Page 18 of A Baxter Family Christmas
“We used to do that. Get up early. Hit the sales.” She paused. “Not anymore. Anyway... I can’t do coffee. I’m helping my mom decorate for Christmas.”
“Got it. Okay.” Connor raked his fingers through his hair and stared at the starless sky overhead. “Maddie... is everything okay?”
“It’s fine. Sorry.” She sighed. “I just... I need to get going. Thanks for the call.”
“Okay.” Connor told her goodbye and hung up the phone.Well, God... that’s that. Maddie clearly isn’t the girl for me.
He slipped his phone into his pocket and headed inside to finish helping his brothers with the cleanup. But even though Maddie hadn’t seemed interested, Connor couldn’t stop thinking about her. When he went to bed that night, the last thought on his mind wasn’t some happy memory of Thanksgiving or even his sister’s wonderful news.
It was the face of Maddie West. A girl who had worked her way into his heart.
Whether he liked it or not.
Maddie lay on her bed, her face buried in her pillow. She had treated Connor terribly, and now all she wanted was to call him and tell him every reason why she’d been so unkind. It wasn’t his fault. She simply had no room in her heart for a boy like Connor.
Better to end things now. Before they started.
She’d been fighting tears since she hung up the phone, and now she felt someone standing by her bedside. “Maddie?”
It was her mother. She rolled onto her side and looked up.
“Honey... what’s wrong?” Her mom sat on the edge of her bed and touched the side of Maddie’s face. “You’ve been crying?”
“I’m sorry. I’m trying not to.” Maddie sat up and pulled one knee to her chest. “Today was the best Thanksgiving. Really.”
“So what is it?” Her mom’s eyes showed concern. “Are you missing Aunt Erin?”
“No. I mean, yes. Of course. It’s just... Connor called me. He wanted to get coffee tomorrow but I told him no.”
For a few seconds, Maddie’s mother waited. As if she were trying to make sense of the situation. “All right... so... you meant to say yes?”
“No.” Fresh tears filled Maddie’s eyes. “I mean, yes. But I can’t.” She’d held on to this for long enough. Then she fell into her mom’s arms and leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Can I tell you something? Just between us?”
“Of course.” Her mom ran her hand along Maddie’s hair and the back of her head. “I’m here, sweetheart. Whenever you need anything.”
“Okay. We need privacy.” Maddie reached for a tissue on her nightstand as her mom closed the door. “Hayley can never hear this.”
“Okay.” Her mother returned to the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong?”
She sniffed a few times. “It’s about Hayley. I never... wanted to talk about it. But I don’t feel like I can move forward unless I do.”
“About Hayley?”
“Yes.” Maddie took a few breaths and looked into her mother’s eyes. With everything in her she wanted to tell her mom the truth. How she had done something she had lived with every day since, and how because of that she believed Hayley’s accident was her fault, and how she had lived with guilt and regret every day.
But she couldn’t make the words come.
Instead she stuck with the same thing she’d talked about before. “I keep thinking about... how it’s not fair that I get to live happy and normal and Hayley... she struggles. It’s not right.” Maddie wiped the new tears from the corners of her eyes. “Why can’t God heal her?”
“Oh, honey.” Her mom hugged her again. “He has healed her.”
“Mom, she’s not the same as other—”
“Maddie, don’t you remember?” A new passion flared in her mother’s eyes. “Hayley was never supposed to walk again. Never supposed to see or talk or ride a bike. Three months after the accident she could see me. Her doctor said it was a miracle, that there was no explanation for that. And a year later when she rode her bike...” Tears filled her eyes. “Hayley is walking proof of God’s power. If she’s different, it’s for His glory. Because she should still be lying in a hospital bed.”
“Mom.” Chills ran down Maddie’s arms and legs. “I didn’t know that.” She tried to picture Hayley wasting away in a bed, unable to see or talk or walk. This was something their family never talked about. Maddie narrowed her eyes. “Is that what they told you? When she was in the hospital?”
“Yes. They said she’d never get out of bed, Maddie. And so we begged God for a miracle. And God gave us just that. Beyond what we could’ve asked for or imagined. Your sister is healthier than we ever dreamed she’d be.”
