A moment later, the three of them piled into Summer’s car and hit the road for Austin. Summer hooked her iPhone up to an auxiliary cable and put on her country music playlist, and together she and Susan belted out each song as its twangy beats filled the sedan. Even Ben joined in for a special rendition of “Live like you were Dying” by Tim McGraw. Summer was pleasantly surprised to find he’d inherited some of his mother’s musical talent.
After what felt like no time at all, they pulled up to a large medical facility and parked the car. The mood immediately changed.
“What’s this? This isn’t the concert,” Susan grumbled.
“Just a pit stop, Mom.” Ben got out of the car and grabbed Susan’s luggage from the trunk.
She shook her head adamantly. “If it’s a pit stop then why are you taking my bags? And why does that sign say Austin Rehabilitation Center?”
Summer braced herself for the argument she’d known was coming. “I’m sorry, Susan. We didn't mean to trick you, but—”
“Yes, you did! You did mean to! You planned this behind my back, lied to my face. I’m not going in there!” She made wide sweeping gestures with her hands as she spoke, then crossed her arms over her chest like a petulant child.
Ben slammed the trunk shut. His face looked more angry than sympathetic. “Don’t talk to her like that, Mom. It’s not her fault. I was the one—”
Summer raised her hand to silence Ben before he could say anything more, then turned in her seat to face his mother. “You’re right, Susan. We did trick you, but only because we didn’t know how else we could help. These past few weeks I have loved getting to know both you and Ben and, heck, the whole town of Sweet Grove too. But did you know that, at times, it’s like you’re two different people? There’s the woman I saw this morning who patiently taught me to sing my favorite song even though we both know I can’t carry a tune to save my life.”
She paused a moment, fixing a big smile on Susan, but the other woman couldn’t even be bothered to look at Summer. She did, however, seem to be paying rapt attention, so Summer took a deep breath and continued. “Then there’s the woman who was so drunk out of her mind that first night we met that she tried to pick a fight with me and my friends in the middle of a bar.”
She saw Ben’s form move in her peripheral vision, but all of Summer’s attention was focused on Susan, on watching for the exact moment her words hit home. Oh, how she prayed they would hit the needed mark.
“There’s the woman who makes jokes and pays compliments, but there’s also the one who is angry, who tries to hide behind a bottle of booze every waking moment of the day. And, remember, you tricked Ben to get us together. You tricked him, and it worked. You tricked him, not to be mean, but because you love him, and you could see what was best for him even if he couldn’t yet see it for himself. And, Susan, he loves you right on back and he wants more of you—the real you. Not the woman who picks fights in bars or needs a drink to get up and face the morning. He’s been there for you all these years. Now he’s asking you—I’m asking you—can you be there for him?”
Susan uncrossed her arms and wrung her hands in her lap. She chewed on her lower lip. Maybe because she craved a drink and needed to keep her mouth busy. Maybe to keep from speaking too soon and saying something she would regret.
When it became clear that she was not going to speak just yet, Ben leaned in through the open car window and handed his mother a stack of cards. “I asked Summer to keep you busy this morning so I could work on getting these,” he explained. “Go on, open them.”
Susan’s hand shook as she opened the first envelope, a cheery pink one with her name written in large, loopy letters. She pulled out a Hallmark card with a cartoon apple on the front. It had a hot water bottle and a thermometer sticking from its illustrated mouth. Get Well Soon, the front read.
Inside there was a handwritten note and a signature that appeared to say Maisie Bryant. Summer tried not to stare. Susan needed this moment for herself, but as Susan read, Summer picked up bits and pieces of what each card said.
We lost more than Stephen that day, Maisie’s message read. You’ve already lost one son. Don’t lose the other by forgetting about him.
Susan sniffed and tucked the card back into its envelope and then opened up the next one. This one had a pair of orange kittens on its front and a message from Jennifer inside. You are my hero. You’re the reason I became a teacher too. I am praying that you will find your fire again.
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes and opened the next card from Pastor Bernie. God never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes we all need help to see His plan. Sweet Grove loves you and wants you back. May His grace shine upon you.
Susan’s tears fell freely by the time she reached a card from Sheriff Grant. I miss seeing you smile, Susan. Do whatever it takes to get that smile back.
She continued to flip through the cards, opening each one and taking time to digest the message inside. When she had finished, Ben handed her one last card. This one rested in a plain white envelope. The card inside had no frills or intricate designs. Its surface was glossy, bright yellow.
Susan opened it and a picture fell out into her lap. It showed a young boy Summer instantly recognized as Ben. Standing beside him was a slightly older boy with darker hair and eyes, but the same smile. A more youthful version of Susan squatted down beside them, a huge, joyful smile on her pretty face. She fingered each of the three figures in turn as if caressing them could bring back that innocent time, the time before their lives had all changed irreparably.
“Do it for Stephen,” Ben said. “He’d want you to get better. I want you to get better. Please, Mom. Can’t we be a family again?”
Chapter 23
Ben’s first night at home without his mother had been the most difficult.
