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“I have a nanny on the radar.”
Joel’s tense expression loosened. He sat up. “Seriously?”
Aaron nodded. “Yeah. If I hire her, I’ll be available immediately to help get more PJs here and the community programs up and running. Name’s Sarah. She’s young, though.”
“Single?”
Aaron nodded. “That’s what her application said.”
“She pretty?” Joel smirked.
“She’s pretty young,” Aaron emphasized.
But Joel’s smirk didn’t fade. “Oh. Right, Chief.”
Silence pervaded for several seconds until Joel’s amused grin morphed into an expression of thoughtfulness.
“Young might be exactly what your boys need,” Joel finally said in sincere tones.
“She’s certainly energetic enough. The last time Mina got on the floor with the boys like the applicant did, Mina claimed it almost took a crane to get her back up.” A smile started to erupt at images of Sarah on the rug with the boys.
Joel must have noticed. He leaned in and eyed Aaron with a funny expression.
Aaron swiped all evidence of the grin from his face and cleared his throat. “So anyway, it’s something to be praying about.”
Joel and his own grin didn’t look deterred. Best change the subject before he could probe.
“Which other projects did Refuge officials mention?” Aaron clicked his pen and poised it over his planner.
“In addition to Vince Reardon’s community and military scuba diving and water safety classes, they got wind of, pun intended, Brockton Drake’s wind tunnel idea. They knew we’d requested zoning for the facility in order to train military skydivers indoors during bad weather. They asked if we might also open it to the community as a family fun center and have some of our guys run it. In exchange, they offered to front half on the cost of the facility.”
“Wow.”
“They’re also interested in Chance Garrison’s rope safety training. They know he’s been working with local Eagle Scouts to teach that stuff, which has been beneficial. With all the caves, bluffs and craggy hiking crevices around Refuge, local volunteer firemen and paramedics could also benefit from his training.”
“Let’s focus on those three programs for now. Stepping out in faith that God is drawing me back into duty, I’m going to talk to my other two PJ teams about transferring to Refuge.”
“Meaning you’re officially giving word and paperwork that you’re returning full-time?”
Aaron nodded.
“And the nanny situation?”
“I’m confident God has it under control.”
After praying with Joel, Aaron returned home. As he pulled into the driveway and exited his car, he could hear shrieks of laughter from inside. Curiosity piqued, Aaron moved faster to see. He paused at the picture window, taking in the live Norman Rockwell-ish scene in his Thomas Kinkade-like living room.
Clapping her hands, Mina tossed her head back and laughed so hard her mouth didn’t close for what had to be fifteen full seconds. Aaron’s gaze followed Mina’s to the floor. In an undignified scramble, Sarah crawled on her hands and knees after Braden, who shrieked with laughter. Bryce scuttled from the footstool onto Sarah’s back yelling, “Yee-haw! Giddy up, pony! Giddy up!”
Making very unladylike burring sounds and snorts, the previously poised Sarah moved faster, holding Bryce on her back with one hand while doing a strange-looking crawl-run-gallop thing after Braden. The entire room pulsed with fun and family togetherness, like the Rockwell and Kinkade paintings lining the guest room he couldn’t bear to enter because the beautiful images of family and light felt more like a mockery in the midst of the dark sadness that had swept his home the night thieving death broke down his door and left widowhood in place of his wife.
Aaron watched through the window and swallowed. But a good kind of lump sat in this throat.
Because today was the first inkling things could be different. Aaron continued to soak in the warm scene. Sarah probably had no idea what she’d already brought into his home. Yet it was more than her. God’s presence in and through her?
The sight melted something inside that had been frigid nearly four years. All Aaron could do was stare. It seemed a miracle was unfolding before his eyes. He’d seen admirable women before but never quite like this and never quite like this one.
The melancholy cloud blocking his emotions for so long lifted, making way for rays of marvel to beam bright streaks through a formerly dark place as he watched. Tender sprigs of hope pushed forth.
He couldn’t turn away from this atypical scene, where the sun seemed to be shining inside his house as well as outside. Nor could he remove his vision from the source of it: this glowing, vibrant woman who’d enraptured his children faster than an F-22 takes vertical flight and who had aced the Mina test with Top Gun colors.
What was the deal? He couldn’t stop thinking about the Air Force blue of her eyes or the contagious sound of her laugh.
Laughter.
Something his home had been devoid of since Donna died. He couldn’t change the past and he wouldn’t trade his boys for anything. But his future in Pararescue and the future of quality time with his boys depended on his return to work. So did the success of community projects the Refuge city council sought for his team to bring about to heal the town after the bridge collapse. Everything rode on his ability to return to duty. Sarah seemed the key.
But things weren’t always as they seemed.
He had days to decide. And his duty was divided between his little boys and the bigger ones who understood his need to be with his children.
Overcome with emotion he hadn’t felt since he’d lost his wife and plunged himself into blind survival mode for his boys, Aaron heaved a breath and watched his children with mixed emotions and mounting wonder as they danced around with this virtual stranger.
