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“I know you will.” One last squeeze of her hand and then Jill walked away.
Lexi stood in the doorway for a few minutes, waiting until the last second before she turned and walked inside. Colt hadn’t shown up. She shrugged off disappointment. Like so many other times in her life, she told herself that it didn’t matter.
People weren’t always there when you expected or needed them. She had learned that early on from parents who had been busy with careers; their child had been an afterthought. It had almost become that way with Colt and his job. He had been obsessed with catching the guy that shot Gavin.
Lexi sat down in her customary pew and opened the hymnal. Her vision blurred a little and she blinked to clear the mist. It was lonely, walking in by herself, watching families take their seats, settling children on their laps or next to them with crayons and pieces of paper or coloring books.
She had always wanted to be one of those families. As a kid she had gone to church with neighbors, the Clines, because her parents had been busy with their real estate business and hadn’t had time. Sundays her parents did brunch and talked to prospective clients.
The Cline family had been her ideal family. They had played basketball in the evenings, and they walked their dogs together. They had gone to church together every Sunday and every Wednesday. And when she had eaten dinner with them, they had joined hands and prayed.
She had wanted that family. For a lot of years that family, more than faith, had been what she longed for.
She sighed and closed her eyes. Footsteps caught her attention and then a movement and someone scooting in next to her. She looked up, swallowing delight and fear as Colt sat next to her.
“Stop looking at me like that, Lexi.” He reached for a hymnal and glanced at the one she held before flipping to the correct page.
For the first time in a long time, she had someone next to her. But she still felt alone. She was alone. Colt had a house on the other side of town and she had a divorce decree in her safe.
Colt sat through the sermon, his ex-wife next to him, and a couple of hundred pairs of eyes glancing occasionally in their direction. Due to the renewed attendance of the faithful, extra chairs had been hauled into the sanctuary to create more seating. Even Dan Garrison, Greg’s dad, was in attendance. Colt figured Dan had been out of church longer than he had.
The disaster of the tornado had brought out church members that hadn’t darkened the doors in years.
He knew because when he patrolled on Sundays he saw the overflowing parking lot. He had seen it before; a disaster brought new congregants, and the return of old. Some stayed in church. After a few months, most of them would go back to Sunday sports and forget promises to God.
Promises—to God, to Lexi and to himself. Those were the promises that Colt remembered. The day of the tornado, when Lexi lost consciousness for a short period of time, he had made some bargains with God.
He had made promises that he didn’t know how to keep.
He pulled at the back of his collar and moved in the seat as his attention wavered and then was pulled back to Michael Garrison’s sermon. The words were the same as so many other sermons, about trusting God in good times and bad. But there was some honesty that took Colt by surprise. Everyone has doubts from time to time. God can handle it. God can’t always undo the reality of life on this planet, but He can give us faith to get through. What we have to do is rely on Him, even when doubts arise.
Colt had plenty of doubts. He closed his eyes, remembering how it felt to drive up on Gavin’s patrol car that night, and to find his friend, a county officer, on the highway, bleeding—gasping for his last breath.
Powerless to help, Colt had cried out to God. He remembered that moment, kneeling on the highway, promising his friend things—promising to pray, promising to take care of a man’s wife.
He had made bargains that night, too. As if he could make deals with God.
A hand rested on his arm. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Lexi sat next to him, real, breathing and no longer a part of his life. Not really.
“You okay?”
“What?” He looked around. The sermon was over, people were standing up.
“I asked if you’re okay. I know this isn’t easy.”
“But I’m here.”
“You’re here.” She looked far too hopeful.
“I’m here because I promised. And because I have to cook.”
“Poor Colt, always being held hostage by that sense of commitment you prize.”
“Sarcasm isn’t you, Lexi.” He stood and she followed him toward the back door. He had parked his car back there and he had seen the grills already set up and ready to go.
“Maybe it’s the new me.” Relentless, Lexi kept up with him.
“I don’t think so.” He turned, smiling because she looked pretty in the deep blue dress and high heels. She was thin and tanned, and her hair hung like silk past her shoulders.
“Any leads on the identity of the little girl, Kasey?” She asked the question out of the blue. But not. Of course she’d want to know about a child.
