by Jillian Hart
Danielle groaned. How could she have forgotten? She did the monthly accounting for the family’s Christian bookstore. The extra income had helped out a lot with all of the extra medical bills. “I’ve got to get cracking on the general ledger. I’m stuck.”
“If you tell Spence that, he isn’t going to be too happy. He’s coming over tomorrow to mow the lawn. Maybe you’ll be unstuck by then.”
Something else to hope for. “It’s Friday night. Spence should be out on a date, finding himself a wife, instead of home worrying about his work.”
“He’s lonely, I think that’s why he’s so harsh. He works so hard at the store. You know he does. He’s shorthanded and wanted me to work, but I told him I’m already putting in long hours at the church. I felt bad that I can’t help him.”
One look at Rebecca’s sweet face, and Danielle knew her baby sister needed a little reassurance. “Spence understands that. He’s just stressed.”
“He is.” Rebecca sighed as she zipped her backpack, perhaps keeping the conversation on their brother to keep it off of herself. “Ava thinks we should try to fix him up again. What do you think?”
“I think Spence definitely needs help, but he’s a grown man. He can find a woman to date if he wants to.” She didn’t add that as much as she worried about Spence’s happiness, she was more concerned with Rebecca’s. She spotted the pink bakery box on the counter. “Let’s have some cookies.”
“Let me.” Rebecca headed to the kitchen, faster in her tennis shoes.
Danielle followed her, tapping in her low heels. “What are you doing? I’ll get my own cookie.”
“I don’t mind.” Rebecca brought the small box to the table and flipped open the lid. “Did you and Jonas have a nice evening?”
“We did.” It hadn’t gone as she’d hoped, but she was starting to see something else, too. Something she didn’t want to look at. Although their first date had gone well, Jonas was still a stranger to her and to himself.
Not what she’d expected. She’d truly believed tonight would spark some locked-up memory. She felt oddly alone as she chose a cookie in the shape of a ballerina bear and studied Ava’s workmanship. Pink icing ballet tutu and shoes, a glittery crown studded with golden sugar and a cute smiling bear face. She nibbled on a toe. “Time to talk about you some more. Breakups are hard. Are you all right?”
Rebecca, always quiet, seemed to withdraw a little, as she tended to do. She didn’t answer right away, which was telling, too. She chose a spotted dog cookie. “Oh, you know. I guess things had been heading this way for a while so it wasn’t exactly a surprise to me. But I’m fine.”
Which meant, not so fine. Danielle wished she could make Rebecca see that this was for the best. “It’s never fine when dreams die. It hurts.”
Rebecca took another nibble on her cookie and nodded. “This, too, shall pass, right? I don’t want you worrying about me, Dani. I’ve decided to adopt Ava’s view of things.”
“Oh, no, that’s trouble.”
“Remember when she went on a no-date policy? Well, that’s going to be me. I need a serious break from all things male. I’ve got a lot on my plate anyway.”
“If I remember right, as soon as Ava instituted her no-date policy, she met Brice. Her Mr. Right.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I don’t have one of those waiting in the wings somewhere.” Rebecca slid her backpack strap over her shoulder and dug for her car keys. “I never want to feel this way again.”
Uh-oh. There was more going on than her sister was admitting to. Danielle wished she could pry it out of Rebecca, but she was already leaving and quietly pulling away. “Love doesn’t hurt like that when it’s right.”
“Love hurts. I’ve watched you this last year, hurting terribly, Dani. It seems to me it hurts either way. If you let someone close, you can lose them. If you let someone close, they might hurt you. It’s a pickle.”
There was that word again. “It’s definitely a journey, but it’s one I’m glad I made.”
“Well, maybe I’ll feel differently in a while.” Already Rebecca was heading through the kitchen, car keys and cookie in hand. “Let me know if you need me next week. I know with Aubrey’s wedding coming up, everyone’s too busy to stay with the munchkins the way they used to. I have more time now that Chris is gone. I don’t mind coming over.”
