“People have to reach a certain place before they are ready for counseling. I think he realized that today. Sadie’s disappearance illustrated all he’d been going through and trying to ignore since the hurricane. I don’t think he can ignore it anymore.”
“Then hopefully the healing can begin.” Now that she realized she had been harboring angry feelings toward Robbie for signing up for the army again which led to his death, could she begin to heal, too? She’d been hanging on to them for almost fourteen years. Remembering the sorrow and pain cautioned her. Knowing she should change didn’t mean she would.
She peered at his attire then hers. “We look a sight, covered in mud and in my case scratches. I’ve learned no hiking through woods in a dress.”
“Or gigging for flounders. Life is a continuous learning experience.”
“Sometimes I have to be knocked over the head to get what I need.” Ruth’s words came back to her. When you care about a person, you need to let them know that. She cared about Cody—too much. She wasn’t ready to let him know that. He’d spent his life avoiding long-term relationships—for good reason—but they were exactly what she needed. Exactly what she hadn’t gotten from her parents or Robbie. She wouldn’t settle for less than that.
When they got to the house Brady placed Sadie on the ground near the hose, then turned on the outside faucet to begin cleaning her.
Maggie faced Cody. “I’m going to get cleaned up, too.”
“We all need to talk. I’ll go home, clean up, then come back. Okay?”
“You can stay for dinner if you want. Tonight I’m ordering in pizza. No cooking for me.”
“You order pizza?”
She grinned. “From time to time, mostly because Brady loves pizza.”
“Most kids do.”
“Tell you a secret.” She leaned close and whispered, “I do, too.”
“See you in a little bit.” Cody strode to his car.
“Mom, will you watch Sadie for a second? I’ve got to get a towel to dry her off.”
Maggie stooped down to the wet dog. “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought you planned this whole thing,” she crooned to Sadie as she scratched behind her ear. “You see it, too. He’s hurting. He needs you.”
Sadie barked and rubbed her dripping body up against Maggie’s muddy legs. She laughed. “Brady isn’t gonna be too happy to see you’re dirty right after your bath. But somehow I don’t think he’s gonna mind washing you again.”
* * *
Maggie shut the dishwasher and switched it on. The back door opened, and Sadie came trotting in with Brady and Cody right behind her.
“Did you get the fence fixed?” she asked as she folded the washcloth over the faucet.
“She won’t get to the woods through our yard. We took some wire and wove it through the chain links to hold it together.” Brady removed the cart from Sadie then scooped her into his arms. “I’m taking her upstairs. She may be able to get down the steps but not up them.”
When her son left the kitchen, she looked toward Cody and mouthed the words, “How did it go?”
“Good.” He paused until he heard the sound of footsteps on the staircase. “He’s agreed to meet with me.”
“Great. When do I bring him to your office?”
“We aren’t meeting in my office. I’ve asked him to take me fishing around Hope. I figure he knows some good spots.”
“Yes, but—”
“If he’s doing something he’s loved to do in the past, he’ll feel more at ease with me.” He quirked a grin. “Besides, I enjoyed floundering so I think I’d like to learn to fish.”
“You’ve never fished?”
“As a child I was never real crazy about eating fish.”
“But you ate the flounder.”
“That’s different. My tastes have changed.”
“When’s your first fishing trip?” She opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of iced tea. “Want some?”
“No, I need to head home soon.” While she poured herself a glass, he continued. “This Saturday. He says we should go early in the morning, so I’m picking him up at six.”
“Six! My son hasn’t gotten up before nine or ten any day this summer. I’ll get up and fix y’all some breakfast.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. I want to. It’s the least I can do if you can help Brady. What you two talk about is confidential, but if there’s something I need to know, I hope you’ll tell me.” Maggie wanted to sit in on the sessions between Cody and Brady, but she knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. The older her son became, the less he shared with her even though she’d reassured him that nothing would ever come between them. She would never turn him away like her parents had done to her.
“With Brady’s permission, I will. He has to feel what we discuss stays between us unless he says otherwise.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’d better go.” He started for the door, then turned back to Maggie. “You know initially I wasn’t sure about Sadie being good for Brady, but I was wrong. Once he decided to care, he dove right in. She seems to be able to read his moods well. She was right there beside him as we fixed the fence.”
“I’m glad because when his pet died right before the hurricane it was hard on him, then the storm hit and it just got worse. I don’t know if he ever grieved Frisky’s death.”
“After seeing how Brady responds to animals, I realize that had to be hard on him. A lot was thrown at him in a short time.”
“I probably didn’t help the situation. I threw myself into cleaning up the house and trying to put everything back to the way it was. I thought that would take care of everything.” As she recalled those sixteen-hour workdays, she shook her head. “With Uncle Keith falling apart, I tried to do what I could to help him. Brady did, too. I don’t regret doing that, but I also should have been more attuned to my son’s needs.”
Cody closed the space between them. “How about you? Did you ever stop to take care of yourself? Deal with your own feelings concerning the upheaval?”
