Page 10 of Courageous Devotions

“Mommy doesn’t have a banana right now,” she whispered, horrified at the thoughts rolling through her mind. Could she talk to Colton? Could she turn to him for help – at least for a day or two? And then she heard the loud exhaust on his truck start up as it began to roll forward.

“Yikes!” she hissed and ran to jump into her driver’s seat, quickly following the truck. “Oh, please still be you driving that piece of rusted hunk of metal…” she whispered openly, praying with everything in her.

The back glass of his sea green old pickup truck still had that American flag across the back and there was a Maltese cross sticker there, too, now. Surely, if he’d sold the truck, the new owner would have pulled that off unless he was a firefighter, too.

The truck turned down a residential road not far from the fire station in Ember Creek, and she hesitated to see one brake light illuminate – and fought back a nervous smile. That was so strangely ordinary in what felt like a nightmare to her right now. As he pulled up to an old house, she held her breath, waiting, and not a moment later, the door opened.

Colton.

Oh gosh, he hadn’t changed much at all. Same faded blue jeans and same worn-out old cowboy boots, but he was sporting a black T-shirt that said something boldly across the chest that she couldn’t read from here. She watched his arms flex as he pulled out a bag of things from the back of the truck and walked up to the front door. She hesitated as a horrifying thought hit her hard.

Was he married?

It had been almost four years, and he now lived in a home instead of an apartment. She’d moved into a bigger one-bedroom apartment because she knew the baby would be coming eventually and couldn’t afford a two-bedroom… but obviously, he’d moved too.

“Mamaaaaaa, I hungry… ‘nana? Hmm? ‘Nana, pweeese?”

Tearfully, she stared at the house and felt despair choke her. If the shoe was on the other foot and she was married to Colton – things would go badly if some woman came up to the front door with a child that looked just like her husband. That did not sit well. She couldn’t be the person to destroy his marriage, if he was married.

“Let’s go get you a banana and Mama needs her head examined,” she whispered, putting the car in reverse and glancing back at the cross streets, tucking that nugget away in her mind. Right now, she needed to feed Zane and figure out if she was actually going to bravely knock on his front door. Could she risking upsetting his world… or maybe something else would fall into her lap, solving all her problems.

She didn’t know what to do anymore.

* * *

Hours later, her phone was dead because her charging cords had been in her apartment, and she didn’t have one in her car. She also couldn’t call into work; she would need to drive there and that required gas. Her next shift was Friday, so she would talk to them then, but there wasn’t much more that could go wrong in her life – until now.

Drip.

“What the…”

Drip, drip, drip.

“Are you kidding me?”

“You tiddding me, wady?”

“Zane, don’t say that,” she chided – only to have three more drops fall directly on her forehead from her sunroof and one on her knee. “My sunroof is leaking now, and it’s raining? Seriously?”

“You tiddding me, wady!” Zane grumbled, saying exactly what she had always hollered in the car when she was driving. Yep, chip off the old block, except this blockhead was getting wet. It was water torture to try and fall asleep like this.

“Oh noes…” Zane suddenly hollered, causing her to look up as he pointed at the light on the ceiling of her Jetta, which was currently dripping, too. There was a steady stream coming out of the visor where it screwed into the headliner, dripping from the map light and dropping on her head. “I wet, mama.”

Yeah, this wasn’t going to work, she thought as a massive crack of lightning hit a light pole nearby, causing her to shriek as Zane flung himself at her across the center console, crying.

“Okay, Big Guy, I get it. Figure my stuff out, right?” she wept pitifully and had no idea where to go, what to do, except to ask Colton for help. “Get in your booster seat, Zane… okay?”

She started the car, put it in reverse, and started toward the street where he lived, praying the truck was still in the driveway, so she picked the right house. As she pulled onto the street, one wiper quit working on her windshield and she finally snapped.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” she wailed – and let out a manic laugh as Zane mimicked her immediately.

“You tiddding me, wady!”

She had found her breaking point.

Parked in front of Colton’s house, she was about to do something she had never imagined would ever happen in a million years. With nowhere to go, no money and no family, she was officially stuck and dangling at the end of a very flimsy rope. The drop from ‘okay’ to ‘on the streets’ was pathetically short. She had no clue exactly how small that drop was until yesterday. Her last vestibule of security had burned to the ground.

“Come here, Zane,” she whispered, trying to ignore the trembling in her voice and clung to her son, hoping she didn’t drop him or trip. If it was nice out, she’d let him walk beside her – but with the storm getting worse and her nerves only lasting so long— urgency was key.

---