“I’ll take you up on that.” Danielle gave her sister a hug. “You drive safe. Give me a quick jingle so I know you got home okay.”
“You two have been apart a long time. You don’t need me interrupting your evening. I’ll make it home just fine, don’t you worry.”
Danielle watched until her sister crossed the lawn and circled around to her little red car parked along the street. The engine purred to life and headlights blazed on, and after a final wave, Danielle closed and locked the door. As unhappy as Rebecca was, surely better things were right around the corner for her.
As she went around tidying up the kitchen and getting ready for the morning, she listened to the low murmur of voices floating serenely down the hall. Jonas must have gotten Madison settled, and now was in Tyler’s room.
Which is where she found him when she headed down the hall. Sure enough, Jonas was on the edge of Tyler’s bed, talking quietly with him. The little boy with the sleep-tousled hair and fireman pajamas gazed with total adoration at his daddy.
“We’ll have to ask your mom about that,” Jonas was saying with a touch of humor in his rich baritone. “I’m not sure this is the right time.”
“Having a dog is always right.” Tyler, so earnest, popped off his pillow to wrap his arms around his dad’s chest. “I really love the dotted kind. The ones on the fire trucks.”
A Dalmatian, Danielle realized. Tyler had been pestering her for a dog ever since he’d met his uncle Brice’s retriever. Rex had more heart than sense, which made him the perfect dog, in Danielle’s opinion. But with Jonas injured and battling with his rehabilitation in costly big-city facilities, there hadn’t been the extra finances or time to spend with a puppy.
“But Mommy said when you came home we could get one.” Tyler, all hope, kept a careful watch on his dad’s face. “I want one real bad.”
Jonas ran his hand over the crown of his son’s head, gentle and loving as always. “I’m sure you do.”
There was her Jonas, not so far away at all. She thought of all the times he had sat right there on the edge of their son’s bed and chatted with him, a devoted father. For once, the memories of the past and the image of the present were one and the same.
Jonas turned toward her, sensing her in the doorway, and the look he sent her was as telling as any words could be.
Your turn now, sweetheart.
She laughed, stepping into the room. “Tyler, we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
“But, Mom! You could say yes right now.” Knowing he was a cutie and that he had her wrapped around his little finger, Tyler gave her a sweet, expectant grin.
Danielle sighed. It was hard being a mom. “Tomorrow. I mean it. Right now, you are supposed to be asleep, tiger.”
“I know.” Tyler flopped back into his pillow. “But I would sleep best if I had my own dog.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Jonas winked as he struggled to his feet. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Good night, son.”
“’Night, Dad.” Tyler looked bursting with happiness, so glad to have his daddy back in his daily life—and that promise of a dog much closer now.
Danielle was glad, too. She bent to kiss her little boy’s brow and wish him sweet dreams. When she turned around, Jonas was watching her from the doorway, his eyes dark with unreadable emotion.
Please let it be love for me, she wished with all of her heart. Her love for Jonas drew her to him like a hook pulling her forward. He turned out the light, she closed the door, and they headed down the hall together.
The door to their room stood open, the lights off, dark and quiet. She felt a tingle of anticipation wash over her. Sh
e was going to be alone with her husband, her beloved Jonas. Finally. Tonight he wasn’t too tired from a demanding physical therapy appointment—there hadn’t been one.
Tonight she needed the shelter of his arms. The loving sweetness of being with him, wrapped up in the blessing of their tenderness for one another. She needed him. She was not whole, not complete without his love.
She turned on the bedside lamp, a soft light that cast a glow through the darkness. Her stomach fluttered with a touch of nerves. It had been so long. She loved him so much. He ambled across the room and stopped, his gaze finding hers. She felt her soul sigh with recognition. Reenacting their first date may not have sparked any memories for him, but she believed it had helped his heart to remember hers.
“It’s getting late,” he said, plainly, simply, as if he were tired.
She watched, her hopes falling, as he and his walker thumped into their bathroom and closed the door.