“I’m fine,” she murmured but immediately wondered if that was really true. Was she?
He stared at her as though probing into her mind to see what she was actually feeling. The true answer to his questions. “Are you?”
“Okay, if you must know, I will be when my son is better. He’s my only concern.”
“I understand that, but in order to take care of another, you must also take care of yourself.”
Stiffening, she stepped back. “I don’t need your services, counselor.”
“I’m not offering my counseling services, but I am offering to be a friend who will listen when you need to vent. I think you’ve been so focused on helping everyone else that you’re ignoring your needs.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Everyone does.”
Anger bubbled in her stomach. So now she was supposed to add her problems to the pile on top of everyone else’s? “I could say the same thing to you. How can you do what you do day in and day out without being affected by it? You don’t even have someone to share it with. You move from place to place, listening to other people’s problems, trying to help them deal the best way they can. Who listens to yours? Who helps you?”
“I don’t have—”
She held up her hand. “Don’t tell me you don’t have problems. If you think that, you’re fooling yourself. Everyone has problems. That’s life.”
“My focus right now is Brady.” Tension vibrated off him, his lips pressing together.
Anytime she had tried to delve into his life, he had slammed the door in her face. A person didn’t do that unless there was a problem—something he wanted to forget. But it still held a grip on him. Maybe he wasn’t even aware it did. Maggie inhaled a calming breath, realizing no good would come out of pushing him. He had shutting down to an art form. “I agree my son is my focus, too. If there is anything I can do, I will.”<
br />
Cody glanced away for a long moment.
Silence hung between them, fraught with emotions Maggie suspected neither one wanted to acknowledge. The only sound that invaded the quiet was the ticking of the clock on the wall.
With a sigh, he turned his attention back to her. “Brady told me one of his cousins died in the hurricane,” he said in his counselor voice, all business.
“Yes, Nathan’s wife. We’ve talked about it, but Brady never said much about Caroline.”
“That will give me something to start with him on Saturday.” Cody walked toward the back door.
Maggie followed him to lock up after he left. “What do I do? I need to do something.”
He pivoted toward her, his professional facade in place. “What you’re doing now. Being there for him. Letting him know you love him. Life is pretty insecure for him right now. He needs to know he can count on you.”
And the Lord. She could still remember hearing her son declare earlier that he hated God.
Cody moved through the doorway onto the veranda that wrapped around the house. Behind him the sun had sunk below the trees, a dimness creeping across the landscape as night approached.
She clutched the door. “Thanks. I feel like I’m saying that to you a lot lately.”
“Me, too. Hannah and I had a talk about when I have to leave Hope.”
“Is she staying?”
“She hasn’t made up her mind.”
“Have you ever thought about staying in a place like Hope? We could use a good counselor. There are people here who need help. It’s not like there won’t be another threat of a hurricane in the future, and I don’t see the economy getting any better anytime soon.”
“Open my own practice? No, I hadn’t thought about that.” Cody couldn’t lie. He hadn’t thought about that until recently. “Somehow I’ll make sure Hannah has what she needs if I leave and she stays. I think though she will realize she needs family around her when she has her twins. And I’m it as far as family goes.” He tapped his chest. In that moment he realized how much he was wanting Hannah to go with him. The more he thought about her two
babies, the more he knew that he needed to be in their lives. To have a family again.
“You need to be prepared if she won’t go with you. If she’ll stay here.”
“I’ve been doing that all my life.”
“Preparing yourself to leave people behind?”
He nodded.
“How sad.”
The pity he glimpsed in her eyes sent anger racing through him. He wanted to shout “I don’t have to have people and a place to be happy,” but the words wouldn’t dislodge from his tight throat. Finally he stepped back, out of the light pouring from the kitchen. “We’ll agree to disagree. I have a good life. I get to help people who need me.” He’d promised God after his mother had died that he would, if He would just take the hurt away. God had—at least He had dulled it—and they had moved from the town not a month later. He hadn’t been confronted with memories from his surroundings and had managed to let his pain go. He still was managing that painful time in his childhood.
“But are you ever really involved in these people’s lives?”
He couldn’t take any more of her questions tonight, her not-so-subtle probings. “Good night, Maggie.” He backed up until he was at the stairs, feeling her gaze drill into him. Then he pivoted and strode to his car.
When she shut the door, his chest constricted and he finally released a bottled breath. Filling his lungs with fresh air, he climbed into his vehicle. Conflicting feelings twisted his gut. Why did Maggie always challenge him to be more involved with others? Wasn’t he involved enough? He certainly knew a lot of details of people’s lives—some closely guarded. Plowing his hands through his hair, he looked toward the house. But was that really the same?
Especially when he had his own closely guarded secret he’d only shared with the Lord.
Chapter Nine
Two Saturdays later, Cody finished hammering in the last piece of vinyl siding and took a swig from his water bottle, then mopped his forehead and neck with a towel. “Now that I’m through, I’m finally getting the hang of hitting the nail instead of my thumb.”
