ISBN 978-1-60260-679-1
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Johnson. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
one
Kelly Coyle gazed around the room at the collection of family members who’d come to celebrate her day. Her mother, though in her midsixties and battling arthritis, still dyed her hair a dark brown, wore makeup to perfection, clothes that would look trendy on a thirty-year-old, and acted every bit as spry as Kelly ever could. Her father, with his salt-and-pepper hair and the most amazing, strike-you-down, blue eyes she’d ever seen, sat on the carpet beside her mother’s chair. Kelly’s young niece, Ellie, had both of them immersed in a dog and cat puzzle the second grader had brought with her.
Kelly’s sister-in-law’s laughter sounded from the kitchen. Kelly knew her brother, Cam, was in there with her. There was no telling what shenanigans the two of them planned to pull for Kelly’s thirty-eighth birthday.
Kelly’s gaze turned to her three daughters. Somehow they had ended up sitting on the couch in stair-step order. Zoey, seventeen, her firstborn, sat with her legs crossed, elbow planted into the armrest and her chin plopped into the palm of her hand. Her appearance had undergone a marked transformation in the last three years—darker hair, darker makeup, darker clothes. Since Tim died, everything about Zoey had darkened.
Tall, thin, athletic, always-trying-to-please, fifteen-year-old Brittany sat in the middle of the couch. The middle child. Brittany second-guessed herself regarding every decision she made. She proved quick to follow others, and there were times Kelly grew more concerned about her follow-the-leader mentality than Zoey’s rebellious attitude.
Candy sat cross-legged beside Brittany. Even though she was eleven and going into middle school in a few short weeks, Candy could not sit still. She was energetic, busy, and always into everyone else’s business. She had to be the center of everything and everyone knew it. But her heart glowed as genuine as her body was active, and many a day God had used her youngest to give Kelly the motivation to keep going after Tim’s death.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Kelly looked up at the man who’d whispered in her ear. Harold Smith, her knight in shining armor. In reality, he was more like the heating guy carrying the wrench, but he’d still saved the day. And after that he’d continued to bless her life. So many people struggle to find a godly love once, and yet God had blessed her twice. She smiled up at his expectant gaze. “I was thinking about how good God has been to me. What a blessing my family is.”
“I agree.” Harold leaned closer, gently pressing his lips against hers. It was cliché, something she could hear her high schoolers say or write in their short stories for her junior/senior language arts class, but the truth was that electricity still shot through her veins when that man’s lips touched hers.
Harold stood to his full height, and Kelly caught a glimpse of Zoey’s contemptuous expression. Kelly released a slow sigh. Tim had been gone for three years, and Kelly hadn’t started dating Harold until almost a year ago. She’d dated no one else, but Kelly knew Zoey’s bitterness wasn’t directed at Harold. The teen had never gotten past Tim’s car accident.
She’d never made peace with God. Kelly picked up her glass from the end table and took a slow drink. Every day Kelly prayed Zoey would embrace God’s peace.
Candy jumped off the couch, breaking Kelly’s reverie. She walked to Kelly and put one arm around her shoulder then twirled a lock of her own hair around the thumb and index finger of her free hand. “Do you feel like an old lady now, Mommy?”
Kelly gulped her soft drink in an attempt not to spew it all over the floor. She wiped her mouth with a napkin as laughter burst from her gut. A chorus of guffaws sounded from the family. “Thirty-eight isn’t that old.”
Candy’s cheeks flushed as the preteen furrowed her brows in embarrassment. It was apparent she didn’t understand the response of the adults. Candy stammered, “But Sara’s mom is only thirty-four, and Tabitha’s mom is twenty-nine.” She scrunched her nose. “I guess Tabitha’s mom is the youngest mom in my class. But thirty-eight is the oldest. I don’t know anybody else’s mom who is that old.”
Kelly wrapped her arms around her youngest child. “But I look good, right?”
“Huh?” Candy scrunched her nose.
Kelly released a laugh as she kissed the top of Candy’s head. “You always make my day.”
Harold grabbed Candy’s hand, his lips tightly pinched in an obvious effort not to laugh. “Come on, you little flatterer, help me get your mom’s cake.”
Candy’s face lit up. “All right.” She pulled away from Kelly’s embrace. “What’s a flatterer, Harold? Why did everyone laugh at me? They’re always laughing at me, and I don’t know what I do that is so funny.”
Kelly watched as the twosome made their way into the kitchen. Candy and Brittany had taken to Harold in only a matter of weeks. Zoey was a different story, but then she wasn’t even fond of Kelly anymore. Harold looked back and winked, making her heart race. Three years ago, she would have never dreamed she would feel this way about another man.
When her husband and father of her three daughters died in a car accident, Kelly thought she’d never know happiness again. As time passed, God began to heal her pain and she was able to enjoy life—her family, her friends, her church, her students. Contentment was the appropriate word to describe what she felt before she met Harold. At peace with herself and her situation.
Then her heater quit working.
