Lucy cried harder, but we’d gone through this enough times by now that she did know the answer, “No!”
“But, Luce, does he still love us? Even though he’s way up in heaven?” My voice trembled and my tears mingled with hers. I hugged her tighter to me, needing her comfort as much as she needed mine.
“I don’t know,” she sniffled.
My chest ached as I rubbed her back and tried to force the words from my mouth, “He does, Lucy. He loves you so very much.”
“Then why did he leave?” she hiccupped.
“Oh, baby girl. He wanted to stay. So badly. But he got sick. And the doctor’s couldn’t make him better. He tried so very hard to stay with us. He did everything that he could.” Lucy cried harder as I rocked her gently.
Ben’s tall frame darkened the door. I didn’t look at him for a very long time. This had to be extremely awkward for him. He had just convinced me to date him and then he had to find me with one of my children, crying over my dead husband.
He walked over and sat at the end of the bed, jolting me out of my fear. He watched Lucy and me with a beautiful intensity. His furrowed brows and concerned frown tugged at my heart.
I had expected him to tell me that he was going to take off. I thought he would look at the two of us and be repulsed. If the child in my arms and the responsibility she represented wasn’t enough to scare him away, then it would have to be my tears. I was a wreck and I couldn’t make it stop or pretend like I had it together.
Yet, his hand squeezed my knee and settled there to offer some comfort. He didn’t run at the first sign of difficulty, he jumped in and held tight.
And somehow he managed to give me courage that I didn’t know I could find and he settled my spirit in a way I didn’t know was possible.
“Do you know that he loves you, Lucy?” I whispered to my little girl. “Do you know that he will always love you?” She nodded for the first time, sniffling and whimpering against my now-soaked t-shirt. “He loves you more than anything. He always will.”
“I miss him.” Her tiny voice was a broken whisper.
“I miss him, too.” Ben squeezed my knee again. I took a steadying breath and felt little pieces of my heart mend themselves back together. “But he’s still watching over us from heaven. He’ll never be far away. We just can’t see him anymore.”
Lucy wiggled in my arms until she lay cradled against me. She had gotten so big this year. Her legs dangled over the side of the bed, kicking a soothing rhythm. She reached up to play with some of my hair, wet from both of our tears.
“Is that why Ben is here?” Her words completely stunned me. My mind went blank. I tried to come up with some kind of explanation or excuse for why he’d walked into her bedroom late at night, but her next question proved that her thoughts were on a different track than mine. “Did Daddy send Ben to take care of us?”
My heart took on a frantic rhythm, pounding so loud I could barely hear my own voice when I answered, “Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Abby told me she’s the sun tonight?” My mom’s amusement rang clearly through the phone.
“I think it was her teacher’s idea of a joke. He cannot wait to get rid of her.”
“That cannot be true,” my mom tsked defensively. I loved her grandparent vision. But really… I was convinced that Mr. Hoya was counting down the minutes until he could officially be finished with Abby.
I had joined him. I couldn’t wait for the summer just around the corner. I could stop worrying about needing to get the kids to school on time and homework in the evenings. Our scheduled activities would all but disappear, except for a few fun leagues the kids wanted to play in with their friends.
I planned on using Ben’s pool as often as I could and actually getting a tan this summer. I had three months to cherish my children as they were until we started a new school year and they managed to grow up without me noticing. Summer always felt like a freeze frame. I could watch them closely and keep them near. When school started, it was a race to keep up with them.
And next year, Lucy would be starting kindergarten. Because obviously she had stopped loving me. Otherwise she wouldn’t go; she would stay home with me forever and not force me to watch her grow up.
“Sorry, Grandma; despite popular belief, Abigail is not a model student.”
My mom snickered on the other end, “I know better than that, don’t I?”
“You’ve got your grandparent goggles on again,” I laughed with her.
She paused for a moment, sucking in a fortifying breath. Finally, she said, “You sound happy, Lizbeth. You sound… okay.”
I stopped near the banister and gripped it so I wouldn’t tip over. She hadn’t said something like this to me since long before Grady died. She had known better.
But now her words rang out through the miles that separated us and I felt them inside of me, blooming with new life and a whole heart.
Was I happy? Somehow I was.
There were still bleak moments of darkness, moments I thought I could not survive. There were still tears shed and difficult decisions to make. There were still times when I failed… completely; when my children didn’t have what they needed or I didn’t manage to fulfill all of my responsibilities.
But this May was vastly, incomparably different than last May.
“I’m dating someone,” I whispered, afraid of her judgment.
I could feel her shock as if it were a physical thing. She didn’t say anything for a very long time and I started to worry that I should have dropped that bomb a little more delicately.
“You are?” she whispered back after another minute.
“I am.”
“The neighbor?” she guessed. “The snow shoveler?”
I smiled, “Yep, the snow shoveler.”