Zane stepped back from the addition they’d built to hold classrooms at a church in a neighboring town. “I’m glad you could fill in for Gideon at the last minute. I didn’t want to postpone this mini-mission trip to Victory Christian Church. The kids needed it.”
“I needed this.” Cody joined Zane and surveyed the work the youth group had accomplished in the past four hours. After nine months the addition now stood where the old set of classrooms had been destroyed by Hurricane Naomi. The congregation had barely repaired their place of worship and had no funds for the rest of the construction. “I’ve been involved in a lot of disasters, but I’m usually wrapped up in helping the people pull themselves together—not the physical structures.”
“They can often go hand in hand.”
Cody scanned the smiling and laughing congregation assisting the Hope Community Church’s teenagers. “I agree.” In his head he’d known that, but seeing it in practice reinforced its impact.
“I didn’t know if Brady would participate much, but he seems to be getting into it. I’ve heard about your couple fishing trips with him.”
“From him?” Cody asked.
“No, from Kim who learned about them from Maggie.”
“Speaking of Maggie and Kim, when are they bringing lunch for all of us?”
“At any moment.”
“Good. I haven’t done this much physical work in a long time. I need fuel.”
The sound of tires crunching the gravel road that led to the church in the midst of a pine forest sliced the air.
Cody spied his sister in the car with Kim and Maggie. “Hannah didn’t mention she was coming out here.”
“Yeah, she asked me about it when I visited the hotel project in Biloxi. I told her she was welcome to come. That I was sure there would be some wiring to be done.”
When Hannah had first come to Hope, she’d told Cody everything that was going on in her life. Now he rarely saw her. She’d become involved in the shawl ministry at the church while learning to knit from Maggie. She’d gone out with some of her coworkers. About the only time he got to see her was when they happened to be working on the same project, especially now that she had bought a used car and didn’t even need him to drive her to work.
“Maybe I should check with you to see what my sister is up to.”
Zane cocked his head and stared at him. “That almost sounds like jealousy.”
“She’s not living with me, then all of a sudden she is. Now I never see her, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’s sharing the apartment or not.”
“She fits in great with the crew and their wives. I think the women have taken her under their wing since she’s expecting. And my secretary can’t wait until she comes to the main office to work with her. When you leave, you won’t have to worry about Hannah. She’ll be taken care of.”
“Yeah, that’s what Maggie tells me.” As he said her name, he searched her out in the group of teens mobbing the trio with the food.
Her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she handed a cooler to Brady then reached into the trunk for a box that she gave to another youth group member. Her son said something to her, and she laughed. The faint sound drifted on the light breeze and zinged him. He loved hearing her laughter and soft Southern drawl. She could be tough as nails then as sweet as the tea she served. Anyone who could teach Hannah to knit was gifted in his book. Just last night he’d seen the shawl his sister was working on. It wasn’t bad, which surprised him. Hannah usually wasn’t patient. But then he hadn’t been around her much for over three years. Maybe she’d changed more than he thought. What else had he missed in his only immediate family member’s life?
Maggie cupped her hands and shouted, “Hey, come help us.”
For a second he didn’t reali
ze she was referring to him until Zane nudged him. “We’re being summoned, and I’ve learned in my short married life not to ignore it.”
“It looks like you’ve taken to it.” Cody strode with Zane toward the Dodge loaded with food for the volunteers.
“Yep and I haven’t regretted one second of giving up my bachelorhood. You should give it a try some day.”
“Maybe one day when I’m your age.”
“Ouch. I’m only three years older than you.”
The same age as Maggie. She should be married. What was holding her back? They had talked about a lot of things but never that. And why did he want her married? When he began thinking about another man with her, his gut knotted. He couldn’t have it both ways. He wasn’t what she needed. She wanted to know everything about a person. He didn’t know how to do that because he’d stopped doing that a long time ago.
When Cody reached the Dodge, Maggie passed him a box of food. “Y’all have done a great job. We’re staying this afternoon to help, too.”
“I seem to recall you’re good at painting.”
“Myself? Or the wall?”
“Both.”
A bark sounded.
Cody peered into the backseat. “You brought Sadie?”
“Yeah. She was wondering where Brady was. The past couple of weeks y’all have taken her with you fishing. She’s used to being with Brady and doesn’t understand when he’s gone for long hours.”
“And you know this how?”
“You should see her. She sits by the door he leaves through and won’t move until he comes home. Well, at least, that’s what she did this morning.”
“So you concluded she was missing him?”
“That’s what happens when you care about someone and you don’t see them. You pine for them.”
More than you know. Until you force yourself not to get involved, to suppress those feelings. He clamped his teeth together and took the box to the picnic area under the large live oak with long, thick branches that encompassed a wide expanse. When he’d first come to Hope in November, he’d seen so many trees stripped of their leaves, not because of winter but the storm. It was nice to see them recover—like the town. Which meant his time in Hope was coming to an end.
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