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Chapter Nine

G randma was on Claire’s mind the next week as she started her normal morning walk along the lake. As she stepped onto the path that took her down around the cliff, her phone buzzed, and she looked to see a text from her ex.

She wanted to slap herself. She’d talked to Josiah about adding an extra week after school and adding an extra week before school started, but she had totally forgotten to message her ex about it and see what he thought.

Now, this text did not sound happy.

Are you ignoring me? When does school end? Do we need to do this through the courts?

He was a lawyer, and part of the reason she really didn’t want to go through the courts was because he knew most of the judges. He knew the judge who would be handling their case, and she thought he might get special treatment.

He was so good at charming people, and that judge didn’t seem immune to his charms. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of the people he had cheated with. He really liked appearing before that judge.

He’d made no bones about that during their marriage, although it hadn’t been until the last year or so that Claire had realized what the reason for that might be.

She held her phone in her hand for a moment and thought about what she should say. She didn’t want to appear too conciliatory or like she was begging him to forgive her. But at the same time, it was an honest mistake.

She figured an apology wouldn’t show too much weakness, although Ted was very attuned to attacking a person at their weakest point. It was a lawyer thing, she was pretty sure.

She reprimanded herself. Just because Ted was a terrible person didn’t mean all lawyers were bad. Still, she knew she was going to have trouble believing that for a long time to come.

I’m sorry. I totally forgot. The last day of school is May 17.

I was wondering if you might be okay if the kids stayed with me for an extra week after school ends and came back a week before school begins?

I thought of doing this rather than having them over for the July 4th holiday in the middle of the summer.

That will save them the long, two-day trip from here to there.

It seemed fair, since you get them for all the holidays during the school year.

It was a lot to text, and Ted was likely to skim over and miss most of it, but at least in text, she had a record of actually saying something to him, where she could point to it and he could understand that it was his fault that he didn’t know rather than trying to blame her, as he always did.

She much preferred texting over phone calls because he could totally charm her and lay all the blame at her feet.

It was a while before he texted back, and she was down the beach, her face lifted to the wind, the Gospel of John being spoken in her ear.

That works for me. So we need to figure out a place to meet on May 24. Here’s where I thought:

Then he sent her a map with a pin drop somewhere in Pennsylvania.

She didn’t even look. Knowing him the way she did, he would have found the route, figured the total miles, and pinned the halfway point exactly. There probably wasn’t even a rest area there.

She messaged back,

Okay.

She could worry about where the closest exit was when they got to that point. Eventually things would work out, and they would have a place that they normally met, and things would go smoothly.

The thought depressed her. Years from now, she would still be moving her kids back and forth between Boston and Lake Michigan.

She didn’t want to think that this was going to go on for so long, but she knew it wasn’t going to get better.

Not unless one of them died—that would be the only way that they wouldn’t be doing this anymore.

Because she was never taking him back. Even if he apologized, which he honestly had, but he hadn’t meant it.

For a while, they’d tried to work it out with him saying that he wouldn’t do it again.

That was when he’d had the affair with the therapist.

After that, she’d figured that there was no point. Whatever he said was probably not going to be true. And she might as well accept that—the sooner she accepted that, the better off she’d be.

She was still thinking about that while listening to John when she noticed a couple she hadn’t seen before walking toward her, holding hands.

As they came closer, it seemed like the woman might be about the same age as she was, in her mid-thirties. The woman didn’t have the slender, reed-willow-thin figure of a teenager, and while the man looked athletic and strong, he didn’t put her in mind of an older person or a young man either .

She braced herself. They might be people she knew growing up.

Really, she didn’t want to see anyone, but there was one person she absolutely did not want to see. Grace.

She had ignored the few messages Grace had left on her phone and completely deleted the number so she wouldn’t be tempted to use it at any time.

The area code wasn’t from around here, so she’d assumed Grace must’ve been calling from wherever she’d moved.