He opened the door for her, and she slid through. He followed, out into bright afternoon sunshine and dry, late-summer heat. The charcoal in the grills had been lit and a few men were already cooking burgers.
Colt opened a cooler and pulled out a box of premade hamburger patties. Lexi stood at his side, waiting for an answer.
“No, I haven’t learned anything. I put articles in papers from surrounding areas, and the national news covered it a few weeks ago.”
“I saw that. You would think someone would be claiming the precious little thing.”
“Her parents are out there somewhere. I just hope they’re…” He couldn’t say it. Lexi nodded; she understood. They all hoped and prayed that the child’s parents were alive.
But if they were alive, what did that say about them? A living, breathing, caring parent would have claimed her. Right?
Or grandparents.
“You’ll find her family.” Lexi broke apart a few frozen burgers. He placed them on the grill as she handed them over.
“I don’t know, Lexi. I feel like I haven’t done enough.”
“You always feel that way, Colt. You’ve done everything, and you’re still beating yourself up, thinking the whole world needs you to take care of it.” She shot him a dark blue look of accusation in eyes that shimmered and then didn’t.
She was a lot stronger than he’d ever given her credit for.
When they first met, back in college, he’d treated her like a china doll that needed to be taken care of. Now she took care of thousand-pound horses and wrestled with sick cows. Today she looked like a princess. Tomorrow he’d probably see her in that truck of hers, wearing a stained T-shirt, faded jeans and work boots.
He smiled and he hadn’t meant to.
Lexi smiled back. She backed a step away, a retreat, still smiling. She looked like someone who had just won a battle. He didn’t know what he’d lost or what ground she’d gained. But somehow it mattered.
“I’m going to help with the children. They’re blowing bubbles.” Lexi touched his arm, her hand sliding down to his, pausing there for a minute and then breaking contact.
“Okay.” He could have said more, but he would have stammered. Not the way for a man to prove he was in control of a situation.
He watched her walk away, pulling her hair back with a clip as she went. He remembered those clips and how he used to like to pull them loose as she leaned over her desk.
At one time he would have leaned over her and kissed her neck, and she would have smiled, but pretended to ignore him.
“Colt, your grill’s on fire.”
Startled back to the moment he reached for the spray bottle of water and squirted the flaming coals. A quick glance over his shoulder and he saw Lexi turn to smile at him.
Lexi smiled as she watched Colt with the spray bottle, putting out the fire that had erupted in the grill. She liked seeing him not in control of a situation. He got a little scattered when it happened, because it happened so rarely. When he looked back at her, she nodded and turned away. Happy, because she had been the one to scramble his self-control.
She skipped away to the area where children of all ages were playing with all different types of bubble-blowing contraptions. In the open lawn area of the church others were flying kites and throwing Frisbees.
“Why the frown when you were smiling a few minutes ago?”
Jill. Lexi glanced at her friend who had left the small group she’d been talking to and was now at Lexi’s side.
“I didn’t mean to frown.” Lexi looked around the lawn at the people, and past to the buildings that were still damaged. “If you could focus on just this one spot, on the people having fun here, you could fool yourself into believing the tornado never happened.”
“I know. Sometimes I look out my window and it’s like I live somewhere else, somewhere other than the town I grew up in.” Jill smiled at a little girl who ran up to them with an unopened bottle of bubbles. “Do you need for me to open it?”
The child nodded, and Jill opened the bubbles and handed them back. The little girl scooted off, and Lexi didn’t know where else to go with the conversation, not when her mind kept turning back to the six hours in her basement with Colt holding her close.
Six hours that had given her hope that maybe, just maybe, she and Colt could work out their problems and rebuild their marriage.
As the workers dug them out that night, Colt had stayed by her side. He had held her close, whispering reassurances. He had stayed with her until they loaded her into the back of the ambulance. Alone, it had been hard to remain optimistic, believing his whispered promise.
She could still close her eyes and see his face in the window of the ambulance and hear the hand that had hit the door, giving them the okay to pull away. And when she woke up in the Manhattan hospital, it had been her mother’s face, not Colt’s.
Nothing had changed in that basement.
Let it go, she told herself. Today was a day of rebuilding, not reliving the past. Moving forward, that was the sermon’s title. Moving forward, knowing God is still in control and still able to answer prayers.
