Her Wedding Wish (3 page)

“If it’s all right with your dad.” It felt fantastic to say that again, but Jonas only looked at her bewildered, as if he had no idea why it would or wouldn’t be his call. So she answered in his place. “I guess it is. Let me get Madison to the table.”

“No.” Madison looked pretty determined as she studied her father. She clutched her cell phone tightly.

“C’mon,
ple-eeeeese.
” Tyler was about to burst with so much excitement. “Daddy, she’s been like this a lot. I’m tryin’ to be a good big brother, but it’s hard.”

“I can see that,” Jonas said quietly with a wink.

Not willing to scoop the child up and risk a meltdown, Danielle knelt to size up the situation. “Don’t you want Mexi-fries?”

Madison bobbed her head once in a serious nod. Her tiara winked as it caught the overhead light.

“Then come to the table, princess.” Danielle held out her hand, palm up, hoping for a little toddler cooperation.

Madison turned her serious gaze to her daddy on the far side of the table. “I wanna sit by yew, Mommy.”

Over the top of their daughter’s head, she could see the hurt on Jonas’s face. As little as Madison was, she knew there was something different—much different—about the father who’d come home to them. Tyler was too excited to truly notice, but would his security be blown apart when he did?

I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, she reminded herself. Prayer, tonight, would help as it always did. With the Lord’s grace, perhaps Jonas would recover quickly enough that Tyler wouldn’t realize it. Jonas had already defied the doctor’s dim prognosis so far. Yes, she decided, steeling her spine, she would rely on her faith. God would make this right.

“I’ll scoot your chair closer to mine, how’s that?” Danielle waited for Madison to consider this. When the toddler placed her sticky little hand on hers, Danielle sighed with relief. One tantrum avoided. “Good girl. Let’s get you up. Look at Tyler. You’re making him wait.”

“Hurry, Maddy,” Tyler added, helping out. “We’re all gettin’ shorter. We need Mexi-fries now!”

A family joke, but Jonas’s forehead furrowed as if he were trying to make sense of that. She’d tell him later about the joke of how the deep-fried Tater Tots kept a person from shrinking, she thought, as she buckled Madison in.

The instant she dropped into her own seat, she could feel the exhaustion in her muscles and bones. She folded her hands and bowed her head just in time, for Tyler was already saying—or more accurately, shouting—grace.

“Thanks for the eats, Lord! God bless us every one!” Tyler, proud of himself, added, “Amen!”

“Volume, kiddo,” she reminded him after she’d added her own
amen.
“You don’t need to shout. God can hear you just fine.”

“Yeah, but He’s all the way up in the sky. When Uncle Spence was on the roof cleaning the gutters, remember how loud I had to talk so’s he could hear me?” Tyler helped himself to the tub of Mexi-fries. He dumped a generous portion on his plate. “The sky is really far up.”

How could she argue with that? She took the tub from him and added Mexi-fries to her and Madison’s plates, before she realized Jonas’s plate remained empty.

“I’ll help you, too,” she said quietly. “Let me get the kids dished up.”

He looked away, his eyes veiled, his face like stone. Tyler was chatting away, trying to decide from the options of tacos and nachos and burritos. Madison talked over the top of him, wanting her “taccas.”

As she unwrapped Madison’s chicken soft taco and cut it into quarters, and then helped Tyler search through the bags for the tacos that were his, she tried to keep the sadness from her heart. She’d known it would be like this. The doctors had been clear and had been warning her through the long journey of Jonas’s recovery.

Everything had changed. There were no more loving looks across the table between them, and no more knowing looks that meant they were storing up cute things the kids were doing to be talked about and laughed over afterward. There were no mutual conversations about his day at work or hers at home with the kids, the way there always used to be. There was just silence and the typical noises that came from having two small children at the table.

She hadn’t realized the depth of their love, and the importance of the meaningful bond that linked her spirit to his, until it was gone. Until there was nothing but silence between two strangers, with their children between them. That meant the love they’d shared was gone, too.

