Laura regarded her with compassion. “Few parents completely understand how fine the line is between supporting and loving their children unconditionally and giving them carte blanche to do whatever they want to do. I may not be a parent, but I struggle with discipline every single day in my classroom. I need my students to follow the rules, but I also want them to understand why those rules matter, to get that I’m not just being vindictive or arbitrary.”
Mariah nodded, her expression filled with sorrow and regret. “I don’t talk about this ever, because there’s no point, but maybe it will help you to understand just a little.” She drew in a deep breath, then said, “My father was an incredibly tough disciplinarian, at least that’s how he saw his actions. He used a belt to keep us kids in line.”
Laura winced as she heard the pain in Mariah’s voice.
“He said it was because he loved us,” Mariah said wryly, “but it was hard to believe that with welts on our backsides more often than not. I vowed I’d never be like that. I wanted Annabelle never to doubt for a single second that I loved her more than my own life.”
“You’ve proven that,” Laura assured her. “And you’re not the first parent to go to an opposite extreme from the way they were parented.”
“But I think it’s clear that leniency wasn’t the answer, either. You should hear the conversations Annabelle’s father and I have been having about that these past couple of weeks. He’d been warning me for a long time I was too easy on her, but I couldn’t see it.”
“Then perhaps this has been a wake-up call that will turn things around for all of you,” Laura said. “Maybe you could focus on being grateful that it came in time and before any real lasting harm came to Misty or, for that matter, to Annabelle.”
Mariah didn’t look entirely convinced, but at least the hostility that had been in the air when Laura arrived was gone.
“Thank you for coming by,” she said at last. “It took real courage and grace to do that. I’m not sure I’d have done the same.”
Laura smiled. “Who knows? You might have surprised yourself.”
At the door, she held out her hand, waited perhaps a beat too long until Mariah took it. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mariah.”
“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,” Mariah said. There was even a hint of real sincerity behind the words.
As Laura walked away, relief washed over her. This sad chapter, she hoped, was finally closed.
* * *
Thanksgiving morning in South Carolina didn’t always have the cool, crisp weather that Laura had grown up with in Iowa, but the skies were blue and the air balmy. She returned home from a church service and coffee hour to find J.C. pacing impatiently in front of her house.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Where do a lot of people usually go on Thanksgiving morning?” she retorted.
He winced. “Church. Of course.”
“Is there a reason you’re here so early? I thought you weren’t picking me up to go to Sullivan’s until two o’clock.”
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about before that,” he said, following her inside, where he continued to pace.
Laura regarded him with curiosity. “Is something wrong? You seem particularly agitated this morning.”
“I need coffee,” he said. “Do you have any coffee?”
“I can make some.”
He waved off the offer. “No, don’t bother. I’ll have water.”
He charged off to the kitchen. Laura let him go. He obviously needed time to compose himself, though she couldn’t imagine why.
When he came back into the living room, he sat down next to her on the sofa, then popped right back up.
“You and I,” he began, then stopped.
Laura had seen plenty of nervous kids in her classroom trying to work up the courage to do an oral report. It was usually best to nudge them along.
“Yes,” she said. “You and I…”
He shook his head as if she’d snapped him back from some faraway place. “I never thought I’d be doing this again,” he said, making absolutely no sense.
“Doing what?”
He looked her in the eyes, his expression charmingly bewildered. “Proposing.”
Laura couldn’t seem to keep her jaw from dropping. “That’s what you’re doing?”
He nodded. “Making a real mess of it so far, huh? You can’t even tell what I’m up to. How pitiful is that?”
Even though her heart was pounding and she was trying valiantly to keep from shouting yes, she managed to look him in the eye. “Is that what you really want to do, to propose?”
He nodded. “I never expected this. You, me. Falling in love.” He groaned. “I am so sorry. This is such a disaster. I should probably wait, start over another time. Take you out for a romantic dinner or something.” He frowned. “We’ve never even had a romantic dinner, not really. Why would you want to marry a man who hasn’t even courted you properly?” He raked his hand through his hair, leaving it charmingly rumpled. “What is wrong with me?”
She smiled. Beamed, in fact. “You’re doing just fine,” she assured him. “And, believe me, there is nothing wrong with you. I’ve tried to find something, just so I could protect my heart in case this went nowhere.” She shrugged. “But, sorry, J.C., no flaws. I haven’t found a one.”
“I could list them, you know, in the interest of fair disclosure and all that.”
She barely managed to contain a chuckle. “Or I could make it easy on you and just say yes.”
He blinked at that, took a step back, then came closer, his gaze narrowed. “Did you just say yes?”
“I did, unless you’ve changed your mind and decided not to ask, after all. You seem to be trying really hard to talk yourself out of it.”
“But I wanted to do the whole romantic, down-on-one-knee thing,” he protested.
She stood up and moved into his arms. “This was better. This was you being sweet and sincere and scared to death. Seems to me any sane person committing to forever ought to be scared to death.”
“But you did it without even
