LITMIR.BIZ

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up like hard ropes. How difficult this had to be for him, coming to a home and a life and a family he could not remember. He was weak and wounded and not the man he was. He must have been able to see that, she realized now, seeing himself in the photo album.

      A downside she hadn’t anticipated.

      Aching for him, she left her hand on his shoulder and kept the contact between them. “Goodbye, Kath, and thanks again.”

      Katherine glanced over her shoulder as she snagged her designer purse from the counter. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. Good night, and, Jonas, it’s so good to see you home.”

      Danielle felt her husband nod in acknowledgment, but her heart was too full of emotions too complicated to sort out. Tyler was climbing into his chair at the table, and Madison was mutinously—although adorably—running after her departing aunt, then looking at her parents, who were not acknowledging her mutiny, and her lower lip stuck out farther.

      “All right! Mexi-fries!” Tyler pumped his fist in victory. “I getta say grace. Can I? Please?”

      “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

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