She quietly circled the table and unwrapped the two chicken burritos for Jonas and added a heap of Mexi-fries to his plate. Her footsteps echoed in the silence as she retraced the path back to her chair.

“No! No! No! No—ooooooo!” Madison’s declaration of independence rang in the main bathroom at high enough decibel levels to break city ordinances. “I kin do it!”

Danielle slumped onto the closed lid of the toilet, dripping wet from helping her daughter with her bath. The steam had frizzed her hair, and she felt wilted as she rested her face in her hands. Steam swirled around her, driven by the current from the door swinging open and a half-clad Madison pounding across the hall to her bedroom. There was a yanking sound as she dragged open the lower drawer in her little white dresser.

“Mom? Are you okay?” Tyler asked from the doorway.

She pasted a smile on her weary face and rose to her feet. “Absolutely. It’s your turn, tiger. Would you fetch a clean towel and washcloth from the laundry room for me?”

“Okay!” He ran out of the room and down the hall.

“Don’t run in the house,” she reminded him and listened for his stampede to slow a bit.

She forced her feet forward, wondering how the rest of the evening would turn out for her and Jonas. They would be alone for the first time, and she was feeling nervous about being with him. It made no sense, and she didn’t like the way she was feeling. But there it was, the hard ball of anxiety stuck in her midsection.

The evening had passed pleasantly with Tyler’s little-boy energy and Madison’s cute chatter. Jonas had sat in the living room with the kids while she’d cleaned up the kitchen. The kids were so busy and active, they’d unwittingly filled up the first half of the evening. But now, the last half was looming ahead of her and she was at a loss as to how to face it.

She turned on the bathwater and adjusted the temperature before adding Tyler’s blue-colored bubble bath to the rising water. Madison shrieked with glee across the hall, and while Danielle hesitated in the hallway wondering about Jonas, the sight of her half-dressed daughter digging out every last item from her bottom drawer took precedence. “You are troubles, bubbles.”

Madison grinned, showing off her dimples. “I want my Ella pants.”

“Sweetie, you definitely need pants.” Danielle knelt and gave the pink Cinderella pajama shirt a tug at the hem to straighten it. “You got that on all by yourself?”

“Yip.”

“You’re a good dresser.”

“Yip.”

Danielle sorted through the items on the floor, folding them as she went. No sign of the matching pajama pants, so she tried the middle drawer. There they were, right on top, in all their pink glory among the folded-up socks. She chased Madison, caught her and helped her into the ruffly pink bottoms. There. One kid
almost
done for the day.

First, she had to turn off the bathwater, then she began turning back Madison’s bedcovers, not sure if Madison was going to give an argument or not.

Tyler’s footsteps preceded him down the hall. He poked his head into the room. “Daddy’s sleepin’,” he said, then thundered into the bathroom.

Sleeping? She knew Jonas hadn’t made the trek down the hall to their bedroom yet. He would have had to pass by the bathroom and the kids’ rooms. Did that mean he’d fallen asleep on the couch? “Okay, prayers, cutie.”

Madison bent to her knees and steepled her little hands. Her tiara slipped forward—yes, it appeared she was still wearing it—and Danielle removed it as she knelt down beside her. She listened while Madison said her prayers and tucked her in with a kiss.

“My story, Mommy?” Madison used her puppy-dog look, rendering her completely impossible to say no to.

“Let me check on Tyler and your daddy first. You stay right there, okay, bubbles?”

“Yip.”

A quick glance into the bathroom told her that Tyler was safe and sound, covered with bubbles and busy playing with his floating fire tanker that shot water all over the tile. She reminded him to remember to wash before padding down the hallway, where she found Jonas stretched out and sound asleep on the couch.

The poor man. He had to be exhausted. Danielle hit the power off button on the TV remote and circled around to lift the warm fleece blanket off the back of the couch. He didn’t stir. She’d wake him up later, after she got both kids put to bed. For now, she shook the blanket out and gently covered him.

