Page 9 of There I Find Hope

The way Sunday had brushed Blake’s hair back so many times.

“I know you’re right, Mom,” Sunday said. She sighed inside. She didn’t want to get better. She just wanted to lie there and be miserable.

“Oh. I thought this might cheer you up too,” her mother said as she stood, digging in her apron pocket. “There was a letter at the post office for you. Dorothy Miller gave it to me. And I wanted to pass it on to you. I’ll set it over here so you can’t read it until you get up.”

“Okay,” Sunday said, although her voice lacked any excitement or enthusiasm or interest. It was probably just another well-wisher sending a card with some kind of pre-written verse on it that when she wasn’t grieving, she would enjoy.

“I need you to help me clean today. We were full last night, and I actually turned some people away. It’s coming on the busy season, and with Griff and Chi and their new Percheron team, interest in Strawberry Sands has doubled from last year.” Her mother paused. “I could really use this room.”

Her mother had never rented the room out before, and Sunday wondered if maybe that was a ploy to try to get her up. But she didn’t want to keep her mom from making money. She worked so hard all her life, she deserved to be successful.

“All right. Maybe not today?”

Her mother smiled gently. “Not today. But if you can clean the green room and the blue room for me, that would be great.”

“By noon?” Sunday asked, having no idea what time it was.

“Noon was an hour ago. Guests will be checking in by four o’clock. So sometime in the next three hours. Please.”

That stunk. She was going to have to get out of bed, and not just sit in a chair in misery, but actually work. And in three hours, she had to clean two rooms. It took an hour for each room, so... She needed to get moving. Probably exactly what her mother intended.

Chapter 4

“Okay. I... I’ll do it.” Sunday didn’t want to say that, but she couldn’t turn her mom down. Plus, she knew her mom was only trying to do what was best for her. But her mom couldn’t help her get better.

Sunday was the only one who could make the decision to do the things she needed to do in order to pull herself out of the...funk, as her mom said. Funk was probably a better word than depression, though. She didn’t want to admit that she was most likely depressed.

Her mom slipped out of her room, closing the door behind her, and Sunday was very tempted to roll over and pull the covers back over her head.

Her childhood training would not allow her to do that. She told her mom she would clean those rooms, and she couldn’t let her mom down.

She should probably get a shower first, since she couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken one, but the rooms were the most urgent thing on her schedule.

When she got those done, she could shower and crawl back in bed. It was only that promise—the promise of getting back in bed—that got her up. As she stood, she saw the little cup of espresso beans that her mom had set on her nightstand.

Her mom had gotten addicted to the things, and from what Sunday understood, they came from the man who owned the lighthouse on the beach. Well, not that man. He had a son who lived in Chicago, and apparently that son brought the man espresso beans, and he gave them to her mom.

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