Dear Reader,
A while back, a dear friend of ours became ill and needed a kidney. Ed did everything he could, including putting a decal on the back of his truck to see if people would be willing to donate a kidney to him. While that decal attracted national attention, the source of his new kidney ended up being another dear friend who felt that giving a friend a chance at life was the right thing to do. No, they didn’t have a romance, as they are both happily married to other people, but Tara’s gift has always sat with me as an incredibly loving act. Our daughters have all been part of the same youth equestrian organization for years, and while we aren’t in a small town like Columbine Springs, our organization is like a family, and it’s always been touching to me to see how we care for one another.
While I did take some artistic liberties with the timeline and romance, it was important for me to share, at least in a very general way, the inspiration I found from watching my friends navigate this incredibly difficult time. I hope you will also find this kind of loving sacrifice inspiring, because there really are heroes out there willing to give the gift of life to another.
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May the blessings of the Lord be with you,
Danica Favorite
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A Mother’s Homecoming
by Lisa Carter
Chapter One
Maggie Arledge made it a point to never attend church on the second Sunday in May.
Yet here she stood on the sidewalk outside Truelove Community Church.
She’d spent the last three years trying to forget what had happened to her. And she’d been largely successful. Wrapping herself in a cocoon of numbness. Taking each day as it came. Staying too busy to dwell on the past.
Calling out greetings, friends surged around her. Like the river diverting around the boulder in its path before the water merged once more.
Her own personal boulder hadn’t proved as easily overcome. Life and love flowed around her. Leaving her feeling high and dry. Unable to find a way to rejoin the flow.
Last year, she’d made a lame excuse for missing church. But this year she traded toddler duty with her friend AnnaBeth before realizing she’d signed up for the second Sunday in May.
Normally, she loved working in the toddler room. But today was fraught with reminders of what she’d lost. Compounding the loss, after church she and her dad would go to the cemetery to put flowers on her mother’s grave.
During her childhood, she and her mom often had to attend church without her father. In a small-town police department, there was usually an emergency demanding the police chief’s attention. He used to joke that crime didn’t observe the Sabbath.
On the steps in front of the sanctuary, she spotted her dad talking to a tall, broad-shouldered man in a police uniform. He must be the town’s new police chief.
With the opening of the town’s new community center and her teaching schedule, she’d been too busy to pay much attention to the man hired to take her retiring father’s position.
Early thirties, she estimated. Three or four years older than her. He had short-cropped black hair. Beard stubble shadowed a strong jawline.
Waving, her dad beckoned her over. “Magpie, come meet Bridger, our new chief.”
The police chief’s head snapped around. She walked toward them. Smile lines crinkled out from the corners of his startlingly blue eyes.
“Miss Arledge,” he rasped in a gravelly voice.
And inside her chest, something altogether surprising fluttered like the barest flicker of a butterfly’s wings.
She slammed to a standstill. “I—I’m late for the nursery. Sorry.” Abruptly turning on her heel, she called over her shoulder, “N-nice to meet you.”
In her haste to be away, she raced into the building. What was it about him that had affected her so? When he’d glanced at her, the sensation she felt sent her into flight. Somehow threatening the carefully protective barriers she’d placed around herself.
She didn’t believe in love at first sight. Nor instant like, either. But she couldn’t deny the awareness—a kind of recognition—that pulsed between them.
Inside the doors, she stopped to catch her breath. Recalling her inglorious dash, she cringed. The new police chief probably thought her the rudest, strangest person he’d ever not quite met.
But she had needed to go inside. The other worker was probably up to her eyeballs in toddlers.
A woman wearing a red rose in remembrance of a living mother bustled past Maggie, urging her brood toward the elementary classrooms.
Her stomach knotted again. During the unsettling encounter with the new police chief, she’d somehow managed to shove the significance of the day to the back of her mind.
Since moving home, she’d reconnected with her childhood faith. Become a regular attendee. Just not on the second Sunday of May—Mother’s Day.
“You can do this,” she whispered.
She pushed off toward the toddler room. If she could get through today, she’d be home free for another eleven months.
Keep moving forward.
Her motto for the last three years. Not fixating on the event that changed her life forever. Not wallowing in the wrenching loss that changed her heart forever.
She rushed down the hallway. Disengaging the child lock on the half door, she slipped into the toy-strewn classroom.
A small girl concentrated on building a tower of blocks. A little boy pounded on the play workbench. She was thrilled to realize that the other worker was her close friend Callie.
Maggie stowed her purse in the cabinet underneath the sink. “Sorry I’m late.”
The very pregnant Callie McAbee smiled. “Just in time.”
With four-year-old Maisie, her husband’s child from his first marriage, this baby would make a sweet addition to their family.
Callie was a