Help him find his way back to me, please, Lord,
she prayed in the darkness. She kissed her husband’s forehead and tiptoed from the room.

“S
orry.”

Danielle glanced up from pouring Jonas a second cup of morning coffee. “What are you sorry for?”

“Falling asleep.” He didn’t look at her as he concentrated on wrapping his hands around his spoon. Long months of hard rehabilitation had helped, but his motor skills were still limited.

She popped open the top of the flavored coffee creamer and poured it for him and then added some into her own cup. “It was a big day for all of us yesterday, with you coming home.”

“You’re dis-disappointed.” He stumbled on the word.

Since she couldn’t admit that, not without hurting him, she set the carafe on the ruffled blue place mat at Tyler’s empty place and slipped into the chair. “Are you?”

He gulped. “Could be easier.”

She nodded, seeing now what she’d been too busy this morning to notice, getting Tyler ready for the church summer program and keeping Madison out of trouble. Jonas had managed to dress himself in a sweatshirt and jeans, but the sweatshirt hung on him, twisted to the left. His feet beneath the table were in socks, not shoes. “I should have helped you more this morning. I’m sorry. I won’t forget again.”

“You helped enough.” Jonas straightened his shoulders, as if his pride were involved, too. “The kids first.”

“Yes. That’s what we agreed back in Seattle, but—” She stared down into her steaming mug, unable to find any answers in the dark depths. She’d let him down, and that’s the one thing she didn’t want to do. Somehow she had to figure out a way to manage everything on her own. “It’s going to be difficult for a while, but I don’t mind working hard for you, Jonas. For the kids. For us.”

He swallowed hard, as if her words mattered to him, and turned in his chair toward the wall. “Our wedding pictures.”

“Yes.” She looked at them, too. How young and carefree they seemed back then. On impulse, she rose and plucked the collage frame from the wall. “There are some of the reprints I framed up from that day. I should dig out our wedding album. It’s in the closet somewhere out of reach, for safekeeping.”

“You’re smiling. It must have been a good day.”

“One of the best of my life.”

She laid the gold frame on the table, and he moved his coffee cup aside to make room. As they leaned forward to study the pictures together, she smelled the scent of his shampoo and the soap on his skin. Her heart cinched a notch. Yes, she thought, tenderly, he was still her Jonas. “If you notice, you’re smiling, too.”

“Yep. I look pretty happy.”

“You were.”

She touched her fingertip to the glass frame, where they’d just parted from sharing their first kiss as man and wife. Hand in hand, they stood smiling, facing their family and friends with the jeweled light from the sun-drenched stained glass gracing them. Their happiness was palpable, so shining and new. “I wish you could remember how that felt to finally be married. To be together with the whole world at our feet.”

“Was our marriage good?”

She noticed the concern in his eyes, the sadness on his face and the wonder. It was not fair that one bullet had stolen so much from him. At least she had the memories of their love. At least she knew what they could have again. “It was very good.”

“We were close.”

“Yes. Very close.”

He nodded once in acknowledgment but not in understanding.

How did she tell him that was her greatest fear? That they might never find one another again. They might never again share that rare close bond they’d had. Grief stabbed deep into her soul, and she fought it away. She had to keep her faith strong and believe that God would not forsake them. “We were best friends. Best…everything.”

“E-very-thing.” Jonas lingered over that word, as if he were trying to figure out what that meant. He remained bent over the pictures.

She moved away and took the carafe with her to rinse in the sink. All around them, hung on the walls or in stand-alone frames or snapshots tacked to their refrigerator, were photographs of their life together, of the babies and of the kids growing up. Of a happier time—her soul ached with sadness for the loss of that happy, innocent time when Jonas was whole.

