“Who?”
Dylan nudged him with his elbow. “You know exactly who I’m talking about. Hannah Douglas. I know you’ve always liked her.”
Brody shrugged off his friend’s comment, preferring not to go back to that time. “That was many years and a lot of experiences ago.”
“Just as well. Those twins are a big responsibility. You want to date that woman, you’ve got huge shoes to fill.”
“David had big feet?” Brody asked, deliberately misunderstanding what Dylan was saying.
Dylan seemed to ignore his remark. “David Douglas was a good guy,” he said, his voice quiet. Almost reverent. “A man that good shouldn’t have died on some Afghani field by a roadside. Lousy bombers making Hannah a widow and single mother.”
“Only the good die young,” Brody murmured.
“He was always the first to volunteer for stuff. Always helping people.” Dylan was quiet a moment, as if remembering all the good things David Douglas had done. “Remember that summer when I was thinking of quitting my job as a carpenter? Leaving Jasper Gulch?”
“Was that the summer we cruised down the Oregon coast on our motorbikes?” Brody sighed. “I don’t think we drove under ninety that whole trip.”
“Yup. That summer. I never told you what happened when I came back from that trip because I felt embarrassed.”
“About what?”
Dylan shrugged, then crossed over the street. “You and I were pretty wild then. Neither of us attended church anymore.”
Though his relationship with God was an integral part of Brody’s life now, for many years the faith he had been born and raised with had been relegated to the “someday” corner of his life. The same place the wife and the three kids were always put. Somehow, in his wilder years, he had always assumed when he was ready for God, the rest would fall into place, as well.
Now he was twenty-nine and still no closer to finding a wife than he had been then.
“Well, I was feeling down,” Dylan was saying.
Brody punched him in the shoulder. “That was why we went on the trip. To get you out of that funk.”
“Trouble was, it didn’t help. I didn’t know what I wanted. David came over when we got back from our trip. He said he was concerned about me. Said he wanted to pray with me. It felt a little funny, especially after all the goofing around you and I had done, but I said yes.” Dylan shrugged, as if still self-conscious about what had happened. “Anyhow, praying with him gave me such peace and comfort. He came once a week just to talk and see how things were with me. He encouraged me to start coming back to church.”
Brody felt a flash of guilt at the memory. What a contrast. One friend who figured going crazy was the way to fix the problems in Dylan’s life. The other, who wasn’t even as close to Dylan as Brody was, knowing the right thing to do.
“So that’s why you started going back to church,” Brody said quietly as he punched in the pass code to get into the fire station. “I always wondered.”
“It was. We talked about work and jobs and he told me being a carpenter was a good thing to do. That building houses was important. That maybe I should find a way to give to the community, as well. Step outside of myself. And that’s when I volunteered for this gig,” he finished, his wave taking in the fire hall as they walked up the stairs to the dorms where they slept and kept their personal gear.
Brody felt a moment of letdown. “I always thought you signed up because of me.”
“Kind of, but mostly because of David. He did a lot of good for a lot of people.”
And Hannah, as well.
The hardest fire to fight is an old flame, Brody thought, reality falling into his life like the thud of an ax. He always had a vague feeling Hannah was out of reach.
Now he knew for sure.
* * *
By the time Hannah locked the doors of town hall, the pain behind her eyes had blossomed into a full-blown headache. Her feet ached and her back was sore and she generally just felt sorry for herself after such a busy day. But as she trudged across Main Street to her apartment, she stopped her moments of self-pity.
Forgive me, Lord, she prayed. Help me be thankful for what I have.
The twins were healthy and she had the support of her friends and family.
But I’m alone.
The taunting thought worried at her moment of peace. Truth to tell, her loneliness had taken on a new hue the past few months. Losing David so soon after they married had been difficult. He had been a part of her life since she was in grade school. They had dated since the ninth grade. He was all she had ever known.
When he had signed up for the army, she had tried to be supportive. But when he proposed marriage just before he had received his orders to ship out, she had struggled with his urgency to get married. Her parents had simply told her to go with her heart. If she had followed their advice, she would have put off the marriage. She would have waited, but when David’s parents had added their voices to his, they created a pressure she was unable to withstand.
Two months later, she was a widow and pregnant with twins, unable to indulge in second thoughts. Her life had been a whirlwind of uncertain emotions and busyness ever since.
And in the past few months, a sense of loneliness had been added to the emotional stew.
Her thoughts slipped back to Brody as she opened the door leading to the stairs up to her apartment. Was it her overactive imagination, or maybe her lonely heart, that thought he had been flirting with her?
No sooner did that thought form than she heard Chrissy’s wails growing louder as she walked up the narrow stairs. Hannah took the last flight two at a time, digging in her purse for the key to the door.
Inside her apartment her mother sat in a wooden rocking chair holding a sobbing Chrissy, Corey clinging to her denim skirt, also crying. Chrissy’s blond curls clung to her forehead, and as Hannah closed the door, the little girl leaned away from her grandmother and reached out for Hannah, tears flowing down her scrunched-up cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” Hannah said, taking the hot bundle of sadness from her mother and tucking Chrissy’s warm head under her chin. “You’re still not feeling good, are you?” Chrissy released a few more sobs then quieted. Hannah dropped to the floor, shifted Chrissy to one arm, then scooped Corey up with her other arm. As he snuggled into her, blessed silence descended in the apartment.
“How was your day?” her mother asked, still sitting in the chair, her head resting against the back. Her glasses were smudged and her hair mussed and Hannah suspected the orange stain down the front of her shirt was from lunch.
“You look tired, Mom,” she said, guilt falling like a familiar weight on her shoulders. “I should have come here at lunchtime instead of going to the café.”
Her mother waved off her objections and smiled. “You needed the break. Your father came and helped me with the children. We had fun, though I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean up.”
Hannah took in the toys scattered around the apartment with its mismatched furniture given to her by friends and people from the community. When she imagined becoming a mother and bringing grandchildren into her parents’ lives, this was not the picture she had envisioned.
“And how was your day?” her mother repeated.
“It was busy,” Hannah replied, nuzzling Chrissy, who lay quietly in her arms now, her chubby hands clutching at Hannah’s sweater. “We received far more people signing up for the fair than originally estimated.”
“That will be