Page 33 of Sugarplum Dreams
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that means he’s quite a guy.” Kyra looked after him, then smiled as she glanced back at Charity. “You look shell-shocked.” She tilted her head. “Are you not happy?”
“I… I’m having trouble processing everything. But I’m definitely happy. I just can’t believe that it’s going to last, you know? I mean, it’s one thing to deal with kids for a little bit, it’s another thing to handle the drudgery of day in and day out.” Plus, there was the little fact that he didn’t really love her and wasn’t marrying her because he wanted to spend more time withher. But that wasn’t necessarily something she wanted to talk about.
“Why don’t you just trust? Trust the Lord, trust Wilson, and let go. It’s like you’re almost afraid that if you think that things are going to be happy, they’re going to evaporate in front of you.”
“Well, that’s been my experience.”
“But you can’t let that color the rest of your life, you know?” Kyra lifted a shoulder and glanced around the room. “I’m not really a good person to talk. You know I’m not married and I have no prospects. And here you are a mother of five, with far more experience than I have with men and motherhood.”
“Just because I have experience doesn’t make me wise,” Charity said, knowing it was true.
“All right, I guess I just feel like you need to enjoy it. It might not last. You might be right. But if you keep yourself from enjoying it now, does it make it any different when it finally ends? Other than you were miserable the whole time, instead of being miserable with the ending.”
“I guess I feel like I don’t have as far to fall when everything gets pulled out from under me, if I’m not enjoying it. You know? Like, you have a much harder landing if you never saw the end coming and didn’t prepare for it.”
Kyra nodded and seemed to understand. “I can understand what you’re saying. But you see my point?”
“I do. And you’re right. I might as well enjoy it. It might not last. Maybe he’ll figure out that this was a lot harder than what he thought it was going to be.”
“And maybe he’ll fall in love with you, and he’ll dig in, and he’ll be there for the long haul, and the two of you will grow old together, and yeah, it’ll be hard, there will be heartbreak, there will be times where you cry, but that’s the way life is. It is not just you having a husband who leaves you with five smallchildren. Yeah, that was pretty big. But every life has big and little problems.”
Kyra looked at her, sincere, like she wanted Charity to understand.
And Charity knew she was right. She knew that there were lots of problems in the world, she wasn’t the only one. She wasn’t even the only one whose husband had left, and there were worse things that could happen. Maybe not in a relationship, but she could have had cancer when he left, or he could have left her with a child in the hospital. But all of her children were healthy, she was healthy, and she should look at her blessings, rather than being scared to embrace them, for fear that they would disappear.
“I needed that talk today. Thank you,” she said, smiling at her friend and truly appreciating the fact that Kyra had seen something off and hadn’t been afraid to tell her about it.
“All right, you know you can go out and watch. They’re going up and down the street, so your kids will enjoy waving to you as they go by if you’re out there standing.”
“All right. That’s a good idea.” Charity and Kyra stood and walked out, and just as Kyra had said, the horses and wagon were coming back down the street with the kids singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs and only occasionally Amy’s sweet soprano to be heard above the din.
Wilson seemed to be having a good time, with Serafina and Evans sitting on his lap. His back was toward Charity as they came down the street, but Gifford and Banks saw her and waved excitedly, calling out to her. That made Wilson turn, and he gave her a grin, pointing her out to Serafina and Evans who both managed to get chubby little hands in the air and move them back and forth.
She was not used to such a sweet sight, to see her kids having a good time, and to see a man who had been willing to stepin and give her a hand. She determined in her heart that she would be the best wife that she could possibly be, although her confidence in her ability to be a good wife was probably at an all-time low. After all, Clancy had told her she was a terrible wife, and that was the reason he had to find someone else.
But maybe Kyra’s advice could apply to that situation as well. After all, Clancy was in the wrong. No matter how bad of a wife she was, he never should have left her, and if she looked on the bright side, she had learned a few things, and she would be a better wife now than she ever had been before.
Chapter Fourteen
“Inow pronounce you man and wife. Ladies, may I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Wilson McBride,” the preacher intoned, serious and sober, even though they were standing in Charity’s living room and the only witnesses they had were the pastor’s wife and Wilson’s mother.
Wilson and Charity had talked about inviting his family to witness their nuptials, but they hated to interrupt everyone on Christmas Day. If they weren’t getting married, Wilson would be taking a nap right now. They’d already opened the gifts, eaten a large meal which Wilson had helped her prepare, and had spent some time at his mother’s house. Where Charity’s children had met all their new cousins. It was so odd, blending a family together.
“Congratulations, son.” His mother came over, and he leaned down, giving her a hug and kissing her on the cheek. She looked extremely happy, and he hoped it was all happiness that caused her eyes to tear up. He hadn’t meant to give her a moment of worry, although he supposed he should have known that she was going to be a little concerned when he announced he was marrying a woman that he barely knew and didn’t love.
Charity was beautiful. There was no other way to describe her as he glanced over at her. That odd swirling happened in his chest again as she hugged his mother, and his mother put her arm around her and they walked away, chatting.
She was so humble, so willing to learn, so eagerly desiring to do her best at whatever was in front of her, whether it was being a wife and mother, or whether it was cooking a meal. He appreciated the fact that she cared and wanted to be a blessing to people. Even though she could barely keep her head up herself.
He walked over to Pastor Connelly who was tucking his books away.
“I really appreciate you coming out on Christmas,” he said, handing the pastor several folded hundred-dollar bills. It was more than double what the pastor said he usually charged for weddings, just because it was on Christmas.
“Thank you,” Pastor Connelly said, taking the money and sliding it in his shirt pocket. “It’s my pleasure. I have a good feeling about the direction that the two of you are headed. I like seeing the families knitted together, rather than torn apart. And to see one stitched back together after being brutally ripped to pieces makes my heart happy.”
There was a bit of sadness still in his tone, and Wilson could only guess that it was probably because the family wouldn’t have needed to be stitched back together if the man that Charity had married hadn’t abdicated his responsibilities and run off. But that man’s loss was Wilson’s gain. He’d almost come full circle and believed that God, rather than thinking that Wilson would be good for Charity, had known all along that Wilson needed Charity and her children. He could already see the changes that had occurred in his thinking and in his life. How he’d grown closer to the Lord. How he’d seen the strength and resilience with which Charity lived her life and even… He felt that part of him that had always longed to be paired up with someone towalk through life with reaching out and feeling like Charity was exactly the right person to spend the rest of his life with.
“It makes my heart happy too. I think I’ve known I needed Charity and the children, and I think it just took me a little bit of time to realize that it wasn’t for Charity’s benefit, but for my own.”