It wasn’t fair to keep wishing for the past, she thought as she turned to the sink, rinsed out the pot and slipped it into the top rack of the dishwasher. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jonas struggling to stand, his attention focused on one of the photographs on the wall. She leaned a little to see what he stared at with such fascination. Her heart stopped when she recognized the picture. It was of her, propped up in a hospital bed, exhausted from forty-one hours of labor and cradling their precious son in her arms.

He did not remember that day, she realized, or how happy they were and how proud he was. She closed the dishwasher quietly, feeling reality settle into the damaged places in her heart.

When he looked away, she saw his eyes were silvered with tears. Tears that did not fall as he blinked them away and straightened his shoulders. Strong—that was her Jonas, always strong.

“I’ll help you to remember,” she promised him with all the strength and faith in her soul. “It’s going to be all right.”

In the corner, untouched by the sunlight that tumbled through the big picture window, Jonas nodded. He didn’t look as if he believed her. Not one bit.

There was a knock at the front door—the quick tap-tap of her mom’s signature knock. Already her key was in the lock and the doorknob was turning. The security system chimed as the front door swung open. Danielle straightened, turned off the faucet and reached for the dish towel to dry her hands.

“Knock, knock. Hello!” Dorrie’s smile was bright, as always. She was a wonder and an incredible mother.

Danielle knew she paled by comparison. “Come on in. I just washed out the coffeepot. I can make fresh.”

“I had my morning quota, my dear. Jonas, it’s great to see you home—” Her pleasant voice was drowned out by Madison shouting from the living room.

“Grammy! Grammy! Grammy!” Bare feet padded on the carpet and then on the linoleum as the little girl—today a mermaid—burst into sight, flinging her arms wide and wrapping them tightly around her grandmother’s knees.

“Hi, honey. Are you going to let Grammy take you to your swimming lessons?”

“Yip. I kin blow bubbles and kick!” Soft brown curls tumbled over her shoulders as she leaned her head back to grin up at her grandmother.

“I can’t wait to see. Do you have your bag all packed?”

Danielle chimed in. “I got it half-finished. It’s on the foot of her bed, I just have to grab a towel.”

“I’ll do that. No worries. What time is Jonas’s appointment?”

“Nine-thirty.” Danielle glanced at the clock on the stove. “We should leave in a few minutes.”

“I’ll finish up here, too. That’s why I’m here, to help out. I’ll have lunch all ready when you get back. Jonas, I hope you still like tuna casserole.”

“Y-yes.” Jonas was struggling with his walker to get around the table. His left leg was very stiff.

She resisted the need to run to his side. For him it was a matter of pride.

He ambled toward her, but his gaze was on their little daughter, in her mermaid shirt and matching pants, her soft curls and sweetness.

“Madison,” he said. “I like to swim, too.”

The little girl’s eyes widened, and she sidled around to hide behind her grandmother. She stared at Jonas and didn’t say anything at all.

Danielle couldn’t breathe for the pain in her heart. Madison had Jonas wrapped around her little finger since the moment she’d come into the world.

Jonas shuffled forward, but it was the sadness in his eyes that both kept her silent and that gave her hope as he eased alongside his walker. He had one hand on the edge of the counter and the other on the walker’s grip.

“You don’t like this?” he asked the toddler, nodding at the metal appliance.

From behind her grandmother’s knee, Madison shook her head again, scattering her soft curls. “No!”

“Me, either.” He took a shaky step away, unsteady as he shuffled forward without much support.

She was across the kitchen, holding her husband’s elbow without thought, but he didn’t lean on her. No, no matter how much support Jonas needed, he would not do that. He did allow her to keep him steady at this crucial moment as he went a few uncertain inches forward.

Their little girl took a cautious step out from behind her grandmother, looking relieved the scary metal thing had been left behind.

Jonas leaned forward and held out his hand, a father’s devotion sincere and quiet. He waited while Madison bit her bottom lip, debating the merits of approaching her daddy now.

When Madison looked up to her, Danielle nodded and smiled. “It’s okay, honey,” she said and scrunched down a bit to be more at the toddler’s level.