So, I was wrong. She eased onto the side of the bed. Disappointment splashed through her like a bucketful of cold water. She sat shivering, as if she were as cold on the outside as she was down deep. She knew they had made progress together tonight as man and wife, but the distance between them was still so great. Not even that distance could stop her from loving him. What she would give for just one kiss.
With a sigh, she turned down the bed, took off the pillow shams and set the morning’s alarm.
Chapter Seven
All I want is for you to love me. Danielle’s confession troubled Jonas all the week through. It whispered to him every morning when he opened his eyes and saw how hard she worked for him and the kids, and always with a smile on her lovely face. It drove him through his painful, grueling physical therapy appointments where he went beyond what the therapist asked him to do.
Her words ate at him in all the dozens of silent moments between them through the day—when they were in the car driving from one appointment to the next. When they were in the house together, she in one room, he in another. When they were at the table, quiet as their children talked and giggled.
It tore him up every time he looked at her. Especially now when she walked into the living room wearing the dark blue dress that shimmered around her. His jaw dropped. The photo album he held ruffled shut. No woman on this planet could ever be as lovely as his wife.
Yes, the Lord had blessed him infinitely.
“Do I look all right?” She looked nervous of his opinion and patted at the sleek cinnamon shine of her hair. “I hope no one can tell I threw this on in exactly three and a half minutes. This is Aubrey’s wedding. I can’t have her regretting that she invited me.”
“You don’t look all r-right.” Emotion jammed in his throat. “Y-you look perfect.”
For once a smile brightened her face, her eyes, her soul. Jonas stared at her, this lovely creature, and realized it was his words that had made her so happy. Happy like in the pictures he’d studied every spare minute he had. Happy like in the wedding pictures.
And not sad.
“Jonas, there you go, trying to charm me again.” She was blushing though, and he realized, as she went to grab her purse from the hallway table, that she was self-conscious. She might not know what he saw: all her beauty, all her strength, all her goodness.
He had to learn her vulnerabilities, too. He could see that.
“I’ll grab the kids’ things and be right back,” she said adorably. “Then we can go.”
“Daddy! Daddy!” Madison stormed up to him in a pair of her mother’s too-big shoes and held out a plastic phone to him. “It’s ringing!”
He’d quickly learned a lot about his daughter. She loved pink and purple. Her favorite toy was the play cell phone she talked into constantly. She went from being a ballerina to a princess to a mermaid all in one afternoon. But his wife, she wasn’t so easy to peg. As he leaned to put his ear to the phone, he kept his eye on her. He couldn’t rightly say why his heart stirred, but it did.
“Hello?” He gave his daughter a grin. “Maddy, it’s for you.”
“For me? Goody!” Pleased, the little girl took back the phone, chattering away as if to a good friend.
He had no trouble at all knowing where Madison had learned such a thing. She had watched her mom and her aunts always talking to one another.
She needs a sister of her own, he thought, and when he glanced at his wife, he couldn’t help blushing.
She was no longer a stranger to him, no longer someone he didn’t know. He had learned a lot on their date. That the Lord had blessed him with a great woman, a woman he must have once loved beyond his own life.
He had learned from the wedding album, which he had studied three times now, that they had been best friends, best everything, just as Danielle had once said. He didn’t know what that all meant, but he had a pretty good idea whenever he saw his wife looking so sad and alone and strong.
He had been her pillar. He could see that, too. He stared down at his gnarled hand and the cane, for which he had just traded his walker. No, he was hardly strong enough for her to lean on.
But he would be.
“Hey, Dad!” Tyler burst through the slider door, his good clothes spotted with water from a quick trip outside to the backyard. “I turned off the hose like you said!”
“You got yourself a little wet there, son.”
“I know. There was a hot spot I’d forgotten to put out! I couldn’t leave it.” A devoted play fireman, Tyler raced across the room, his church shoes squishing. “But do you know what?”
“What?”
“If I had a dog, then he coulda helped me.”
