by Dana Corbit
She’d never expected anyone to understand how much she missed running, how she craved that burn in her muscles and that brush of the wind on her face, but it seemed to register with Joe. Even if she couldn’t accept his gift, she would never forget how special it made her feel.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t accept a gift like that.” She could hear the sadness in her voice, so she didn’t try to convince herself that he would miss it.
“That?” He pointed to the jogger. “That’s not a gift. I don’t count anything I could pick up off an internet classified ad as a gift. This was more like a need fulfillment. I saw a need, and I figured out a way to fulfill it.”
His explanation had her lips lifting. “I needed a running stroller?”
“Well, not needed exactly, but it could kill two birds with one exceptionally large, three-wheeled stone.”
“Which two birds?”
“The get-you-running one and gotta-have-child-care one.”
“Are those rare breeds?”
“Not quite extinct, but definitely endangered.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
Even as she continued their silly banter, she reasoned through his logic and a bit of her own, already tasting the salty sweat of a good run on her lips.
“Gift or need fulfillment or whatever you call it, I still wouldn’t be able to just accept it from you. I would have to repay you for it. Every penny.”
“That’s not necessary—”
“It is to me.”
“Fine.” His frown quickly turned into a grin. “But remember, my loans come with interest. One point above Prime Rate. And I don’t tolerate late payments.”
Lindsay shook her head, still smiling. Joe Rossetti was impossible and exasperating and frustrating and wonderful. He owed her and Emma nothing, and yet he was always doing nice things for them. She was trying to tell herself that this was just another one of those nice things, something really intended for Emma’s sake, but the case was harder to make this time.
Could he really have done this just for her? Could he have feelings for her that went beyond friendship? No. She pushed the errant thought away. She shouldn’t ruin a perfect moment with her friend by reading too much into what he’d done.
“I’m not even sure how it would work,” she said finally.
“The doctor said you didn’t really need your cane anymore, didn’t she? It’s just there for extra support.”
Lindsay tapped the cane next to her. “My wooden security blanket.”
“This would be like that, too. Just like having a shoulder to lean on.”
Lindsay glanced sidelong at him, only to find him watching her. He didn’t have to say it, but in these past few days, he’d become a strong shoulder for her and for Emma. That was the type of man Trooper Joe Rossetti was—someone who put his life on the line every day to benefit others. But he was also the man who’d chosen between her and Delia. She couldn’t forget that. Otherwise, it would be just too easy for her to fall for him.
“Go faster, Aunt Lindsay.”
Emma kicked her heels inside the jogger and threw her head back in delight as they rounded yet another corner.
“This is the fastest I can go, sweetie,” Lindsay explained as she had several times before during their walk that had lasted closer to an hour than the thirty minutes they’d originally planned.
Still, as they began the return trip to Lindsay’s condo, Joe felt tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with physical exertion this time. He didn’t want the walk to end, but what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t turn Lindsay into a marathon walker just because he wanted to spend more time with her. Them. He meant them.
“Remember, Emma, that Aunt Lindsay wanted to practice walking with the jogger first before she tried running.” He reached over the side of the stroller and ruffled the preschooler’s hair.
“But she practiced already,” Emma insisted.
“That’s true, but she’ll need more practice. Like when you practice writing your name. She wants to get really good at it, like you are with your writing.”
Joe glanced sidelong at Lindsay, who’d been even steadier than he’d hoped while walking behind the stroller, gripping the padded handlebar with both hands.
“Who knew that Emma had such a need for speed?” he said.
Lindsay grinned as she came to a stop next to him and pushed the parking brake. “And I thought she’d be worried about being H-U-N-G-R-Y.”
Both shot glances at the child in the stroller, just making sure she hadn’t mastered the skill of deciphering oral spelling yet. But the girl only rocked forward and backward in her seat, as if to get her chariot going again.
“You see?” He gestured toward the child. “Nothing to worry about.”
They would have had a difficult time convincing Emma that she needed to wait until after dinner for their walk, anyway. When she’d awakened from her nap and discovered the new toy, she immediately wanted to try it out.
Lindsay glanced at the child and then at him again. “Guess not.”
With her face flushed from the exertion of the brisk walk and escaped tresses from her ponytail curling around her face, Lindsay had never looked prettier to him. He wondered if she’d always been this happy when training before the accident, her shoes tapping out a rhythm, her breathing slow and steady.
He realized with a shock that he would do almost anything to keep her smiling like that.
“Well, you look about the same as I did when I ran up to your house earlier.”
Her gaze narrowed, but then her expression softened. “Whew. I thought you were serious. My doctor wouldn’t be happy with me if I started doing too much too fast.”
“No. You look great. Really.” Joe swallowed. It wasn’t supposed to have come out like that. He sounded as if he was looking at more than how she was handling this new activity, and it would be hard for him to deny it.
