'Til Death (A Rebel Ridge Novel)
Page 32
The day Wesley Duggan testified in court and was jailed for perjury. Lincoln’s first Christmas with Aunt Tildy and the Walker family.
Meg and Lincoln ringing in the New Year in his bed, making love on a Storm at Sea.
The day Lincoln appeared in court, and was pronounced cleared of all charges and his record expunged.
The day they were married in their old country church.
The day Lincoln showed her the blueprint for the house they were going to build.
The night she and Lincoln made the baby she was carrying.
The day they leveled the grade to begin construction on their new house.
* * *
By the time spring came to Rebel Ridge they were well into the first year of their new life.
Meg often felt as if the past eighteen years she’d spent alone had been to prepare her to truly appreciate the joy of the life that now lay ahead. She and Lincoln had gotten a very late start on the life they’d planned so many years ago, but as he said, they were wasting no time catching up.
The first time they’d gone to Dallas she’d been taken aback by the size and the noise. They’d been numerous times since, and she was learning to like hot Mexican food and cold beers.
They would be in their new house on the old Fox home place long before snowfall—the new house with a room big enough for quilt looms and shelves for fabrics, and a large cutting table to lay out her designs. It was to be next to the nursery and across the hall from their bedroom.
Three vital rooms in her house that formed a triangle binding her life as perfectly as the triangles she sewed into her quilts.
Only now and then were they reminded of how close they’d both come to dying, but that just reinforced the fact that they had surely lived for a reason.
As Meg’s belly grew bigger, the house grew closer and closer to completion.
The night before they were set to move in, Linc took her up to the building site.
She was standing on the wraparound porch and looking up into the night sky with his arms around her shoulders, his chin resting on the crown of her head.
“Look! A falling star!” she said, pointing toward the east and the flash of light streaking across the blue-black sky.
“I saw one of those the first night I came back here,” he said. “At the time, all it did was remind me of my fall from grace.”
“What do you think of now?” she asked.
Linc stroked the swell of her belly, then kissed the side of her neck right below her ear.
“I think of how many nights we will stand on this porch looking out onto this land like our people did before us, and watch stars burning out that began falling long before we were born. I think of infinity, Margaret Ann, because that’s what you are to me.”
Meg was so full of love for this man that she could hardly speak. Her vision blurred as the star burned out above them, but she didn’t care. There would be others, for as long as they lived, ’til death—and then forever again, because theirs was a forever kind of love.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460309704
Copyright © 2013 by Sharon Sala
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