Page 8 of Wish You Faith (Christmas Sweethearts #1)

CHAPTER FOUR

M om made the best chili. Ground beef with two types of beans. To keep it warm, she put it in a slow cooker. Everyone at the Christmastown Tree Farm had tasted Sonya Hamilton’s famous chili.

Mom enjoyed cooking for others, and did not let arthritis in her hands stop her. There she was now in the break room, dishing out seconds to hungry employees and chatting with them about their families.

“Have more! All you can eat!” Mom went around the room, making sure everyone had their fill.

“If you run out?” one of the employees asked.

“Then I’ll come back tomorrow with another pot.”

Mom watched the tree farm employees like they were children. Rosie knew that Mom had wished for more kids of her own. By the sovereign providence of God, she had only given birth to Rosie. Mom was forty-five years old then, and it was a difficult pregnancy.

Standing at the door and recording the break room scene on her iPhone, Rosie couldn’t imagine life without Mom. The break room wouldn’t be as warm as today, with Mom’s easy laughter filling the space.

Tears pooled in Rosie’s eyes. The phone shook in her hand.

She had to stop recording and step back before Mom saw her. She retreated down the hall and burst into tears as she approached the women’s restroom to hide.

“Are you okay?” Evan’s voice.

She waved him away without looking at whether it was really Evan or not.

In the women’s bathroom, she cried into a wad of paper towels to muffle her sobs.

Maybe she feared needlessly. Mom’s life was in God’s hands. If her cancer returned and God took her home, she would be finally free from pain. Jesus Christ would welcome Mom to heaven. God would wipe away her tears, as promised in Revelation 21:4.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Rosie had wanted to quit her job and stay with Mom until her dying day, but Mom had talked her out of it. Not only was her Christmastown work the sole income for both of them, but Rosie would drive everyone nuts if she stayed at home and hovered over Mom day and night.

Mom knew that Rosie had to keep working. Work had been Mom’s way to distract herself from missing Dad. If she hadn’t been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Mom would’ve kept working as a librarian well into her late seventies.

Like mother, like daughter.

The more Rosie worked, the less she worried about the days to come when she’d be going home to an empty house—Mom and Dad both gone.

Ironically, Rosie had been working so hard lately—thanks to the Christmas season—that she’d missed seeing Mom before she went to bed at night.

A few times a week when she wasn’t at the SSLR community center, Mom would either carpool with Rosie or take an Uber to the tree farm so that she could volunteer doing some light work.

Lorenzo had set up a hammock in the greenhouse for Mom to take a nap if she wanted to. After lunch, Rosie would drive her home fifteen minutes away.

Suddenly realizing it was almost after lunch, Rosie splashed water on her face and patted it dry. She checked her eyes in the mirror. Not too red.

She rushed out of the restroom, and stopped when she saw Evan standing there.

“You okay?” His voice was almost a whisper, as though he was keeping a secret for her.

She barely nodded, trying not to cry again. Sometimes she was moody once a month, but that wasn’t it today. Today she was simply sad that Mom was dying before her very eyes. She wanted to spend more time with her, but she had to work. It wasn’t a job that she could telecommute to.

Thankfully, Amy allowed Mom to hang out with them as a volunteer.

Rosie switched gears to work mode. “The truck all loaded up?”

“Yes, it is. I’m eating lunch now and then off we go to SSLR.”

Every year in the first week of December, Christmastown sent a crew to decorate the Savannah Senior Living Resort.

Although Savannah was in their name, the retirement community was located on Tybee Island.

So popular was SSLR that not everyone who wanted to live there could.

Mom had been on the waiting list for three years.

Rosie walked with him to the break room. “Mom’s chili is contest-ready. Have you tried some?”

“Not yet. You eating now?”

She nodded.

“Rosie!” Mom pointed to a vacant seat near her slow cooker.

Rosie went straight to Mom and hugged her. “I love you so much, Mom.”

“I love you too, sweetie. Now go wash your hands before you eat.”

Rosie already had in the restroom down the hallway, but she went to the kitchen sink anyway. Evan squirted soap on her open palms, and they washed their hands side by side at the stainless steel kitchen sink.

Evan was wise enough not to ask her why she’d been crying. Rosie didn’t want to talk about it in front of Mom. They each got a bowl of hot chili, with extra shredded cheese for Evan and no cheese for Rosie.

“Why don’t I go home with you this afternoon?” Rosie asked Mom. “I can take the afternoon off.”

“Are you slacking off work?” Mom scolded her.

“No, ma’am. She’s the hardest worker among us all.” Lorenzo stepped into the break room.

