Page 11

Chapter Seven

“ I t always helps when the kitchen is warm. In the winter, it’s harder to get your bread to rise, and you have to wait longer. Come summer, it’ll rise so fast it’ll practically fly out of the pan, and you’ll have to chase it across the kitchen floor.”

Claire laughed at her gram’s exaggeration.

There really wasn’t a whole lot to making bread, but somehow her grandma had a knack for making it better than anyone she knew, and she was hoping to learn it herself. Her grandma had agreed to teach her, and Claire had already had several not-so-good failures.

The bread tasted okay, but it didn’t have that light, sweet, yummy taste and soft texture that her gram’s bread had.

Grandma explained that it really had to do with kneading it, but Claire didn’t understand what she was doing differently than what her grandma did. She did everything her grandma told her to.

Grandma said it just took time.

“All right. I’m going to take my walk by the lake while this rises.”

“That’s good. I’ll do my devotions in my chair.”

They smiled at each other—a little change in their routine—as the bread lesson had taken a little extra time that morning.

Her kids were going to be sick of homemade bread by the time she was done, because they’d had it every night for supper for the last three nights.

And it hadn’t been fabulous. But she’d made garlic bread, and then grilled cheese sandwiches, and Grandma had made some kind of vegetable soup that had gone perfectly with it the third night.

They’d just have to figure out something to have with it tonight. But she’d think about that while she was walking.

She opened the door and came face-to-face with Josiah. How could she have forgotten about him? He’d been there all three days as well.

She was starting to get used to him. A little, anyway.

“Good morning,” he said from where he was on his knees in front of the flower beds in front of the house.

“Good morning. I don’t know why I forgot you were going to be here this morning,” she said, feeling silly for startling when she’d seen a man kneeling as she’d opened the door.

“You had a lot on your mind.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Making bread, mostly.

Because she didn’t want to think about any of the other hard things.

Including the fact that she knew exactly when school ended for the year, and she still hadn’t sent her husband the date.

Nor had she tried to figure out a route where they could find the best place for them to meet and exchange the kids.

It was the fact that she dreaded exchanging the kids and losing them for the entire summer that was making her reluctant, she was sure.

“What’s the matter? You look down today.”

Did she? She didn’t mean to. She brightened her expression and tried to put on a smile. “Sorry.” She finished walking out the door, closing it carefully behind her without allowing the screen door to slam.

“That’s fine. Don’t tell me.” He paused. “I was just talking to my mom last night, and her MS is getting worse.”

“I didn’t realize your mom had MS.”

“She was diagnosed when I was still in high school. But there’s been a big change in what docs are able to do since then.”

“I’m so sorry. That must be really hard to have something that you know you’re never going to get rid of.”

“She has such a great attitude. She hardly ever gets down. Not being able to do things, to serve people, is probably the hardest thing for her.”

“I remember her as always being a mom who volunteered to help in class.” That probably hadn’t helped make Josiah more likable in her eyes.

After all, when kids were in school, their goal was to avoid parents, right?

And if someone’s parents were in there all the time, especially if they acted like they liked their parents, as Josiah had seemed to, that kind of made him a pariah to the rest of the kids.

“Yeah. She loved that. I think she wished she would have had a whole pile more kids and become a teacher. That was just her jam—all those kids that needed help.”

“Her cookies were the best,” Claire said honestly. She still remembered Mrs. McMurtry’s cookies.

“She hasn’t made cookies in years. A lot of times, she doesn’t even cook a meal. Putting a sandwich together is too hard for her, although she was able to heat soup up for me the other day.”

“Wow. That must be really hard for you.”

“I’m just determined that I’m going to cherish every day with her.” He lifted his shoulder, leaning back on his haunches and putting his hands on his thighs. “There isn’t anything more you can do, especially with something like that.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s a good attitude. I suppose I was just thinking that sometimes things happen that we don’t like, and if we can’t change them, we have to learn to somehow accept them and live with them.

That’s what I was thinking about when I came out—the fact that my kids have to go back to Boston for the summer to be with their dad and I don’t want them to. ”

“Ouch.”

“I know. I’m supposed to let my husband know when the last day of school is so we can arrange a time to meet and exchange them. And then I’ll pick them up right before school starts. I wish I had a little bit of the summer to spend with them.”

“Why don’t you see if he’ll let you keep them for a week after they get out and bring them back a week before they go back? That way, you get two weeks, and he gets everything else.”