Lindsay glanced at him, licking her lips nervously. An awkward silence lingered, and Joe searched for something to say to defuse the electricity sparking between them. It wasn’t dark enough for the stroller to require more than its reflectors, but the current between them could have powered headlights without batteries.
“Go, dog, go.” Emma pointed in the direction she wanted the jogger to move.
The adults chuckled, but Lindsay’s was a nervous laugh.
Because Joe hated making her so uncomfortable, he changed the subject. “Didn’t I see a book that said something like that in Emma’s room?”
“It’s called, strangely enough, Go, Dog. Go! It’s her new favorite at bedtime.”
“Go, dog, go,” Emma repeated, louder this time.
“Oh, I think she meant it.” Lindsay released the parking brake and started forward again.
“You’re doing a good job with her, you know. She’s adapting well.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t look at him, but her eyes were suspiciously shiny.
“I’m glad this running thing is going to work out for you guys.” He paused long enough to watch her movements, so much more fluid than they’d been with the cane. “You look happy when you’re moving. Complete.”
“Is it so obvious?” Instead of waiting for an answer, she continued, “You must really think I’m shallow. My sister dies, my niece loses her mother, and all I can think about is that I can’t run anymore.”
Joe reached out for the jogger’s handle and pulled her to a stop.
“That isn’t all you’ve been thinking about. You’ve been mourning the loss of your sister, and you’ve stepped up in every way possible to care for Emma. You’ve put yourself last in this situation. You probably always do that. But in this one thing, don’t.”
Lindsay’s wide eyes and the strange look on Emma’s face as she twisted in her harness to look up at them made it clear he’d said too much. He might as well have announced how amazing he thought she was. He released his grip on the handle, and Lindsay started forward again without lookin
g over at him.
Finally, she chuckled. “You make me sound like Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa or something. Like in Matthew 16:24, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’” She shook her head. “I can assure you I’m not as selfless as you think I am.”
“There you go quoting scripture again.”
“I have to do something with all those memory verses I learned in Sunday School. My quoting ability always makes me the life of the party.”
The words of a few verses he’d memorized himself long ago filtered through his thoughts, but he tucked them away. He had a point to make. “All I’m saying is it’s okay to miss something that was more than a hobby to you.”
“You didn’t buy that, huh?”
“All those ribbons gave you away. It took a lot of dedication and pain to earn those.”
“Okay, you got me.”
Lindsay started forward again, and the condo complex came into view in the distance. Joe searched for a way to stall her longer, but he’d already been doing that. If he kept at it, he would have to explain why. Even he didn’t know the answer to that.
“Running was the one thing I did for myself,” she said after a long time. “I always felt close to God as I ran, testing my body and listening for His guidance. I’ve felt guilty about missing running, especially with everything my family has lost, but not being able to get out there has left another void in my life.”
“I know what you mean.”
Joe could sense Lindsay’s gaze on him as she weighed his words, but her next comment surprised him.
“You do know, don’t you? Earlier, you said something about running making me feel complete. How did you know?”
“I’m not suggesting that there weren’t days when you had to force yourself to put on your running shoes. But once you were out on the road, didn’t you know without a doubt that was where you were supposed to be?”
For a few seconds, Lindsay didn’t answer, and when she finally did, her voice was thick with emotion. “It was exactly like that, but I still don’t understand how you know that. Is there something you feel that way about?”
He didn’t know whether it was her question or that he’d been waiting for her to ask it, but Joe found the words pouring out of him like volcanic ash during an eruption. “A void for me would be never to strap on a weapon again, never to pin on a badge and not to have the chance to serve the public again.”
His chest squeezed. Was now the right time to tell her the rest of the story that still weighed on his heart? Should he tell her how the events from the night of the accident related to his own loss of confidence and his fear that he would lose the job that meant so much to him?
She swallowed visibly, as if she recognized that he’d said something significant, even though she couldn’t know what else he’d been tempted to tell. But then she smiled.
“And do you often ‘feel the burn’ in your work?”
“It was an analogy.”
“If you say so,” she said with a chuckle.
Part of him was relieved for the break she always gave him, and part was frustrated that she hadn’t demanded to know more. It was long past time for him to tell her the rest of the story he’d kept from her, for his benefit as much as hers.
But it was so easy to walk along with Lindsay in companionable silence. This felt so right. And after he told her, things between them would never be right again.
Lindsay saved him from having to acknowledge he was a coward by stopping and staring up into the trees that formed an arch over the running trail.
“See what I mean?” she said. “You have to feel close to God out here, surrounded by His creations.”
“I’m glad you have that if it helps you.”
“Was it your mother’s death that caused you to lose your faith?”
Joe blinked, surprised by the question. It wasn’t a subject he enjoyed talking about, but even it was easier than the one he’d been considering. “I guess her death had something to do with it. She was definitely the strongest example of faith in our family. She was the one who corralled us together for church on Sunday mornings.”