Turning to Evan, who had sat down across the table, Rosie said, “Mom thinks that if I take time off, she’d have to spend time with me and she can’t watch her regular TV shows.”

“Oh, we’ll bore each other to bits, and then she’ll have bad memories of me after I’m gone.” Mom laughed.

“Can you believe that logic?” Rosie sighed, then bowed her head to pray blessings for her food. She also prayed that God would extend Mom’s life, if at all possible. But she ended that request with, “Thy will be done, Lord.”

When she looked up, Evan was still praying with his head bowed.

Rosie stared at his wavy hair for a while, then saw Mom’s sly smile.

“I’m going to take a nap in my special hammock.” Mom winked as she waltzed out of the break room.

Mom had clearly lost some weight, but otherwise, she was still mobile without having to use a cane or a walker. The cancer was in her breast, so it wasn’t visible to the general public.

Discovering the Stage 4 cancer late had been an eyeopener, but Mom’s refusal to go back to the hospital any longer except for outpatient checkups made Rosie upset. What if the cancer returned in the worst possible way? Mom told her to trust God. What about medical advances? Mom wouldn’t budge.

Stubborn Mom had made her final decision, and there was nothing Rosie could do about it.

When Rosie turned back to her bowl of chili, she noticed that Evan was grinning ear to ear.

“What?” she asked.

“Your mom winked at me.”

“She did not.” Rosie’s jaw dropped.

“She did too.”

“When?” Rosie was embarrassed on her mother’s behalf.

“After we washed our hands and sat down. She was standing beside you and looking right at me.”

“Oh.”

“No worries. She’s cute.”

“My mom? Cute?” Rosie chuckled. “I guess you’ve never seen her competitive side.”

“She’s tiny. Looks harmless. How tall is she?”

“Five feet flat. She used to wear platform heels, even at the library, but not anymore.”

“Library?”

Rosie nodded. “Mom was a librarian for many years.”

“Five feet tall, huh?” Evan said in between eating chili. “You must’ve taken after your dad. How tall was he?”

“Six two. I have his tall genes, even though I’m really only five eight, but I have Mom’s traits,” Rosie explained. “She and I make quick decisions—except when we disagree with each other.”

“I know how that is.”

“How what is?”

“Disagreements with Mom.” Evan sighed. “Sometimes I wish she’d understand me more than criticize me.”

“That means she cares.”

“Oh? When I have a bad day at work and all I want is a hug, I go to Mom’s house for dinner, and she rails at me for not being as smart as Connor.”

“Connor?” Rosie finished her bowl and didn’t want any seconds.

“My older brother. Perfect GPA. Wharton MBA. Perfect wife. Perfect everything.”

“You know you’re exaggerating,” Rosie said quietly. “You used the word ‘perfect’ that can only be applied to God.”

Evan didn’t say anything.

“So your brother went to Penn.” The University of Pennsylvania was quite far away from Seattle. “Why not go somewhere in Washington or in the neighboring states?”

“He wanted to go to Stanford, where his wife went. He didn’t make it, though. So he applied to Penn, got in, and then she transferred. She was a year ahead of him, but they’re the same age.”

“You went to Vanderbilt. Did you try for Ivy League schools like your brother?” Rosie recalled their conversation at the masked ball about Vanderbilt, but she hadn’t asked about any other colleges he might have applied to.

“I avoided going anywhere near Connor.” Evan laughed. “I knew Mom would show up to see him, and I really wanted to avoid Mom.”

Rosie was surprised at Evan’s candor.

“I only applied to Vanderbilt and UCLA. Got in both, and picked Vanderbilt because it’s in landlocked Nashville, and Mom had no reason to go there.”

Rosie felt sorry for Evan. She said a quick prayer for him in her heart. Unless there was something irreconcilable, she hoped that Evan could learn to honor his mother—even from far away. However, at this juncture, it seemed that they had a fractured relationship.

“What about you? Why UGA?” Evan asked.

“Oh, you remembered that I went to UGA.”

“You told me at the masked ball.”

“I’m impressed at your memory.”

“And I, you. You recalled that I went to Vanderbilt.”

“Seems like we don’t need too much time to get to know each other since we remember a lot.

” Rosie smiled. “To answer your question, I went to UGA because that’s far enough away from Mom.

I couldn’t wait to get home to Savannah every chance I could—more so in my senior year after Dad died.

I drove eight hours round trip multiple times a year, and didn’t go to summer school. ”

“That’s nice of you to spend time with your mom,” Evan said. “She seems easy to get along with.”

“She is friendly to everyone, including strangers.”