Colt wasn’t supposed to be trusting the people around him to steer him right, he was supposed to be trusting God! If God wasn’t taking away the love in his heart for Jane and the twins, then maybe God was chasing him into the right field. It might be time to stop fighting it.
And as that thought settled into his heart, he suddenly realized what he needed to do. It might not make any difference whatsoever for Jane, but it changed a whole lot for him!
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.
God was a better cowboy than he was. Maybe, just maybe, Colt could get back to the house before Jane left...
Jane buckled Micha into the high chair next to her sister. The air-conditioned ice cream shop was a welcome respite from the heat outside. Peg had suggested the place—Creekside Creamery. She said that the ice cream here was best in America, made from fresh cream from local dairies, and Jane wouldn’t want to miss it.
With her emotions raw, Jane didn’t care if she ate ice cream or not, but she didn’t want her own heartache to affect the girls and she figured they could use a treat. Besides, shouldn’t they celebrate the inheritance just a little bit?
And if she had to be brutally honest with herself, perhaps there was a small part of her that wasn’t quite ready to leave Creekside. Perhaps there was another part of her that needed to soothe her broken heart, and chocolate ice cream had always been her first stop in years past. She might as well start there now.
Jane had two baby cups of ice cream in vanilla, and a medium cup of her own. She handed Micha and Suzie each a spoon. They could feed themselves now—they’d be covered from eyebrows to shoulders with ice cream, but that was half of the experience, wasn’t it?
Jane sat down opposite the girls and let out a long breath.
“Let’s say grace,” she said softly, folding her hands. “For this ice cream we are about to eat, make us truly grateful. Amen.”
Then she put the bowls in front of each girl. “Yum.”
They knew what ice cream was, and Jane guided their spoons a couple of times before they stuck their fingers into the cups and slurped them clean—the preferable way to eat ice cream, it seemed. Jane took a bite of her own, her heart weighing heavier in her chest.
It was better this way—leaving without another painful goodbye. She caught Micha’s cup just before the toddler threw it, and she scooped up some ice cream and popped it into the little girl’s mouth. Micha’s eyes lit up.
“Mmmm,” Jane said, and she took a bite of Micha’s ice cream, too. The vanilla was very, very good.
The girls wouldn’t remember this, but she would—all these times when they enjoyed something together. This was the groundwork for raising two well-adjusted, well-loved girls. She’d be here for them, and she wouldn’t be distracted with a demanding marriage. Her girls would never have reason to complain that she wasn’t there for them every step of the way.
Jane turned to Suzie and scooped some ice cream into her mouth too, and as she looked up she saw an older couple come into the shop. The man was on crutches and his face on one side was badly burned—so much so that Jane startled when she saw it. He wore an army hat, the kind veterans wore. She was about to look away when she noticed how the wife walked slowly beside him, pulling coins out of her change purse as they made their way to the counter. The man said something, and his wife looked up at him, her eyes sparkling.
Jane paused, watching them.
The wife—she was wearing a wedding ring—put her hand on his, and Jane saw that his hand was equally scarred as his face—three fingers missing. The older woman turned to the teenager working the register and gave an order, then she started counting out coins.
The order was two small cones, and when they had them she carried them to a booth in the back, and her husband hopped on his crutches next to her. When he sat down, the wife raised the first ice cream cone to his scarred lips and he took a bite.
“Good?” Jane heard her voice as it filtered over to where she sat. Then she took a bite of her own. “Mmmm. This is great, isn’t it?”
There was some quiet chitchat that Jane couldn’t make out, but watching as the wife tenderly feed her husband his ice cream, she felt tears rise in her eyes. This woman’s husband had made it back from the war, by the looks of things. Jane’s husband had not. Jane had received her husband’s remains and a folded flag. A thank-you for her husband’s sacrifice.
But what if Josh had come home? What if he’d made it back and she’d had the chance to spend more time with him, take care of him, get over those strange distances between them and find some closeness again?
What if she’d been able to go out for ice cream with Josh and her girls?
She would have been grateful for the chance at a life as a family. Even if it would have been hard. Even if Josh would have had his own personal torments she couldn’t fully understand.
The wife reached forward with a napkin and dabbed her husband’s lips. He said something, and his eyes softened. The wife’s low laugh