Aaron looked away, only to send his gaze searching across the sky he loved so much.
“I need Your wisdom. Outwardly she’s beautiful, but You see inside a person, Father, to the very core of the heart. Only You can tell me if she’s the right one to care for my sons. Help me know I’m drawn to her because of the beauty You see, and not because of what I see.”
Chapter Three
“I’ll see who it is.” Mina made her way to the trilling phone the next evening. After answering, Mina handed the cordless to Aaron. “Sarah.”
Aaron brought it to his ear. “Hey, Sarah. What’s up?”
“Hi. Hope I didn’t wake the boys by calling.”
“No, we’re just getting ready for bath time.”
“I’m calling to see if maybe I left my phone there. I’ve checked all other places I was yesterday and today and can’t find it. I don’t use it that often, so I didn’t realize it was missing until a couple hours ago.”
“Have you tried calling it?”
“Yes, but I might have left it on vibrate. I don’t remember. Strange thing is, a couple of times I’ve called, it seemed like someone answered. Then what sounds like a small snowblower runs. Then it disconnects.”
A small snowblower? Aaron eyed his boys—particularly the one with the penchant for phones and making sneak calls: Bryce. But of course there was Braden—not a day shy—who still sometimes answered the phone at times when Aaron’s voice came across the answering machine before Mina could make it to the cordless. Small snowblower did quite accurately describe Braden breathing into a phone before he spoke into it.
Aaron tuned back into Sarah.
“…then it goes to voice mail. I’m afraid the battery will die soon and I won’t be able to find it.”
Aaron rose and looked around the sitting room where Sarah had romped with the boys. “I don’t see it at first glance, but I’ll take a better look and call you back.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
Aaron hung up and moved the footstool. No phone.
Bryce approached cautiously, finger in mouth. “Whatcha doin’ Daddy? Who was on the phone?”
On his knees, Aaron angled toward Bryce. “Miss Sarah. I’m looking for her phone. She might have lost it here. Have you seen it?”
Bryce’s eyes grew wide. He faced Braden, who suddenly avoided Aaron and streaked past the bathroom.
“Son?”
“Um…” Bryce looked ready to flee or cry. He darted guilty looks toward the stairs, where Braden now half slunk, half tiptoed upward.
And suddenly Aaron knew. One of them had the phone.
He could go ahead and call it, hoping to hear it vibrate or chime, but he wanted to give the mini-criminal a chance to come clean first.
“Bryce? Do you know where the phone is?”
He gnawed his finger. “Um. Maybe.”
“Does Braden have the phone?”
Bryce shook his head with vigor. “He doesn’t have it.”
“Does he know where it is?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you?”
“No. Please don’t be mad at him, Daddy.”
Aaron rose. “Braden? Come down here, please.”
Braden had never descended stairs so slowly. “What, Dad?”
“Do you know where Miss Sarah’s phone is?”
Braden fidgeted so much the banister jiggled.
“Son?” Aaron lengthened the word and firmed his tone.
“I don’t have it!”
Aaron drew a breath, hoping to inhale patience along with oxygen.
God, help Braden want to be honest. And help me deal with this right so he learns integrity.
Aaron picked up his cell phone and typed in Sarah’s number. Seconds later a musical tune sounded from the playroom.
Bryce gasped. Braden’s eyes bugged.
“Busted.”
He must not have heard the chime before due to the solid-wood door being closed.
Aaron tilted his chin at Braden, frozen to the stairs. “Go get it. Now.” Aaron’s tone left no room to refute or resist.
He dialed Sarah back at the number in the caller ID and let her know the phone was there. “I’ll call you right back, Sarah.”
Braden shuffled like an endangered snail to the other room. His ploy when he didn’t want to do something or when he was in trouble was to feign fatigue.
“Get a move on. Or get used to no cartoons.”
Braden sped up considerably, then returned with the phone outstretched. “I didn’t mean to steal it.” Braden’s chin wobbled. At least he looked contrite now.
Aaron sat and pulled Braden onto his lap. “Then why did you take it, son?”
“I just borrowed it so she would come back and get it.”
Bryce moved close. “Yeah. We like Miss Sarah and want her to come back.”
Aaron nibbled his bottom lip. At least Braden hadn’t lifted the phone solely for the sake of stealing it. “Taking her phone wasn’t the best way to go about making her want to come back though. Was it?”
The boys shook their heads.
Aaron called Sarah’s landline again. “I’ll bring your phone by so you don’t have to use the gas. But first, I have a couple of boys who’d like to say something.”
“Okay.” Sarah sounded mildly curious.
He passed the phone to Braden.
As Sarah sat at the tiny motel-room table preparing to write one of her thrice-weekly letters, whimpers came across the line, causing her to pause.
“Mi-iss Sarah?”
Bryce or Braden? She couldn’t be sure. “Yes?”
“I—I—I—Please don’t be mad at me and not come back.”
Sarah’s heart melted. “Is this Braden?”
“Ye-heaw.”
“Do you have something to tell me?”