“You miss her,” Summer said, pulling him in for a cuddle and stroking his hair as she spoke to him.
Ben sighed. Why was it that only one part of his life could be right at any given time? Then again, before Summer, his world had been in complete disarray. At least he was making progress now, striding toward a better life one step at a time.
“I didn’t realize it would be this hard,” he admitted. “What am I going to do without her for three whole months?”
Summer smiled and mussed up his hair. “Well, you’ve got me for almost two of them. I’ll make sure you don’t get lonely.”
He kissed her then, ending that particular conversation. Both knew where it could lead, and neither wanted to go there.
The issue, however, remained. What would happen once Iris returned and Summer was no longer needed to run the flower shop? Ben couldn’t think about that just then, or the sadness and uncertainly of his life would drag him into the darkness once again.
Now that he’d seen the light of Summer, he only wanted to bask in her warmth. It all had to work out in the end, didn’t it? God wouldn’t have answered Ben’s prayer only to change His mind and take it all away again. Even though Ben was new to this whole faith thing, he simply couldn’t believe in a God who would play such cruel games. And so he remained hopefully—perhaps even foolishly—optimistic, brushing the thought of ever losing Summer so far to the side that, with time, it didn’t even register anymore.
That is, until the truth came crashing back and knocked Ben clean off his feet.
Several weeks had passed, and he and Summer had spent every single one of them wrapped in each other’s arms or walking hand in hand through the town of Sweet Grove. Even though he missed his mother, he loved the new shape his life had taken. He loved Summer, and he told her every chance he had.
Everything had changed, though, on one ordinary August day. He’d finished his shift at the market, and rather than head to the library as was once his routine, he now came to Morning Glory’s to help Summer finish her work for the day and close up shop.
When he arrived, he found Summer talking on the phone with her back turned away from the d
oor. He came up to hug her hips from behind, but she brushed him away.
“Yes, yes, thank you. Yes, I’ll see you then. Thank you so much for this opportunity,” she said, then hung up her phone. This call hadn’t been with a customer ordering flowers. Ben’s heart churned in his chest. Oh, no. Oh, no. Not yet. Please God, not ever.
She turned to face him, a deep frown marring her beautiful face.
“We both knew this couldn’t last forever,” she started, and Ben knew that his worst fears—his fears that were so terrible he couldn’t even fully acknowledge them—had officially come to light. “As much as we may have wanted it to. There’s no place for me here, Ben.”
The sudden declaration shocked him so much, he needed to take a seat, to brace himself for this conversation—the conversation he had foolishly believed wasn’t coming. “Yes, there is a place,” he insisted. “Right here with me, the man who loves you.”
“Ben, don’t.” She lifted her hand and clutched at her forehead as if fending off the world’s worst migraine.
He wanted to go to her, to hold her, to tell her to stay, but he was so afraid of what happened next and he couldn’t stand the thought of her pushing him away. Instead he chose to focus on the facts. “Don’t you love me too?”
She shook her head then sighed, still unwilling to look into his eyes. “You know I do,” she said. “And if you really do love me don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t understand. Everything was great yesterday. Who was that on the phone? What changed today? And how can we unchange it?”
She dropped her hand from her face, and Ben saw her eyes were rimmed with red—though not a tear fell. “My Aunt Iris is coming home tonight.”
Could it really be? Had so much time passed already? Somehow it felt like Summer had been with him forever, but at the same time as if they’d only just gotten started. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the end. He wanted to tell her all these things, but instead he simply said, “Oh, I see.”
Summer paced the length of the shop, filling the small storefront with a cloud of nervous energy. “She’ll take over the shop again, and there will be nothing left for me to do. We both know I’d only get in her way,” she explained. “And I can’t just sit around the house all day, Ben. I need to be out among people. I need to have a purpose.”
He nodded. He knew all this about her, but he still didn’t know why she couldn’t stay right here with him. She was the answer to his prayer. Forever and ever, amen. God had sent her to save him and his mother. What would happen to them without her?
“Where will you go?” he asked, still unable to say the most important things that ran through his mind.
“I just accepted a job in Portland, doing administrative work at a law firm. I leave the day after tomorrow.” She picked up a small paper weight from the table and tossed it from hand to hand, then resumed pacing.
“Administrative work? Law firm? That’s not right for you at all.”
“But what choice have I got, Ben? I have to do something with my life.”
He stood and hoped she would stop pacing long enough for him to gather her in his arms, but she just kept walking back and forth, just kept walking away from him, from the future he so desperately wanted them to have together. “Stay here, Summer,” he pleaded. “The people of this town love you. I love you.”
She stopped pacing but did not come into his arms. Instead she hung her head and spoke woodenly. “You know I can’t stay. If I stayed and did nothing, refused to face my fears, I wouldn’t be the woman you fell in love with anymore, now would I?”
“Then let me come with you!”
“You know you can’t do that, Ben. Your mom will be back in just over a month. She needs you now more than ever.” Summer was right about that—no matter how wrong she was now about everything else.