Claire stared at him. She had considered that.

She’d also thought about asking for a week in July or something, since he got all the holidays during school, but that would mean a two-day trip out and a two-day trip back, and that would be most of the week.

She’d figured the kids probably wouldn’t want to spend that much time driving unless she could have them longer.

Of course, she’d thought about flying, but that was expensive, and while the kids could fly by themselves, she didn’t really want to send them on a plane alone.

“I didn’t think about that. That makes me feel a little bit better.

Like we have a little bit of time to decompress and then to gear back up before school starts, instead of getting them and giving them away as soon as school’s out, and getting them the day before they have to go back.

I should ask about that.” She shook her head.

Maybe she was just so gloom and doom that her brain just couldn’t come up with solutions. “Thanks.” She tilted her head.

“I think I’ve been smelling a lot of fresh bread in the house lately. I’ll accept your thanks in the form of a warm slice or two with melting butter.” He gave her a grin and then leaned back over the flower beds, adjusting the border that had slipped and was crooked.

“I have to think about that,” she said, knowing that she would give him as much fresh homemade bread as he wanted.

“Are you going to be here for lunch?” He seemed to leave during lunchtime, and her grandma had said that he went home to eat with his mom a lot when he was around and close by and his dad wasn’t there.

“I will. Dad’s home, and he’ll be with Mom today. So I can skip lunch at home and eat fresh homemade bread with melted butter to my heart’s content.”

“All right. I just put dough back to rise, so unless I screwed up, you should have plenty of bread to eat to your heart’s content.”

He grinned at her but didn’t stop working. Just nodded his head.

She smiled and found herself still smiling after she had walked down the steps and started away from the house.

Why did she feel lighter than she had in a long time?

Was it just talking to Josiah? Or was it figuring out a solution to a problem that had been bothering her?

Or not dreading talking to her husband so much?

She was almost certain he would give her those two weeks, especially when she reminded him that he was getting Christmas break and Easter, and she would like to have the Fourth of July.

But instead of making the kids do an extra trip, she would just take the extra time at the end of the year and the extra time at the beginning .

It was a perfect compromise.

She found herself humming a bit as she went down the steep hill to the lakeshore.

Was she really that happy? Had the short time she’d been at her grandma’s house really changed her outlook that much?

She knew it had. She’d fallen into a routine, one that she loved.

Walking along the lake every morning, working on scraping the paint from the house after she got back, helping her grandma with anything that she needed, and spending time in the evening with her grandmother and kids in the living room, doing homework and reading books and doing family things.

Sure, she missed the idea of having a husband and a dad for her children in the home, but she did really love how things had worked out.

Maybe she wasn’t completely happy, but she’d definitely taken steps in the right direction.

As she started along the beach, she saw two horses in the distance. That had to be Becky and Rodney, people who had moved into Raspberry Ridge and gotten married since she’d moved away.

She’d talked to them a little bit, but today they just rode by, waving from the top of their big Clydesdales.

Apparently, they had carriage rides they rented out during the tourist season.

They had a presence down the beach and got most of their business from there.

But they were hopeful that Raspberry Ridge would start to see some of the overflow.

Claire wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about that.

On the one hand, eggs and home-baked bread might be nice things to sell to the tourists, but she also loved how quaint and quiet and almost unchanged Raspberry Ridge was from when she was younger.

Other than the healing garden, which was a definite asset, most of the town had stayed the same. Tourists would change all that.

But tourists would also give people business and keep them from needing to move out of town.

She looked up at the hill—just barely visible in the distance was the old Lakeside Inn. Maybe someone would even reopen it.

She could imagine how derelict it was, since it had looked old and run-down when she was a kid. Maybe someone would just bulldoze it down, and the idea of reopening it was a pipe dream.

For some reason, she thought about Josiah and her, how they were helping to fix up Grandma’s old farmhouse.

Maybe they could buy the inn and… Wait. Was she trying to think of things for her and Josiah to do together? What was wrong with her?

She pulled her earbuds out of her pocket and stuck them in her ears.

Normally she listened to her Bible while she walked, but she’d had so much on her mind, she’d started out without them.

She needed to empty her mind of all her worldly thoughts and cares and fill it with God’s word.

That had been the best start to her day she could have imagined.

Maybe that was the reason everything seemed to be shifting into a more positive mindset.