she prayed in the darkness. She kissed her husband’s forehead and tiptoed from the room.
Chapter Three
“Sorry.”
Danielle glanced up from pouring Jonas a second cup of morning coffee. “What are you sorry for?”
“Falling asleep.” He didn’t look at her as he concentrated on wrapping his hands around his spoon. Long months of hard rehabilitation had helped, but his motor skills were still limited.
She popped open the top of the flavored coffee creamer and poured it for him and then added some into her own cup. “It was a big day for all of us yesterday, with you coming home.”
“You’re dis-disappointed.” He stumbled on the word.
Since she couldn’t admit that, not without hurting him, she set the carafe on the ruffled blue place mat at Tyler’s empty place and slipped into the chair. “Are you?”
He gulped. “Could be easier.”
She nodded, seeing now what she’d been too busy this morning to notice, getting Tyler ready for the church summer program and keeping Madison out of trouble. Jonas had managed to dress himself in a sweatshirt and jeans, but the sweatshirt hung on him, twisted to the left. His feet beneath the table were in socks, not shoes. “I should have helped you more this morning. I’m sorry. I won’t forget again.”
“You helped enough.” Jonas straightened his shoulders, as if his pride were involved, too. “The kids first.”
“Yes. That’s what we agreed back in Seattle, but—” She stared down into her steaming mug, unable to find any answers in the dark depths. She’d let him down, and that’s the one thing she didn’t want to do. Somehow she had to figure out a way to manage everything on her own. “It’s going to be difficult for a while, but I don’t mind working hard for you, Jonas. For the kids. For us.”
He swallowed hard, as if her words mattered to him, and turned in his chair toward the wall. “Our wedding pictures.”
“Yes.” She looked at them, too. How young and carefree they seemed back then. On impulse, she rose and plucked the collage frame from the wall. “There are some of the reprints I framed up from that day. I should dig out our wedding album. It’s in the closet somewhere out of reach, for safekeeping.”
“You’re smiling. It must have been a good day.”
“One of the best of my life.”
She laid the gold frame on the table, and he moved his coffee cup aside to make room. As they leaned forward to study the pictures together, she smelled the scent of his shampoo and the soap on his skin. Her heart cinched a notch. Yes, she thought, tenderly, he was still her Jonas. “If you notice, you’re smiling, too.”
“Yep. I look pretty happy.”
“You were.”
She t
ouched her fingertip to the glass frame, where they’d just parted from sharing their first kiss as man and wife. Hand in hand, they stood smiling, facing their family and friends with the jeweled light from the sun-drenched stained glass gracing them. Their happiness was palpable, so shining and new. “I wish you could remember how that felt to finally be married. To be together with the whole world at our feet.”
“Was our marriage good?”
She noticed the concern in his eyes, the sadness on his face and the wonder. It was not fair that one bullet had stolen so much from him. At least she had the memories of their love. At least she knew what they could have again. “It was very good.”
“We were close.”
“Yes. Very close.”
He nodded once in acknowledgment but not in understanding.
How did she tell him that was her greatest fear? That they might never find one another again. They might never again share that rare close bond they’d had. Grief stabbed deep into her soul, and she fought it away. She had to keep her faith strong and believe that God would not forsake them. “We were best friends. Best…everything.”
“E-very-thing.” Jonas lingered over that word, as if he were trying to figure out what that meant. He remained bent over the pictures.
She moved away and took the carafe with her to rinse in the sink. All around them, hung on the walls or in stand-alone frames or snapshots tacked to their refrigerator, were photographs of their life together, of the babies and of the kids growing up. Of a happier time—her soul ached with sadness for the loss of that happy, innocent time when Jonas was whole.
It wasn’t fair to keep wishing for the past, she thought as she turned to the sink, rinsed out the pot and slipped it into the top rack of the dishwasher. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jonas struggling to stand, his attention focused on one of the photographs on the wall. She leaned a little to see what he stared at with such fascination. Her heart stopped when she recognized the picture. It was of her, propped up in a hospital bed, exhausted from forty-one hours of labor and cradling their precious son in her arms.