It had been years since he’d thought about his mother kneeling with him in prayer next to his bed, but now he could see it as clearly as if it were yesterday.
“She’d be disappointed to think that her death caused me to give up on God,” he admitted.
“But you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you didn’t believe, you wouldn’t have given me that poem.”
“The poem? Are we back to that again?” He shook his head, rolling his eyes. “I told you it was an impulse to give it to you.”
“Was it an impulse that made you carry a poem around in your trooper’s hat? A poem that says, ‘Don’t be afraid. You are a child of God. You are precious in his eyes.’”
“No, it wasn’t like that.” Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure. Had he on some level wanted to reclaim his faith, even if he wasn’t ready to commit to it?
“I don’t know why I kept the poem. My friend Cindy gave it to me and told me that a police officer gave it to her during the lowest point in her life. Her husband had left her. She’d lost her job, and then the officer stopped her for speeding. When she burst into tears and the whole story spilled out, he reached into his hat and pulled out the poem to give to her.”
“Oh, that must have been an awful time for her,” she said.
“It was. I still don’t know why Cindy passed the poem to me.”
Lindsay stared at him, a knowing look in her eyes.
“It probably just impressed me that the guy carried it in his hat, so I started doing the same.”
“You think that was all it was?”
He frowned because even he was beginning to wonder. “I never intended to pass it along to anyone.”
“But you did, and I’m glad you did. It reminded me that, like in Luke 1:37, ‘For with God nothing will be impossible.’”
She smiled at him, and like he always did, he felt that smile all the way to his toes. But then, as she turned to look ahead again, something must have caught her attention because she jerked the jogger to a stop.
Parked behind Lindsay’s car was a sedan he didn’t recognize, with a driver still behind the wheel. He stiffened, but instead of feeling the instinct to touch his weapon that was still locked in its case back in his truck, he felt a territorial reaction.
Jealousy? That was ridiculous. He was never jealous. He had no business feeling that way over Lindsay, anyway. So why was he watching that car and hoping the driver didn’t turn out to be younger or taller or better looking?
“Were you expecting someone?”
She shook her head.
“What is it?” He strained his eyes to get a better look. “A guy?”
“A man and a woman. They’re my parents.”
Chapter Nine
Lindsay straightened her shoulders and then pushed the stroller forward. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet she felt guilty as she watched her father and mother open the doors and climb out of the car.
“They didn’t say they were coming by,” she told Joe, though he hadn’t asked.
“It’s Nannie and Papa,” Emma called out with glee.
By the time they reached her driveway, Lindsay’s parents were standing together, leaning against the driver’s side of the car. Her mother had her arms crossed over her chest, and her father was twirling his keys.
“Well, there she is,” her father said, as he bent down to get on Emma’s level. He reached down and unbuckled the child from her harness and lifted her onto his hip.
“Hi, Mom and Dad,” Lindsay said.
“Where have you been?” her mother asked her, while eyeing Joe suspiciously.
Her father was the first to step forward. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“But…you have,” Lindsay said, falling over her words as she
locked the jogger’s brake. She released the handle and stepped carefully toward the group of adults.
“Joe, these are my parents, Brian and Donna Collins.”
“Mom and Dad, this is Trooper Joe Rossetti. You met…at the hospital.”
Lindsay braced herself as her father stepped back from shaking hands with Joe. Usually, her mother was easiest to read, her anger or frustration obvious in her tight jaw or a flash in her eyes. But this time her father’s annoyance was more obvious in the way he kept jangling his keys.
“Trooper Joe and Aunt Lindsay went running with me,” Emma announced. “It wasn’t very fast.”
“I guess you ran for a long time because Nannie and Papa have been waiting here a whole hour,” Donna said.
Her mother might have been talking to Emma as she let her gaze pass over the jogging stroller, but the message appeared to be for Lindsay alone.
“I’m sorry we made you wait.”
Lindsay was sorry about a lot of things right now, and that she’d been out running around, almost literally, when her parents had arrived at her home was just one of them. The annoyance she felt that her parents hadn’t called first was another. This wasn’t the first time since Emma had started spending the majority of her time at Lindsay’s condo that her parents had shown up unannounced, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Brian touched his forehead to his granddaughter’s. “We tried to come just after dinner, so—”
“I’m hungry,” Emma said, as though she’d just now realized it. “I want dinner.”
“Dinner?” Donna lifted a shocked brow. “That poor child hasn’t had dinner yet? It’s nearly seven-thirty.”
Lindsay shot a glance at Joe, who looked as uncomfortable as she felt, and then turned back to her mother. “I know it’s a little late, but she fell asleep on the way home from day care. Then Joe came by with a jogging stroller, and—”
“Were you napping at almost dinner time, dear heart?” Donna stepped over to where Brian was holding Emma and brushed the child’s hair back from her face. “Now you won’t get any sleep tonight at all. You tell Aunt Lindsay not to let you nap so late anymore.”