“Your turn.”
She hesitated.
“You’ve got to learn sometime.”
She didn’t smile, though her eyes brightened a tiny bit. She unbuckled. They made the switch.
He pointed. “You see where my driveway is?”
She nodded.
“Drive down and turn in. That’s all you have to do.”
“Okay.” She shifted on the seat and gripped the wheel, resolve showing on her face. “I can do this.”
His driveway was only about a hundred yards away. The length of a football field.
He blew out a breath. “Nice and easy now.”
She put the truck in drive and crept down the road. At some point she would need to be able to drive the speed limit, but this probably wasn’t the best time to mention that.
They reached the halfway mark, and he pumped an invisible brake pedal with his foot when the truck started veering toward the ditch.
“Straighten out.”
She jerked the wheel.
He raised his hands in protest. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I’m a little tense.”
Unbelievable. No wonder he never let anyone drive his truck. His shoulders began to ache. And she thought she was tense.
“Almost there. You think you can make the turn?”
She set her lips in a determined line. “Yes.”
The driveway was ten feet away. He gripped his knees and pressed his back into the seat.
Rae screamed. The truck bumped over something. She slammed on the brakes, only it wasn’t the brakes. It was the gas.
The truck surged forward. She jerked the wheel.
Bang. Crunch.
The front wheels of George’s antique-car mailbox rolled down the street in a satisfyingly straight line as the post holding the box tipped to a forty-five-degree angle.
Rae yelped.
“Huh.” Gerrit rubbed his chin. He may no longer have need of a rooster. He weighed his options. “Put it in reverse and try again.”
“But . . . but . . . I ran over an animal or something. And hit a mailbox.”
He smirked. “Serves him right.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Daisy’s ears perked up at the sound of Hannie’s car pulling into the driveway.
Gerrit gave the dog a wry smile. “Good, your mother’s home. Now you can quit following me around.”
She wagged her tail. He quickly donned two floral oven mitts and pulled the lasagna from the oven with a flourish. His face fell. He’d been forced to guess at Hannie’s return time, which meant the lasagna had finished cooking about a half hour ago and had been warming ever since. And it showed.
The back door banged shut.
He set the pan in the middle of the table, wrinkling his nose at the overly crisp edges.
Hannie swept into the kitchen. “Hello.”
He nodded. “Hello.”
She eyed the table. “Lasagna?”
He nodded again. “If I would’ve known when you’d be back, I wouldn’t have overcooked it.”
She set her purse on the counter and gave him a solemn look as if he’d just announced he had six months to live.
He fidgeted. Cleared his throat. “I just meant if you would’ve given me a call . . .”
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, and his words faded away. He waited.
Uh-oh. There were those crow’s feet again.
Her eyes fixed on him. “You mean like all those times you let me know when you’d be home for dinner?”
He swallowed. There was no safe answer. He used to call her from the farm when he knew what his evening was going to be like. Sometimes. But when was the last time he’d done that? Ten years ago? Twelve? How had she ever known if he would be home for dinner?
He grunted. She hadn’t known. So she and the kids had gone about their lives without him. Never expecting. Never waiting. And then the kids had grown up, and Hannie had opened her shop and kept right on living without him.
Hannie sat down at the table. “I do appreciate your making dinner.”
He quickly filled her glass with water from the sink, his chest inflating. “I put a lot of work into this lasagna.”
Her mouth twitched. “I can see that.”
He joined her at the table and glanced at the two empty chairs, a nearly forgotten image filling his mind. He and Hannie and the kids holding hands around the table, praying. Thanking God for their food as Luke had taught them to do. It had been so easy to believe in God back then.
Hannie leaned her elbows on the table and gave him a sideways look. “I got an interesting text from Agatha about an hour ago.”
Oh, great. Gerrit hid a grimace as he scooped a medium-sized piece of lasagna onto her plate. There were no secrets around here.
“Apparently there was a hit-and-run on their mailbox.” Hannie picked up her fork and pointed it at him. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
He mumbled something about drivers being crazy these days and shoveled the biggest bite of pasta he could manage into his mouth. The tips of his ears began to burn. But Hannie didn’t need to know, and the mailbox would be easy to fix. After what George had taken from him back in the day—the nerve he’d had then—he could hardly complain now. Besides, it had been an accident.
He chewed harder, covering up his satisfaction. An accident that saved him the purchase of a rooster. Ha. What a day it had been. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much excitement.
The girl’s question from earlier sprang to his mind. About whether Hannie liked working at The Daisy Chain. He finished his bite and glanced at his wife, who was giving him a suspicious look.
“Did you have a good day at work?”
The faintest hint of a smile appeared. “It was good and bad. The good part was that even though I was shorthanded, we still had one of our biggest days since Valentine’s weekend.”
“Good.” He spoke around a lump in his throat. “That’s real good.”
He used to buy flowers for Hannie on Valentine’s Day. Luke had insisted. “Gotta treat your lady right,” he’d always say. Luke was probably the only reason Gerrit had managed to marry Hannie in the
