Page 16 of The Baxters
Nothing about that answer felt right to Elizabeth, but she didn’t say so. There was no need to probe Kari about her hesitations. She was marrying Tim. Period.Even though Elizabeth had hoped today would play out differently.
With Kari walking up the aisle toward one man and only one.
Ryan Taylor.
5
Ashley Baxter opened the door to her parents’ room and peeked inside. Cole was asleep in the crib they’d set up before he was even born. Ashley could see her son’s blond head through the slats in the bed. Without making a sound she shut the door and exhaled.
No one would ever understand why she was uncomfortable about Landon being at Kari’s wedding today. They were two entirely different people now, it was that easy. No matter what her family wanted to believe about her. No matter what Landon wanted to believe.
The accident had changed her. She would never be the girl she’d been back then.
To think her mother would talk about elementary school again. As if Ashley could even remember the precocious innocent she’d been back then. Sure, Landon was the same. His character was woven into the fiber of his being. His soul would always be the same—loyal and compassionate, devoted to God and anyone else he met. Ashley might’ve been that way before, but that certainly wasn’t her now.
Hardly.
Even still, her parents thought she’d eventually make her way back to Landon Blake. Somewhere down the road. But they were wrong. Ashley wasn’t going to wind up with Landon any more than Kari was going to marry Ryan Taylor. Clearly.
Those days were behind them. In the past, where they would stay.
Ashley walked to the kitchen and sat at the familiar table near the boxed cookies. Why would Landon even want to come to the wedding today? He knew who Ashley was now, knew about her time in Paris and her pregnancy.
No one understood better than Landon how completely Ashley had changed. After the accident, she had told Landon she no longer felt connected to him or to her family. What did any of them know about the brokenness of the world? They had a blind trust in God and beyond that they were unaware. Sweetly ignorant.
Ashley could never be like that again. Not after the crash.
Hadn’t she made herself clear to Landon? “You and my parents, you don’t understand.” She had told him from the hospital. “You’re too safe, Landon. Too predictable. You won’t even consider the idea that God is just a myth.”
Landon could’ve given up on her. Instead, he had put his hand on her arm, his eyes never more kind. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” Ashley’s response had come sharp, ruder than she intended. Why wouldn’t he walk away? Leave her alone?
Instead he never broke eye contact with her. “Ashley.” He stepped back, his love for her as steady as his beautiful heart. “You’re going through a phase… You’ll believe again one day and everything will be okay… God will show Himself to you.”
She lifted the lid off the nearest box of cookies and took one. Landon was wrong. God was finished with her—if there was a God. And nothing was going to be okay again. The cookie tasted stale. She stood and walked it to the kitchen trash can. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and took it back to her seat.
Ashley was in charge of flowers for Kari’s wedding. Something she loved. She had spent hours yesterday getting the arrangements just right. A mix of pink and white roses from the family garden, and accents of tiny baby’s breath, which John bought from a local florist. Each vase had a burlap bow, which Ashley also had tied.
Today she needed only to fill a box with the bows and get them to the reception hall. One of the girls from the flower shop would add the bows to the arrangements and set them at each table. Working with flowers was like painting. Getting the colors just right, every shape and detail. For Kari’s wedding, each finished centerpiece was a unique work of art.
Even after all that had changed in Ashley’s life, herlove of art remained. Which was something else Landon Blake had believed about her. That she would find a way to make it as an artist.
Ashley leaned back in her chair and pictured him. The handsome guy who had turned her head since the first day they met.
Landon Blake.
She stared out the kitchen window and the years gathered like so many storm clouds. And there she was again, first day of fifth grade in Mr. Garrett’s class. Ashley had accidentally dropped a bowl of ice cream on the teacher’s head during the back-to-school social the day before.
Landon was one of the only kids in her class who saw the whole thing go down. He came up to her at lunch that first day of school and told her that she had handled the ice cream disaster quite well.
It took a month before Ashley realized Landon wasn’t being a menace or making fun of her. And when they took their class trip to the zoo that fall, as the students moved on to the next exhibit, Landon stayed behind with her while she sketched the giraffe. Ashley smiled at the memory. They both got lost that day, and finally in the dark, dank reptile encounter, a zoo worker had spotted them.
“Hey! You two!” The guy ran toward them. “Stop!”
Instead, Landon had grabbed her hand and the two of them had run through the zoo in search of their class. Trying to avoid zoo jail. A couple of explorers, they hadcalled themselves. Ashley smiled. She could feel Landon’s young fingers against hers.
That was also the year when some kid named Elliot accidentally blew a giant gum wad into Ashley’s hair, and after her mother had taken her to the salon to have the sticky mess cut out, it was Landon who helped her survive.