She had to let it go, because she still wanted more than Colt could give her. She wanted to be somewhere on the top of his list of priorities, not the person that came after everyone else.
She didn’t want to be the person waiting, wondering if he would come home.
It was hard to put that into words. In their marriage, she had failed to explain it to him. It had come out as accusations. She knew that, now. Too late.
“Come on, let’s play horseshoes.” Lexi’s friend Jill nudged her from the memories.
Jill, in her prairie skirt and boots, was a cowgirl. The real deal, not the city kind, like Lexi. Jill could rope, shoot a gun and make cheese. Of course she would beat Lexi at a game like horseshoes.
“I’m not sure about horseshoes,” Lexi admitted. “I’m better at blowing bubbles.”
Jill reached for a bottle of bubbles on a table. “Go for it, then. But I see a certain cowboy that I’ve been after for about ten years. You blow bubbles and I’ll see you later.”
“Watch out for that cowboy,” Lexi warned. “He’ll break your heart.”
Jill shrugged and danced away, her skirt swishing around her legs.
Lexi dipped the plastic wand into the bubbles and drew it out. Rather than blowing, she waved it in a circle. Huge bubbles flew through the air, floating and then landing on the grass, some popping midair.
Children ran around, hands out, trying to catch the illusive bubbles. Little girls with pigtails and boys with crew cuts.
“Lexi, I need to ask a favor.” Michael Garrison walked toward her, weaving his way through the crowd of bubble-blowing children, who now saw him as a target. He laughed, swatting at bubbles and ruffling the hair of the children surrounding him.
“Okay, a favor.” She felt a little sick to her stomach, because he had that smile on his face. He was up to something.
“We’re trying to match pets with people. I know you’re about full over at the clinic, and a few other folks in town are taking in strays, so I thought this might be a way to match up lost pets to owners, or adopt them out. We might even do a rabies clinic while we’re at it, just to make sure the pets are immunized.”
It sounded good, but that mysterious twinkle in his eyes was another matter altogether. Lexi looked from Reverend Garrison to Colt, and wondered if there was a connection between them and this pet-matching project.
“If you’re too busy…” Michael Garrison caught a bubble and it popped.
“What day and I’ll make sure that I’m not.”
“Next Saturday.”
“Here at the church?” She looked around, and it didn’t take long to realize that this was about the only place in town for a project like this one.
“Yes, at the church. We’re trying hard to make this a comfortable place for people, so they feel good about coming and bringing their families. We all need to heal.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Oh, and don’t forget the lost-and-found room. It’s been filled up and emptied two or three times since it started. I know you lost so much….”
Lexi nodded, and she didn’t cry this time when she thought about the house she and Colt had picked and furnished together. Most of her belongings had been destroyed, everything but a few pictures and a box of jewelry that had been her grandmother’s. Even her wedding pictures had disappeared.
And her wedding ring set. She tried not to think about the engagement ring that Colt had put on her finger so many years ago, or the wedding ring they had picked out together. They’d been in a box in the hall closet.
Michael was still standing next to her.
“No sign of the Logan ring?” Lexi placed her bottle of bubbles into the hands of a little blonde with large blue eyes and dimples.
“Nothing. Some jewelry has shown up, but not the ring. Or Tommy’s dog.”
Tommy. Her gaze lingered on the boy, whose hand was held by the strong and powerful hand of Gregory Garrison. Now that was a wonderful tribute to God’s care for the little ones.
“I know. I’ve had my eyes out for that dog.” Lexi turned her attention back to the reverend. “Is it wrong to pray that a dog comes home?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. Remember ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’”
“‘The Lord God made them all.’”
“And not only does He care about that dog, He cares about broken hearts.”
Lexi looked up, shocked by the words. Her surprise must have registered. Michael smiled. “Tommy’s heart, Lexi. That dog was his family when he didn’t have one. I know he has one now, but the dog is still important to him.”
“Yes, of course.”
Michael shifted, looking away for a moment before looking back at her, a reverend again, not a young man, uncomfortable with the conversation.
“Don’t give up.” He said it with conviction and she was lost, because there were several things she could tag with that saying.
“Give up?”
