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Chapter 4

Realizing and showing your partner how important they are to you. - Teresa, California

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DWIGHT WANTED TO ASKOrchid why she couldn’t appreciate him, but even more than that, he just wanted to leave.

“Let me walk you to your door.” The night was chilly, the wind even colder, and there were clouds skittering across the sky, blocking out the moon, casting shadows, making the deep night even blacker.

She nodded, and they walked up the walk side by side. They just said goodbye at the door and nothing else.

He didn’t want to go to Bryce’s house. He hardly thought Bryce would be waiting up to talk to him, but just in case, he didn’t want to take that chance. He didn’t feel like talking.

So he drove the short distance back into Sweet Water and parked along the street.

Leaving the key in his truck, he got out, unsure of what he was doing. All the shops were dark. There were no lights in any of the windows and no movement on the sidewalk or streets. Not even a TV blinked giving a sign that there might be human life awake at this hour.

Sweet Water might as well be a ghost town, and it was barely midnight.

Lord? What did I do wrong?

He hadn’t always been a praying man. In his younger days, he’d been pretty cocky and sure of himself, feeling like his success was due to everything he had done rather than something he had faith in. And it was certainly true that he had worked hard for everything good that had happened to him.

But it was also true that he wasn’t any more talented, hadn’t worked any harder, hadn’t done anything different than a lot of other men he played with.

God had blessed him.

The older he got, the more he saw it. The more he tried to appreciate it. The more he tried to talk to God about things instead of just doing everything his own way.

He supposed that’s what he had done with Orchid. He chased after her without checking with God first.

But he felt at peace when he thought about her. He didn’t think he was going in the wrong direction. Maybe he was just going about it the wrong way.

How can I know? What do I do?

He found a bench and sat. He didn’t know for how long, his head down, his forearms resting on his knees. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, he just needed to know what direction his hard work should take.

“I thought I saw someone out here,” a voice said beside his ear.

He looked up to see a dark figure, not very tall, wrapped in what looked like a billowing cape.

“Miss Charlene?” he said, recognizing the voice but unable to make out her features or anything other than the dark material fluttering around her.

“That’s right. My house is just down yonder. I happened to be up; I couldn’t sleep. Something was nagging at me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I looked out the window and saw a figure sitting here. Now, that I’m here and see it’s you, I think I might know what had been bothering me.” She adjusted her walker until she was standing beside him at the bench. “Is it okay if I sit down?”

“I hate to keep you out in the cold.”

“We can walk to the church. It’s not far, and it would give us a sanctuary from the wind.”

“Can you make it that far?”