Big Sky Reunion

Eyes widening and a lopsided smile creasing her cheeks, Martha said, “That would be so nice, dear, but are you sure you want to be stuck in a small town like Potter Creek? There isn’t much for young people to do here.”

Then why had Daniel stuck around?

“You remember, I was managing a knitting and needlework store until—” her voice broke and she struggled to keep a tremor from her lips “—until Jason got so sick.”

“That poor little boy. I was so sorry—”

“The shop built up a really nice clientele,” she hurried on, unwilling and unable to talk about her son. “Mostly women, of course, but quite a few young mothers. Even some teenagers. The classes were filled all of the time and we kept adding new ones.”

Moving her right arm awkwardly, Martha put the rubber ball in her lap. “Is that what you’d like to do with my shop?”

“After your hospital social worker called me about your discharge plan, I got to thinking about the shop and how much you’d taught me that summer I visited. I wouldn’t do anything with the shop without your approval.” She did need to keep busy, though. She couldn’t go on wallowing in self-pity and isolating herself from human contact as she had for the past six months.

Using her left hand, Martha lifted her right hand and brought them both to her chest. “Praise the Lord! I’ve been praying He’d give me a sign of what I should do. Now God has answered my prayer and sent you to me.”

Slanting her gaze to the worn and faded Oriental carpet on the floor, Melinda shook her head. “I don’t think I’m God’s answer to anything. But I do need to work, Aunt Martha.” Regret and grief nearly choking her, she lifted her head. “I’m broke. I had to declare bankruptcy last month.” Enormous medical bills had taken every dime she’d received after her husband’s death—a death benefit from the defense contractor who’d employed him as a civilian truck driver in Afghanistan. An IED had blown up under his vehicle. Even then, she’d still owed thousands of dollars for Jason’s care. She’d had no choice but to file for bankruptcy and start over again.

Alone.

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.”