Encouraged, Madison took a step toward her daddy. “Why you got that?”

Jonas’s smile was wobbly and looked relieved. “Because my leg doesn’t work so well. But it’s gonna be better.”

“Oh. Okeydokey.” Madison laid her hand on his, studying him trustingly. “You gonna come see me swim? I kin kick real fast! Jest like a mermaid.”

“I’d sure like to see that sometime soon.”

“Yip.” Madison grinned hugely. “C’mon, Grammy! I shew you my towel!”

Danielle rose to full height as the little girl grabbed her grandmother by the hand and pulled her through the kitchen. She was thankful, deeply grateful.

She turned to Jonas, who waited until Madison was out of sight before he grabbed for the edge of the counter. She tugged his walker to him, holding him steady. He looked too tired from the effort and his leg was shaking, but his smile was pure Jonas.

“This is going to work out just fine,” she told him, certain of it now. “You wait and see.”

“I brought my toolbox,” Dad said in his gruff, good-guy way as he shouldered through the front door and stomped his boots on the entry rug. “Figure the boys and I can get a few things done for you around here.”

Danielle looked up from the counter where she was peeling carrots for the salad. Her burdens lifted at simply seeing her father—her stepfather, who’d adopted her when he’d married her mother long ago. Gratitude filled her right up. She couldn’t have a better father, and she loved him. “Dad, this is supposed to be a celebration dinner. You shouldn’t be doing work around here. We can worry about things getting done later.”

“Nonsense. You know me. I’m not happy unless I’m busy.” He winked, and his smile was good-natured as always. “Might as well make myself useful while I’m here. And what about you, missy?”

“What about me?”

He set down his toolbox against the entryway wall. “You sure you ought to be in here working like that? Your mother isn’t gonna be happy if she and the kids come back from the grocery store and see that you aren’t taking it easy like she told you to.”

“I’m fine, Dad. Really.” She smiled to prove it to him. “You know me. I’m not happy unless I’m busy.”

He shook his head slowly from side to side and, judging by the squint to his friendly blue eyes, he wasn’t fooled one bit. “Jonas resting?”

“He fell asleep on the couch. He had a tough physical therapy session.” Not to mention the doctor appointment before that. “Let me get you something cool to drink, Dad. It’s a scorcher out there.”

“Looked like it was trying to storm to me.”

“Storm?” That couldn’t be good news. She hadn’t had time to check any weather report. Apparently she’d been too busy trying to get a start on dinner prep to look out the big garden window over the sink and counter.

Now that she did look, she saw thunderheads were gathering on the horizon. Huge ones. That might not bode well for their backyard picnic. And for her not to have noticed, well, it only went to show how tired she felt.

Great. She squared her drooping shoulders and put down the peeler. “I’ll get you some iced tea.”

“I’ll do it myself, missy.” Dad ambled her way, still a big man despite the fact that he’d passed retirement age. “But I will take one of those brownies. They smell awful good.”

Danielle reached for a clean knife and joined him at the opposite counter to cut him a generous piece. “You’re going to spoil your appetite.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dad was smiling as he tore a paper towel from the dispenser and held it to use in place of a plate. “No one anywhere makes a better brownie than you. You even got Ava beat.”

One of her younger sisters, Ava, was a professional baker. A high compliment, but one she’d heard before. Plus, Dad was generous with compliments. She kissed his cheek. “Why don’t you go put up your feet? If you don’t want to disturb Jonas, you can use the TV either in the basement or in our room.”

“No, I don’t mind bothering Jonas.” Dad winked as he strode out of sight. The faint rumble of his voice in the living room told her that Jonas must have woken up.

When she peered around the corner to check on him, he had straightened up on the couch. Now sitting up, he was sleepy-looking and pale, but he seemed glad of the company. That had to be a good sign, right? She worried about the evening ahead. Her family—bless them—had dearly wanted to see Jonas again. But was he up to so much at once?