“I get the hint, buddy.” Jonas thought of the vacation pictures from the first album he’d studied, and how his son had been at his side in nearly every photo. Of the way Tyler gazed up at him with such love and need.
He felt that way about his little boy—he loved and needed him, too. He ruffled Tyler’s downy brown hair. “Your mom promised we would start looking into getting a dog after the wedding.”
“Good thing Aunt Aubrey is getting married today cuz I can’t wait anymore!” Good-natured, Tyler rolled his eyes, and plopped on the couch. “Know what?”
“What?” Jonas raised his arm so Tyler could lean close against him. It was a rare kind of sweetness when his son snuggled close.
“I’m gonna name him Lucky.”
“That’s a mighty good name.”
“Cuz he’s gonna be a mighty good dog.”
Emotion welled up in his chest, making it hard to breathe. Every beat of his heart hurt. Jonas gazed down at the little boy and turned back the pages of the photo album he had taken off Danielle’s bookcase. The picture was of a red-faced, hours-old newborn, swaddled in blue, napping in a hospital bassinet. The tag overhead read, Baby Boy Lowell.
“That’s me.” Tyler leaned close to study the page of pictures. “I was real little then. Maddy was like that when we first got her from God at the hospital. She was reaaally little but reaaally loud.”
It was a marvel, this baby who had grown into this little boy. Lost memories—lost moments—Jonas could not get back.
“Sorta like now.” Tyler grinned, showing off his dimples, nodding to his little sister standing in the middle of the room, talking away at full speed.
“Yip, call me. See yew later, alligator.” She disconnected with a flourish. “Mommy!”
Sure enough, Danielle had swept back into the room. Jonas felt his pulse skid to a stop. Everything within him silenced. There were so many memories he’d lost of her, too. So many moments, huge and small. But there, in the album on his knees, was the image he could not remember. Exhausted, pale, happy Danielle propped up in the hospital bed, cradling their son. The woman who had given him a home, and a family—everything that mattered.
“Madison! We’re running late. Where are your shoes?”
“I donno.” Madison pressed a button and the cell phone rang. “Oop! I gotta take it.”
“You can talk while we race
, bubbles.” Danielle scooped the girl up and settled her onto her hip, still managing to look amazing.
Simply amazing. He could not look away. His eyes refused to move. He wasn’t sure his lungs were pulling in air.
“Jonas, are you and Tyler ready? Tyler! Look at you.” Danielle shook her head, scattering her chestnut curls. “Well, you’re not wet clear through. I suppose Aubrey won’t mind if her ring bearer is water spotted.”
Jonas closed the photo album and set it on the table. “Maybe we can strap him to the top of the minivan. He’ll be dry by the time we make it to the church.”
“Good idea.” Danielle’s eyes twinkled merrily at him over the top of Madison’s curls.
His heartbeat stalled. Sharing a smile made him feel closer to her. His worries felt lighter as he followed his wife and kids through the house to the garage. Danielle was busy strapping Madison into her seat.
“Noooo! I don’ wanna!” the little girl shouted at the top of her lungs, her cell phone clutched in one chubby hand.
“She’s still reaaally loud.” Tyler climbed into the backseat beside her. “C’mon, Maddy. I have to get buckled in, too.”
“But I want Daddy.”
Jonas eased in beside his wife and leaned his cane against the open door. “Let me finish buckling her.”
“Thank you.” She laid her hand on his arm and squeezed once.
Madison’s squeals faded away and the heat of the garage with it. His troubles and worries vanished, leaving only a quiver in his heart and an emotion too tender to name. He longed for this moment to last so that he could touch the silken sleekness of her hair and breathe in the fragrance of vanilla and roses. He ached to reach out and draw her into the shelter of his arms.
Then she released him, tapping away in her matching blue shoes to heft the bag for the kids into the back of the van. The moment was broken; his pulse thudded to life again, his troubles returned, and Madison was still fighting her nemesis, the seat belt.