Big Sky Reunion. Charlotte Carter
Desperately trying to stitch her life back together again.
“I’m so sorry, Mindy. If I’d known…”
She tried to shrug off her aunt’s sympathy, but it felt like ice picks were being jammed into her spine one after the other, cutting off the messages from her brain to her muscles. The pain paralyzed her.
“Of course you can run the shop, dear. I won’t be of much help, but I’m sure you have some wonderful ideas.”
The tension drained from her shoulders. The tightness she’d been holding in eased and her facial muscles relaxed.
She had a job and a task that was so daunting she wouldn’t be able to think of the past. Maybe she’d even be able to sleep at night without the dreams that had haunted her for the past three years.
One problem remained. Now that she was going to stay, what was she going to do about Daniel and the feelings she had for him that had never quite gone away?
Foolish feelings she should have discarded when she put on Joe’s wedding ring.
After dinner, Melinda decided to finish her unpacking. She’d brought only two suitcases with her. Her few other possessions she’d stored with a friend to be shipped later—if she decided to stay in Potter Creek.
She’d stayed in Aunt Martha’s guest room ten years ago, the narrow twin bed and varnished pine bedside table and matching dresser familiar to her.
Shaking out her clothes, she hung them in the small walk-in closet: casual blouses and slacks, the ubiquitous jeans that was the uniform in small Montana towns. A few pairs of shorts and tank tops for the scorching days of summer.
At the bottom of the suitcase she found her Bible. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she held it for a moment and rubbed her fingertip over the faux-leather cover. For years she’d read the Bible or a book of daily devotions every morning. And she’d prayed.
But no longer.
Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision. Her chin quivered. The bitter taste of failure, of God’s censure, filled her throat. He would never forgive her. Nor could she forgive herself.
She opened the drawer in the bedside table and tossed the Bible inside where it would be out of sight, no longer a reminder of lost hope.
As the Bible landed with a thump, the cover flew open. A snapshot slid out.
She covered her mouth with her hand to prevent a sob. Jason. Two years old. A towhead with a beatific smile, wearing his swimsuit, running through the sprinklers on a hot afternoon. A perfect child. As smart and quick as an Olympic athlete and just learning to talk. She could still hear him calling her.
“Mommy! Mommy! Watch me! Watch me!”
Tears rolled down Melinda’s cheeks unabated. In three short years he’d gone from that beautiful child to little more than skin and bones, racked with pain with every breath he took, unable to walk or talk.
A sense of panic, of not being able to breathe, started like a coiling snake in her midsection. Twisting and turning and spinning, a tornado of blackness rose into her throat. Her head threatened to explode. Muscles and bones lacked strength and began to crumble. She was falling, falling…
Brain tumor. No hope. Vegetative state.
“I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry.” She slid off the bed onto the floor and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
A counselor had told Melinda she’d effectively been in a war zone for three full years struggling to save her child. She was suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Knowing hadn’t changed a thing.
God hadn’t saved her baby boy.
The following morning, Aunt Martha insisted they go to church.
Melinda tried to talk her out of it. “You’re not strong enough yet.”
“Nonsense, child. I can sit in church as well as I can sit at home. And I need to thank the good Lord for saving my life and bringing you to stay with me.”
Clearly she could do her thanking right here in the living room, but it was impossible to argue with Aunt Martha.
No matter that she was sweet and syrupy and full of lopsided smiles, she wasn’t about to give an inch.
No matter that Melinda didn’t belong in any church.
So, with her teeth clamped tightly together and her jaw aching, Melinda wheeled her aunt out to her fifteen-year-old Buick sedan, helped her into the car and drove her to church.
And, of course, she couldn’t simply drop her aunt off and come back in an hour, although that’s exactly what Melinda would have preferred. Instead she had to help her into her wheelchair and push her up the walkway to the double-door entrance of Potter Creek Community Church.
The whitewashed structure wasn’t the largest church in town, but it did have the tallest steeple. Today, instead of beckoning her inside, it seemed to cast a shadow over Melinda that said she wasn’t welcome. She kept her head down and her arms close to her body as she pushed her aunt into the cool interior.
“Morning, Aunt Martha,” a familiar masculine voice said. “Glad you’re back home and out on the town.”
Melinda stopped stark still and her head snapped up. Daniel O’Brien? At church? Dressed in a fine-cotton Western-style shirt and slacks? Greeting folks as they arrived?
She blinked and shook her head. She must be hallucinating. The Daniel O’Brien she remembered wouldn’t have been caught dead in church on Sunday morning or any other time.
A smile curved his lips and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Good to see you, too, Mindy.” His dark brows lifted ever so slightly as he handed Aunt Martha and Melinda each a program for the morning service.
Melinda wanted to take it and run. Instead she gave him a curt nod and pushed her aunt past Daniel as quickly as she could. They didn’t get far. Several of Martha’s longtime friends spotted her. They gathered around, most of them as gray-haired as her aunt, welcoming her back home. A few looked vaguely familiar to Melinda, but she couldn’t recall their names.
“We’ve been so worried about you.”
“The prayer circle has been praying for you.”
“Isn’t it nice your niece could come stay with you for a bit.”
Melinda forced a smile that instantly froze on her face. She was annoyingly aware of Daniel standing no more than five feet behind her. In his deep baritone voice, he greeted new arrivals, all of whom he knew by name. They responded with the same warmth of friendship that he had extended.
She felt like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole and discovering Daniel was the king of hearts.
Where had his wild side gone? The risk taker who drove a hundred miles per hour down the highway. The fighter who’d landed in the town jail more than once. The daredevil who raced a train to the crossing—and won. Barely. Leaving her breathless that they had escaped death and releasing her own wild side that she’d never known lurked somewhere inside her.
Did his new persona merely mask the man who had kissed her so thoroughly and wanted more? He would have gotten it, too, if Aunt Martha hadn’t returned home earlier than expected.
Heat flamed Melinda’s face as she remembered that memorable August evening ten years ago. She’d left town the next day right after an older girl, DeeDee Pickens, had flaunted the ring Daniel had given her.
“Hope you know you don’t stand a chance with my Danny boy,” DeeDee had crowed.
Melinda parked Martha’s chair at the end of a pew near the back of the church and slipped past her to take a seat.
Reverend Arthur Redmond,