“But what about what I need?” he argued.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I wouldn’t be true to myself if I stayed, and I wouldn’t be good enough for you either.”
“But—”
She raised her hand to stop him from saying anything more.
“Ben, I can’t. Not right now. Not anymore. Can we just—? Can you help me close up here? We can talk about this more later. It still hasn’t all quite sunken in.”
He agreed to drop the topic and dutifully helped her shut down the flower shop for the night. But everything she’d just said wounded him deeply.
How could she possibly think she wasn’t good enough for him? Or that she had to leave in order to make herself better? She was already the best thing to ever happen in his life. After all, he was the one with no education and a dead-end job. She was already too good for him, but rather than question how they’d ended up together, he’d instead chosen to appreciate it, to be thankful. What if once Summer had done all she needed to do to make herself “good enough for him”, she no longer felt he was good enough for her?
His head spun with all the implications.
He didn’t care if he had to give up on his dream of going to school and becoming a history teacher altogether. Now a life with Summer was the only dream that mattered, and it was quickly slipping from his grasp.
How could he convince her to stay? He had to come up with something. And fast.
The rest of his life depended on it.
If being in love was the best thing Summer had ever felt, breaking Ben’s heart was by far the worst—especially since she’d had to break her own, too. But they had brought this on themselves, hadn’t they?
Yes.
She’d spent every free moment in his arms these past couple months. Partially because she worried about him being alone while his mother served out her stint in rehab, but mostly because being in his arms felt like exactly where she needed to be.
Unfortunately, Ben’s girlfriend wasn’t exactly an occupation she could put on business cards. She needed a job—a career—and she’d neglected that fact for far too long. In hindsight, she should have been continuing her job search—and her soul search—that entire summer in Sweet Grove, checking out books like What Color is Your Parachute?, browsing the listings online, working her network to see what she could find, even exploring possible graduate programs that might have a place for her.
But she hadn’t done any of that. Mostly because it had been far too easy to push aside these unpleasant tasks and instead kick back and enjoy her new relationship with Ben.
Faith, she’d told herself. But she realized now that faith wasn’t just about sitting back and waiting for good to come to you. It was also about being willing to take that leap, about being willing to charge after what you wanted. She’d understood that too late to change things now, and she needed to make up for lost time however she could.
That’s why when a recruiter called her with a job opening in Portland, she’d taken their series of quick telephone interviews. And when a few short days later, the company called to make a formal offer, she’d accepted it sight unseen and without a moment’s hesitation. After all, no one else was making her any offers—and she couldn’t live on love alone, as much as she wished she could find a way to do just that.
She hadn’t hesitated, but by now she’d second-guessed herself plenty. But no matter how she turned the problem over in her mind, she always came up with the same solution. She needed to leave.
Yet again, she ran through an endless series of what-if scenarios as she drove to pick Aunt Iris up from the airport. She thought back to her first meeting with Ben, their afternoon at the wishing well, their pledge to stop being afraid taken atop the cider mill bridge—she thought about every moment in between, and every moment since.
Still, if she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t change a single thing.
The love that had bloomed between them was a gift she’d forever cherish, even when she and Ben had long since moved on to their real lives. Maybe he could start things up again with Elise—or even Sally. For a
s crazy as the librarian came across, she clearly had strong feelings for Ben. And why wouldn’t she?
Ben was awesome.
So awesome, in fact, that she knew he would find a way to be okay without her. He had to, because she was leaving town. Did he understand that she didn’t have a choice in the matter either? Would he forgive her for allowing herself to fall so head over heels in love and for dragging him down with her?
Oh, if only Portland weren’t so far from Sweet Grove. But it was far, too far. Then again, if they were meant to be together, it would eventually work out, right? Maybe once she had a bit of experience under her belt, she could find a job somewhere closer. Maybe Austin. And maybe if Ben wasn’t…
Oh, who was she kidding? Certainly not herself, and not Ben either.
Why had she been so foolish? Why had she allowed herself to fall in love, to envision a future with Ben, when she’d always known it couldn’t end any other way than this?
She would hate herself a little bit forever for having done this to him, but life was about the journey, not the destination, and her train was getting ready to pull out of the station.
She pulled up to the arrival gate and watched as stranger after stranger poured from the airport. She smiled sadly to herself as the returning travelers leaped into the arms of the loved ones who’d missed them. Would she ever find a love like that again? Or had she already used up her one chance for greatness?
Aunt Iris emerged from the double sliding doors, weighted down by two huge suitcases and a duffel bag. The moment she spied Summer, a huge smile crept across her tanned face, and for the briefest of seconds, Summer forgot her troubles and just felt happy.
She jumped out of the car, leaving it to idle at the curb, and ran to hug her aunt. She hadn’t realized until now how much she had missed Iris.
“It’s so good to see you, Sunny Summer,” Iris cooed. “I have so much to tell you and Sunny Sunshine about my trip. So many pictures to share.”
Love's Prayer (The First Street Church Romances Book 1) Page 13