Chicago? Cleveland? She wasn’t sure. Some big city, where Grace had ditched the rest of them, riding out with all the confidence and arrogance of youth.

Claire had felt the same way. But she hadn’t been quite as flamboyant as Grace had been in her exit.

But Grace was one of the people who knew what had happened, who had gone through the tragedy with her.

And then Claire had deliberately pushed Grace away with her accusations, and they hadn’t had a relationship since high school.

And that was really the way Claire wanted to keep it. She had zero desire to revisit the past.

Of course, the Lord was going to put the one person in her path that she didn’t want to see.

She knew it was Grace before they were closer than twenty feet. The sea-green eyes, the gorgeous, picture-perfect smile, along with the honey-brown hair that hadn’t changed at all.

Grace might have been a little bit heavier than she had been at eighteen, but she definitely wasn’t fat. She looked fit and trim and extremely happy to be holding onto the hand of… Could that be Trevor?

Great. Claire now had the perfect reason to not talk to them.

But she couldn’t quite manage to make herself continue putting one foot in front of the other when the couple stopped in front of her.

“Good morning. It’s a beautiful day for a walk,” Grace said, her eyes narrowing, but her voice not holding the familiar recognition that Claire assumed would be there if Grace had recognized her.

“Good morning,” Claire said, not adding anything at all to it, hoping that they would just start walking again .

“Claire?” Trevor said. She knew as soon as she heard his voice it was Trevor. She gritted her teeth.

“Yes. It’s me. I’m not sure who you two are, but I’d rather keep the past in the past if you don’t mind. Have a good day,” she said, and then she moved so she could go around them and continued on.

It was rude and unkind, and she could almost feel the two of them turning around and watching her go.

But she didn’t care. She didn’t want to talk to them.

Didn’t want to dredge up the tragedy, didn’t want to have to deal with the past. She had told Josiah that she couldn’t have her grandma get sick because she couldn’t handle it.

She definitely couldn’t handle anything popping up from her past. That was all safely buried, and she wanted it to stay that way.

“Claire!”

Claire heard Grace’s call, and her first instinct was to continue to walk.

Her feet stopped moving, although she didn’t turn around.

“I’d really like to talk to you. Please?”

She wanted to say no. She definitely didn’t want to meet with Grace of all people. She sighed and turned partway, but did not look directly at Grace. “Maybe sometime. Not right now, though. I’ve got to get back, and I need to get my walk in.”

She turned around before Grace could suggest that they walk together and started moving quickly.

It was interesting that at that moment, through the speakers, she heard a verse from John about love.

Okay, Lord, I hear You. But can I have a little bit of time to process?

To get used to the idea? Do I have to make a spur-of-the-moment decision right this second to meet with her?

Surely I’ll see her around again. Although maybe Grace was just visiting, and she wouldn’t see her around for another year or more.

And she was with Trevor.

She was still stewing about it, although it helped to have the Bible in her ear.

She knew she should be kind and was overreacting.

She should just be kind. It was that simple.

Sometimes simple was hard, though. And this was one of those times, where she knew what she needed to do— be kind.

Just like that. But actually doing it? Totally different story, and not easy at all.

Josiah was already working on the front porch when she walked up to the farmhouse.

Her grandma had said that she was going to sit in the chair and do her devotions, but the last three mornings she’d done that, she’d fallen asleep.

Claire didn’t want to go inside and wake her up. Plus, it was a beautiful day—warm and sunny and promised to be the perfect temperature, with a gentle lake breeze keeping the bugs at bay.

She happened to be scraping right along the corner end of the house, almost directly beside where Josiah was working.

She got into the lift, moved it into position, and picked up the torch.

“Have a nice walk?” Josiah said without stopping his work.

He was scraping and taking down the railing of the porch.

He was going to replace it with a new, more durable type of composite material that would look natural but would last forever, according to the salesperson anyway. Her grandma wanted to try it.