Two quick items:
First – Starting TODAY and running through December 13, 56 Tips is free. If you haven’t already, grab a copy and if I can beg… leave a review. That minute of your time helps me out more than you know. (If you haven’t left a review for TOUCHED, or any of the Foundations books or the Covenant of Trust books, that would make a really swell Christmas present for a certain writer I know…)
Second – TOUCHED will be free December 15 -19 in preparation for the release of EMBRACED. Speaking of … enjoy chapter five.
Saturday, February 18
My father would have been fifty-seven today. At least two of us, almost certainly just two of us, would have headed to St. Louis for the day. We would have eaten out some place and he would have opened whatever gift I had picked up on the drive over. Then he would have invited us to stay and go to church with them in the morning. I would have refused. He would have nodded without looking at me, and he would have sighed, but then he would have put a hand on my shoulder and told me how glad he was to see me.
My heart hurt for what would’ve been.
I wanted to tell Christopher about his papa today, especially in the quiet before his mother got up and the chaos began. I got Christopher’s baby book out and we looked at the pictures of him and my dad. My dad beamed in those pictures. “Pa,” Christopher said as he patted the pictures.
“Yep, that’s your papa. I wish he was going to be here today, but we’ll just have to remember him.”
“Kiss.” That’s what Christopher called himself, and every baby he saw.
“Yes, that’s Christopher. Papa used to have red hair like yours. Did you know that? You get it from him. Mommy and me and Nana all have blond hair. Even Mimi has blonde hair.” Well, at one time she had blonde hair and her current hair color reflected that.
“Michael!”
“Mama’s up early.” I put Christopher back in his bed and found Stacy leaning against the doorframe of the bedroom, holding her hand against her forehead. “Are you all right?”
“I’m having a terrible migraine.” Not a hangover. People judge you for having hangovers. They don’t judge you for having migraines.
“Want me to get you some aspirin?”
“Yes, and a cup of coffee, baby.”
Baby. I put my arm around her. “Why don’t you lie down? I’ll bring them up.”
“Can I ask you a silly question? I mean, you promise you won’t laugh?”
“Oh, I won’t laugh.”
She leaned up and whispered, “Did we sleep together?”
“No.”
“Well, I hoped not. I mean, with us divorcing and all . . . but when I woke up . . . You understand?”
I did. I understood every bit of her desperate shallow vanity. I understood I saw a side of her no one else did, because she knew I would protect her. But I also understood that wasn’t enough. She would leave me anyway.
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