Page 41 of There I Find Happiness

They didn’t say anything for a while, and Lana didn’t figure they needed to. Sally seemed like she figured out the issue with Norma Jean, and Lana realized that maybe she wasn’t quite as cold as what she thought she was going to be.

Or maybe it was just sitting with a friend. Daughter almost.

That was the nice thing about Strawberry Sands, everyone was so close to everyone else.

She thought again about her visit and the different things Pierre told her that evening after they put the children to bed.

They’d walked out of the lighthouse to talk, since there wasn’t much privacy inside. It had been a long time since she walked on the beach with a man, and she enjoyed it more than what she wanted to admit.

Pierre hadn’t seemed to notice that she was beside him, since he was so wrapped up in the issues with his kids.

He’d gone from being deeply invested in his business to deeply invested in the children who were in his care. He didn’t even know for how long. Their parents were still trying to figure things out so they could get them back.

So many issues and so many problems. Lana wished she could help, and she knew of several ways. But they would require her leaving the place that she loved and the town that she lived in all her life.

That wasn’t her plan. She planned on dying in Strawberry Sands.

Sometimes God had other plans, some of which involved moving a lady who was set in her ways, happy where she was, but was needed somewhere else.

Lord, I want to submit to Your will and Your plan, but these old bones don’t really want to move anywhere.

She knew he heard her, but just like she and Sally had been talking about, she also knew that God knew what was best, and sometimes He moved in a way that wasn’t what she wanted but was exactly what she needed. It happened all the time throughout her life, and she was afraid that maybe now was one of those times.

But she didn’t want to be too down, because there were a lot of bright spots on the horizon. The three children were one of them, and Pierre was another. He was a good man. A man that if Lana were younger, she might have been able to fall in love with.

Chapter 14

“Ithink you’re ready,” Rodney said as he turned from hanging up the last of the harnesses and leaned over top of Ashes’s broad back.

“I don’t know. I don’t feel ready,” Becky said, a sour mixture of fear and pain splashing against her heart. It wasn’t really that she didn’t feel like she was ready to handle Cinders and Ashes, Ronnie’s big Percheron team that he used to give people carriage rides on the beach. She actually loved driving them, loved working with them, loved everything about it.

The problem was, she didn’t want to do it without Rodney. And, the fear was that he would go to college and find a girl and fall in love with her. And then, Becky would be left behind in Strawberry Sands, taking care of his horses, giving carriage rides, and basically running his business, until he brought his new love back, and kicked Becky out.

She’d been kicked out before. Maybe not in so many words, but her mother hadn’t wanted her, her dad hadn’t wanted her, and she had too many foster families to name who hadn’t wanted her. She knew all about how it felt to be kicked aside. It was kind of what she’d come to expect out of her life.

And, her way of dealing was to suck it up and pretend she didn’t care.

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