The memory brought a smile to her lips. Her brother, Cam, had taken care of all their repair needs after Tim died. Electrical problems. Plumbing issues. Whatever needed fixed, Cam did it. But last November, Cam, his wife, Sadie, and their daughter, Ellie, had taken a short trip to visit her parents in Washington. When Kelly’s heater gurgled its last, Kelly believed she and the girls would tough it out until Cam returned. Until the temperature in the house plunged to fifty degrees. Kelly had no choice but to call the heating guy.
Harold Smith was the first to answer the phone. When the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed man walked through her door, Kelly’s heart went to pitter-pattering, her knees turned to jelly, and giggles she hadn’t heard since junior high spewed from her lips. The man didn’t even have to cast a line; she was already hooked.
Cam nudged her shoulder, breaking her reverie. “How’s it feel to be so old, grandma?”
Kelly glanced at her seventeen-year-old, Zoey, and her fifteen-year-old, Brittany. “I think I’ve got a few years before anyone will be calling me that.”
Zoey rolled her eyes and peered out the front window. Brittany shifted in her chair, crossing her leg. “Really, Uncle Cam, I don’t even have a boyfriend. Don’t even want a boyfriend. They’re all too short for me anyway.”
“There’s gotta be some six-footers at the high school.” Cam continued to tease her. “I bet Zoey could hook you up with one of her friends.”
�
��Yuk. Zoey’s friends are weird.”
Malice slipped from Zoey’s lips. “At least I have friends. I’m not some six-foot freak of nature that boys have to wear stilts to even come close to looking at eye-to-eye. I’m not—”
“That is enough.” Frustration welled inside of Kelly. “We are not going to start—”
“Okay now.” Kelly’s mom clapped her hands then stood and grabbed Brittany’s hand. “Why don’t you show me that new soccer medal since your grandpa and I didn’t get to go to your last tournament.”
Kelly noted the pooling of tears in her middle daughter’s eyes as she led her grandmother to the bedroom. Focusing her attention back on her oldest daughter, Kelly pinched her lips together. Zoey’s body was tense and rigid. She stared at Kelly, as if to dare her mother to say something to her. I don’t even recognize this child, Lord. I expect some squabbling between the girls, but this hatred that Zoey seems to feel—I don’t know what to do with her.
“Time for cake,” Harold hollered as he and Candy burst through the kitchen door.
“Grandma.” Kelly heard Brittany’s voice from the hall. “Come on. Cake.”
Candy’s eyes gleamed with excitement as the twosome walked toward Kelly with the pastry that seemed to be covered with entirely too much fire for a woman who still felt like she was in her midtwenties. “You’ll love this cake, Mom.” Candy’s face flushed as she covered her mouth with her hand, as if trying to hold back a secret.
Kelly peered into Harold’s mischievous gaze. There was no telling what he’d had the baker put on her cake—a tombstone, a cemetery. It had to be something pretty silly for Candy to get so tickled.
He lowered the cake in front of her. Kelly gasped. It was not what she expected at all. She drank in the bright red cursive icing that read, “WILL You MARRY ME?”
Harold watched as Kelly’s deep blue eyes widened in surprise. She lifted one hand to her lips. He almost chuckled out loud at the outlandish sparkling mess of flowers or something that covered her hot pink fingernails. He’d always thought nail stuff was silly, and here he was … in love with a woman who was the queen of the gaudy stuff.
Harold nodded at Cam. Kelly’s brother stood and took the cake from Harold’s grasp. Harold lifted the half-carat marquise diamond ring from the icing and wiped off the band. Kneeling on one knee, he took Kelly’s left hand in his. The light from the living room window seemed to cast a glow around her shoulder-length brown hair, making her look prettier than any angel he’d ever seen in pictures. This woman was entirely too girly, way too smart, too beautiful, too perfect for an old, get-your-hands-dirty, blue-collar guy like him. But the love that radiated from her tear-filled gaze nearly took his breath away, and he couldn’t help but practically yell out a praise to the heavens. He swallowed and whispered, “I love you, Kelly.”
She nodded her head ever so slightly. “I love you, too.”
Her admission calmed his nerves, and Harold took a deep breath. Never in his forty years of existence did he think he’d be doing this. He was a hermit at heart, a huge fan of Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. Harold always connected with the green muppet’s penchant to be a recluse, to do as he wanted, make a mess if he wanted, and to be left alone unless he wanted to make an appearance.
And as for women … as a boy, Harold might as well have been a card-holding member of the Little Rascals’ Women Hater’s Club. When he was a teen, he’d avoided the female species like grease avoids water. As a young man, he’d thrown himself into his work. Something about women—maybe it was that they cried for no reason, got all bent out of shape for no cause, or fussed over the most ridiculous things—made him want to stay away from the whole lot of the female population.
Or possibly it was that they whined over what their hair looked like and sprayed the poor mass with sticky stuff until the ends stood stiff and straight on the top of their heads. And why did they want war paint on their faces? If God had wanted their eyelids to be purple and green, he would have made them that way.
Sure, Harold had to admit they smelled awful good when a guy got home after a long day of working around sweaty guys and broken toilets or busted heaters. Still, did women really need all those bottles and cases he saw in the store to help them smell that way? It seemed a little ridiculous, if not quite a bit pricey.
