Page 26

Chapter Twenty

“ A ll right, bring a jacket because sometimes down by the lake the wind really makes things cool.”

“Yes, Mom,” Lana said with what sounded like an eye roll, although she didn’t actually do it. She knew she would be in trouble for being disrespectful to her mom or for doing that.

Claire sent up a silent prayer, asking the Lord for help and also asking Him to help her not dread the coming years.

If this was just a taste of what the teenage years were going to be like, she wanted to bail out now.

Except she didn’t. They were her children, and she was grateful for every second she got to spend with them.

Which was why they were taking a carriage ride and going kite flying this afternoon.

“Is everything you packed in here?” Josiah came to the door, holding up the picnic basket she’d carefully packed that morning.

It was one of the things she’d found in one of the spare rooms at her grandma’s house.

She hadn’t gone through everything, but she’d just stood in a couple of doorways, looking and thinking and remembering the good times.

The picnic basket had caught her eye, and she’d thought, why not use it?

So many times, things like this got stuck in a closet somewhere and never got pulled out .

“Yes. Everything except the blanket, which I see you are carrying.” She pointed to his other arm.

Josiah had been amazing. Everything that she needed.

The kind of man that she really wanted standing beside her.

Unlike her ex, who was never there when she needed him, who was always working late or blaming her for whatever went wrong.

She couldn’t even imagine trying to go through something this difficult with him.

He would just bury himself in work or in affairs or whatever he did and pretend to be a good dad, putting on a show anytime people from the outside world would be looking on, but when it came right down to it, she wouldn’t have had the support that she desperately needed.

That Josiah had provided.

But how did she tell him? She knew her feelings for him were deepening into something that she thought could be a relationship, but how did she tell him?

How did she go from nothing to having him know that she wanted to…

be with him? Have a romantic relationship?

Spend the rest of her life with him? It seemed a little much.

He nodded his head at her and walked out the door, leaving her with no more answers than she’d had before. She did have a date with Grace later today. They were going to go to the café in Strawberry Sands and eat together and chat.

Claire was hoping that they would talk about the tragedy, just get it out in the open so that she could quit avoiding it in her mind.

To know that Grace didn’t blame her for anything, and that the way she remembered it—that it was a total and complete accident—was the way that Grace remembered it as well.

If there was any responsibility she needed to shoulder, she wanted to do that as well.

This seemed like a good time in her life to clean up things and make a new beginning.

She supposed every ending automatically meant a new beginning.

And she wanted to do this one right. She’d messed up so many of her other new beginnings—she didn’t want to mess this one up.

And that it was going to include Josiah, if he would allow it, was a given.

She just needed to talk to him too. Maybe she should ask him out on a date.

The idea made her stomach quiver and lurch, and she decided that perhaps she could wait until her children were gone .

Yesterday they had gone swimming, even though it had really been too cold. They’d also worked a little in the flower beds. She hadn’t forced her kids to do it, but she’d talked a little bit about what her grandma had done, and Lana especially had seemed interested.

Of course, they were still taking care of the chickens, and they’d cleaned out the chicken coop, putting fresh new straw in the boxes and putting the manure in a pile beside where her grandma had always had her garden.

It had gotten smaller and smaller over the years, but Claire had plans for this year.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the masterpiece that she remembered it being in her childhood, but…

Maybe it would produce something, and growing vegetables would make her feel like she’d accomplished a little.

Just like a loaf of bread, no matter how much worse than her gram’s, made her feel accomplished as well.

“Come on, Dan. You have your coat?”

He held up the coat that he held in his other hand. She nodded and then was surprised when he went and put an arm around her, holding her close. She wrapped her arms around him and just hugged him without saying anything.

“I love you, Mom,” he said. He was still ten years old—such a perfect age.

She loved it. It was before the teenage years, but after the bumbling incompetence of childhood.

It was the perfect age, in her opinion. Maybe eight to ten.

Seven to eleven, something like that. And both her kids were almost completely out of it.

The thought made her sad for a moment, but she pushed that feeling aside. She could be sad later. Today, she had a carriage ride to take and kites to fly.

She grabbed the backpack that she’d put on the porch along with the duffel bag that held all their kite paraphernalia.

“I love you too, Dan. You’ve been awesome. Are you ready to fly kites?”

“I don’t ever remember flying kites before.”

Even though in Boston they were close to the ocean, it just wasn’t the same.

To get to the beach, to get to the harbor, they had to go through town, and it took forever.

And…she just never took the time. Because it wasn’t like they could do much when they were there.

They had to get out of town in order to find a beach that worked.

Th ey had done that some in the summer but not nearly like she’d wanted. And they were crowded.

There was just something wild and free and beckoning about the shores of Lake Michigan.

“If you let me have those, I’ll throw them in the back,” Josiah said, coming back for the duffel and the backpack she carried.

“I think it’s up to you—you’re going to want me to let you do all the work, and I’m going to be completely worthless.”

“You’re definitely not completely worthless.

You are the spirit behind everything. Let me be the workforce.

” He grinned at her, and she found herself grinning back.

A silly, romantic grin, the kind that she might have given a boy in junior high or high school.

Not the kind that she should be handing out as a thirty-something-year-old woman, a divorcee with two children.

A lot of worldly experience under her belt.

But Josiah made her feel like that high school girl, made her burdens feel not as heavy as what she imagined them to be, and made life seem like it could be fun and free and not as serious and careworn as what she always wanted to make it.

She wanted to be with someone like that. Someone who helped her be better.

They turned and walked together off the porch. The kids were already in the back of the truck, and she walked around to her side while Josiah put the duffel and the backpack in the back, along with the picnic basket and the cooler that held their drinks.

She anticipated a really nice day.

And she wasn’t wrong. Rodney and Becky were awesome.

They had the carriage but not hooked up, and her children watched with fascination as they showed how they cared for the horses before they hooked them up, picked their feet, and explained what they were doing as they got the carriage and all the straps and harness attached.

Claire found herself watching with fascination as well. She’d never seen anything like it. And the carriage ride was fantastic. There was just something about being pulled along by the strength of magnificent horses that lent a magical feel to the entire day.

Rodney and Becky were charming and sweet, but not overbearing, and at times, the four of them sat in the back laughing over something or pointing out ships on the horizon or interesting waves—just all the things that people saw when they were by the lake and with their family and people they loved.

Claire couldn’t shake the feeling that she wished that this was her family.

She wished she hadn’t messed up so badly.

But maybe she’d needed the mistakes in order to become who she was.

Maybe without the mistakes, this day wouldn’t be so bright, so beautiful, so perfect.

She wouldn’t understand or appreciate perfection without having gone through the pain and agony of imperfection.

The thought settled her and gave her a calmness and a rightness.

And she stopped wishing that she had done things differently.

Although she probably always would have that desire, she knew that God had allowed her to go down the path she was on for a specific reason, and if the timing had been different, it wouldn’t have been right.

Once Rodney and Becky had taken them back to the stable and unhitched the carriage, inviting them in for a snack which they declined, they got back in the truck and headed down the beach a bit, to a deserted spot that was wide enough for them to fly kites comfortably.

Josiah showed them how to put their kites together, and they all worked at them.

She could just imagine that Ted would have hired someone to put the kites together.

She was surprised by the thought and then pushed it out of her head completely.

She didn’t want to spoil the day by thinking about Ted.

He was gone. Part of her past. A part of it, but still in the past.