Page 49 of Over the Verdant Hills
He nodded, not knowing what words to say, not trusting himself to not say something that he shouldn’t. She’d just had a really hard thing happen, along with an exceptionally difficult year. This wasn’t the time for him to tell her that he thought he was falling in love with her and ask her to consider what that might mean for her.
He wasn’t even sure what he wanted. Except maybe he wanted her to admit that she was falling for him as well.
As she stepped back, he pushed away from the counter where he was leaning and pulled the rag back out of his pocket, wiping his hands, because he needed something to do with them.
“I’ll be back this evening. Call me or text me if you need me, okay? Anytime, about anything.”
“Okay. And thank you. It’s good to know that if I need you, you’re there.”
He nodded, and then, as much as he didn’t want to, he left the kitchen and drove away. He wanted to stay there with her. He wanted that to be his right—where they walked through this together, all the way. But that wasn’t his position right now, and he had to be okay with that. Still, a man could dream.
Chapter Twenty
“All right, bring a jacket because sometimes down by the lake the wind really makes things cool.”
“Yes, Mom,” Lana said with what sounded like an eye roll, although she didn’t actually do it. She knew she would be in trouble for being disrespectful to her mom or for doing that.
Claire sent up a silent prayer, asking the Lord for help and also asking Him to help her not dread the coming years. If this was just a taste of what the teenage years were going to be like, she wanted to bail out now. Except she didn’t. They were her children, and she was grateful for every second she got to spend with them. Which was why they were taking a carriage ride and going kite flying this afternoon.
“Is everything you packed in here?” Josiah came to the door, holding up the picnic basket she’d carefully packed that morning. It was one of the things she’d found in one of the spare rooms at her grandma’s house. She hadn’t gone through everything, but she’d just stood in a couple of doorways, looking and thinking and remembering the good times. The picnic basket had caught her eye, and she’d thought, why not use it? So many times, things like this got stuck in a closet somewhere and never got pulled out.
“Yes. Everything except the blanket, which I see you are carrying.” She pointed to his other arm.
Josiah had been amazing. Everything that she needed. The kind of man that she really wanted standing beside her. Unlike her ex, who was never there when she needed him, who was always working late or blaming her for whatever went wrong. She couldn’t even imagine trying to go through something this difficult with him. He would just bury himself in work or in affairs or whatever he did and pretend to be a good dad, putting on a show anytime people from the outside world would be looking on, but when it came right down to it, she wouldn’t have had the support that she desperately needed.
That Josiah had provided.
But how did she tell him? She knew her feelings for him were deepening into something that she thought could be a relationship, but how did she tell him? How did she go from nothing to having him know that she wanted to…be with him? Have a romantic relationship? Spend the rest of her life with him? It seemed a little much.
He nodded his head at her and walked out the door, leaving her with no more answers than she’d had before. She did have a date with Grace later today. They were going to go to the café in Strawberry Sands and eat together and chat.
Claire was hoping that they would talk about the tragedy, just get it out in the open so that she could quit avoiding it in her mind. To know that Grace didn’t blame her for anything, and that the way she remembered it—that it was a total and complete accident—was the way that Grace remembered it as well. If there was any responsibility she needed to shoulder, she wanted to do that as well. This seemed like a good time in her life to clean up things and make a new beginning. She supposed every ending automatically meant a new beginning. And she wanted to do this one right. She’d messed up so many of her other new beginnings—she didn’t want to mess this one up. And that it was going to include Josiah, if he would allow it, was a given.
She just needed to talk to him too. Maybe she should ask him out on a date.
The idea made her stomach quiver and lurch, and she decided that perhaps she could wait until her children were gone.
Yesterday they had gone swimming, even though it had really been too cold. They’d also worked a little in the flower beds. She hadn’t forced her kids to do it, but she’d talked a little bit about what her grandma had done, and Lana especially had seemed interested.
Of course, they were still taking care of the chickens, and they’d cleaned out the chicken coop, putting fresh new straw in the boxes and putting the manure in a pile beside where her grandma had always had her garden. It had gotten smaller and smaller over the years, but Claire had plans for this year. Maybe it wouldn’t be the masterpiece that she remembered it being in her childhood, but… Maybe it would produce something, and growing vegetables would make her feel like she’d accomplished a little. Just like a loaf of bread, no matter how much worse than her gram’s, made her feel accomplished as well.
“Come on, Dan. You have your coat?”
He held up the coat that he held in his other hand. She nodded and then was surprised when he went and put an arm around her, holding her close. She wrapped her arms around him and just hugged him without saying anything.
“I love you, Mom,” he said. He was still ten years old—such a perfect age. She loved it. It was before the teenage years, but after the bumbling incompetence of childhood. It was the perfect age, in her opinion. Maybe eight to ten. Seven to eleven, something like that. And both her kids were almost completely out of it.
The thought made her sad for a moment, but she pushed that feeling aside. She could be sad later. Today, she had a carriage ride to take and kites to fly.
She grabbed the backpack that she’d put on the porch along with the duffel bag that held all their kite paraphernalia.
“I love you too, Dan. You’ve been awesome. Are you ready to fly kites?”
“I don’t ever remember flying kites before.”
Even though in Boston they were close to the ocean, it just wasn’t the same. To get to the beach, to get to the harbor, they had to go through town, and it took forever. And…she just never took the time. Because it wasn’t like they could do much when they were there. They had to get out of town in order to find a beach that worked. They had done that some in the summer but not nearly like she’d wanted. And they were crowded.
There was just something wild and free and beckoning about the shores of Lake Michigan.
