This was working. Somehow, despite the crazy hours, the logistical nightmare, the conflicts and confusion, they had managed to pull it off.
By 3:00 p.m. the Saturday of what would have been Layla Parker’s birthday, it was apparent the town’s first-ever Giving Hope Day was an overwhelming success.
Claire sat at a worktable outside the community center with her leg propped up on a crate and her hands deep in dirt, transplanting flowers donated by the nursery into containers.
They couldn’t have asked for better weather. Someone had definitely been smiling on them. It had rained on and off the previous week and she had been praying they could escape another storm. Much to her relief, only a few high, puffy clouds marred the vast blue perfection of the Colorado sky. The June afternoon was lovely, warm and sunny and beautiful, the mountains a brilliant, gorgeous, snow-topped green.
The scent of dirt and petunias and the sharp, sweet tang of pine mingled on the breeze. It smelled fresh and new and, corny as it sounded, rich with hope.
Vehicles had been coming and going all day from the community center, which had become command central. Even though she’d witnessed the endless stream of people all day, she still couldn’t believe the turnout. Everywhere she’d been today, the crowds had overwhelmed her. Seniors wielded paintbrushes alongside teenagers at the high school as they repainted the flaking old bleachers. Little kids carried tools and nails and water bottles for their parents as they worked to build a new playground on land donated by—surprise!—grouchy Harry Lange. Inside the community center, a dozen quilts at a time had been set up for gnarled hands to tie for the children’s hospital in Denver and Claire had even seen two sworn enemies, Frances Redmond and Evelyn Coletti, smile tentatively at each other as they snipped yarn.
She smiled at the memory, pulling out another plant start from the flat on the worktable. She rotated her shoulder, aching everywhere, but it was the kind of satisfied exhaustion she loved.
She couldn’t regret any of it, not the long hours of preparation, not the paperwork, not the sleepless nights of worry.
The day wasn’t over yet—the dinner and auction were still several hours away—but even without that, she thought maybe the goals of she and the others planning this day had been met. The people of Hope’s Crossing were talking to each other more, reaching out to neighbors, working together to lift and help those in need.
The Angel of Hope, whoever it might be, must be smiling right about now.
She picked up the trowel, savoring the feel of it in her unencumbered hand. Three days after her cast had been removed, she still felt strange without it. Although she was a long way from regaining full use of her arm, at least the skin had lost a little of that shriveled, puckered look.
She was setting in the last start of this container and packing down the dirt when a voice spoke behind her.
“This is a good thing you’ve done for Hope’s Crossing.”
Claire jerked her head around with a little cry of happiness.
“Katherine!” She instinctively reached to hug her friend, forgetting all about her grimy hands.
“Oh, dear,” she said when she pulled her hands away and saw the dirt streaks she left on the older woman’s pale peach sweater set. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Now you’re all dirty.”
“It will wash. Don’t worry. It was never one of my favorites.”
Claire gave a rueful smile, shaking her head. Katherine never changed. If someone burned down her house, she would probably claim she had been thinking about moving anyway.
“How wonderful to see you!” Claire exclaimed. “I never expected you to make it, with everything you have going on. How’s Taryn?”
Katherine’s normally graceful features looked haggard, the lines etched a little deeper. Her hair was a few weeks past needing a color and trim and Claire wished she could bustle her away right now to a hair salon for a quick pick-me-up.
“Things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped, to be frank,” Katherine said. “I guess we had some quixotic idea that once she finally started to come out of the coma a few weeks ago, things would quickly turn around.”
Claire and Alex had visited the hospital in Denver the day after that last devastating encounter with Riley two weeks earlier and both of them had been heartened to see Taryn’s eyes open, although the girl had still been largely unresponsive. She had wanted to visit again, but pinning down all the necessary details for this daylong event had sapped her time and her energy.
All that seemed unimportant now. She should have made the effort, figured out some way to make it happen. A visit would have been a much better pick-me-up than a hair color, especially if Katherine had been struggling with this discouragement on her own.
“I thought she was improving.”