Then he met Kelly.
The woman he’d driven to that local fingernail place more times than he could count over the last year. The woman who got her hair trimmed and colored more often than he did laundry. The woman whose war paint made her eyes sparkle and her mouth irresistible.
And everything changed.
Now he was willing not only to marry a girl, but take on three more of them. Teenagers and a preteen to boot. The irony of it welled up within him. You have quite a sense of humor, Lord.
He gazed back at the woman he longed to cherish for the rest of his life. He yearned to hold her, comfort her, protect her as only as husband could. Ever so gently, he caressed her knuckles with his thumb. “I’ve waited forty years for you. Will you be my wife?”
Without hesitation, she leaped out of her seat and wrapped her arms around his neck, making him lose his balance and fall to the floor on his back. Lifting herself off him, she sat up on her knees beside his body. “Sorry ’bout that.”
A mischievous grin formed on her lips as he rose to a sitting position. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I’m assuming that means yes.”
She giggled, wrapped her arms around him, knocking him off balance again. His back hit the hard wood with a thud, but he hadn’t felt a thing. Kelly Coyle was going to be his wife.
two
Kelly stuck the identification label she’d made for the new set of class novels on the inside flap of one of the books then handed it to Zoey to place on the bookshelf. “It’s going to be kinda weird having your old mom for a teacher, huh?”
Zoey shrugged. She arranged a few books on the shelf, never turning toward Kelly.
Only seven years had passed since Kelly had finished her college degree. At the age of ten, Zoey’s pride at her mom’s accomplishment had been apparent. Despite having struggled in school, Zoey, from that point on, made every effort to earn good grades. Zoey had been successful, too … until Tim died. Since that time, Kelly’s oldest child had spiraled more and more out of control.
Knowing that she had to keep trying, Kelly added, “I’m looking forward to having you in class. Language arts has always been your favorite subject, just as it is mine. We’ll be able to share—”
“Do you really have to keep going with this song and dance?” Zoey peered at Kelly. Though they’d spent the better part of three hours working in Kelly’s classroom preparing for the new school year to begin in only a few weeks, this was the first time today her daughter had so much as glanced at Kelly.
Kelly placed her hands on her hips, irritation welling in her gut. She’d spent the entire morning tiptoeing on pins and needles, searching for some way to connect with her oldest girl. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Zoey twirled her hand through the air. “This whole mother/daughter bonding stuff. I don’t want to be here. You know I don’t want to help you put your room together.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “What? Are you hoping I’ll tell you all my thoughts and feelings and that will make everything all better? That we’ll be one, great big, happy family again.” She spread out her arms, a snarl forming on her lips. “News flash, Kelly Coyle. Dad is dead. Things will never be all better.”
“You will not take that tone with me.” Kelly stomped toward her daughter. Though Zoey had grown a few inches taller than her mother, Kelly peered up at her child, demanding the respect she had not only earned, but as her mother innately deserved. “Every one of us lost your dad three years ago. We’ve all hurt—”
Zoey rolled her eyes then took a few steps back. “Yeah, some of us more than others.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means”�
��Zoey grabbed her purse and walked toward the door—“I’m not going wedding dress shopping today. I’ll catch you later.”
“Zoey Coyle, you come back here.” Kelly followed her daughter outside. Noting Zoey’s car parked beside her own, Kelly cringed. She’d forgotten Zoey had met her at the school. “You’re not leaving. You are grounded.”
Zoey ignored her and kept walking. Before Kelly could reach her daughter, Zoey opened the car door, slid inside, and drove off. Kelly stared after her, the shock of her daughter’s outright rebellion seeping through her skin. Zoey’s defiance had hit an all-time high. Without a doubt, Zoey would be grounded. Kelly would take away the keys, the cell phone, the television, and whatever other privilege she could think of. But Zoey’s problem wasn’t one that could be fixed with punishment or discipline. Zoey’s was a heart problem. God she needs You so desperately, and I need to know how to be a good mom to her. Help me know what to do.
Harold gripped the cell phone tighter. “Do you want me to go search for her?”
Kelly’s exhausted voice mingled with tears of despair. “No. She’s going to be grounded when she gets home, but I’m going to wait until she gets there. I just needed to vent.”
Harold bit back a reply. He didn’t want to hurt Kelly’s feelings, and he didn’t want Rudy, who sat in the truck’s cab beside him, to see his frustration at the child. From what he’d seen of Zoey, she didn’t need the opportunity to do as she pleased until she got home. She needed to be disciplined—and now. If he had his say, the girl wouldn’t be wearing black makeup and baggy black clothes. Her hair wouldn’t be dyed black and tied up in knots all over the place. The child’s appearance screamed she had problems.
Truth be told, Harold was a little embarrassed when they went places together as a soon-to-be family. He’d never tell Kelly that. He loved that woman with all his heart. And the other two girls, Brittany and Candy, well, they were as sweet and as normal as could be. Sure, the two younger girls fought and picked and cried and whined at each other over the slightest things, like which of them would sit in the front seat of the car or who had to do dishes which days, but they didn’t look at their mother with contempt as Zoey did.
For Better or Worse Page 1
