Coming Home: (Contemporary Christian Romance Boxed Set): Three Stories of Love, Faith, Struggle & Hope

by Debra Ullrick

  “Well, I was wondering when the big engagement shindig is for one thing.”

  “Oh.” That threw Keith off for a minute. “Week from today.”

  “At the mansion?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, are you coming over some time so we can hang out before the old ball and chain gets back or what?”

  Keith shifted the phone to the other ear, picked up one more shirt and then another skirt and put them in the cart. “How’s Friday?” He felt guilty about leaving his best friend hanging—even if he did have a zillion other things to think about.

  “I need to go potty,” Peter said from the cart, and Maggie looked at Keith. The multitasking was beginning to fry his nerves.

  “Friday works for me,” Greg said. “You want to just meet at Tonie’s for pizzas, and we’ll go from there?”

  Maggie waved Keith down even as she lifted Peter from the cart. “We’ll be right back.”

  Gratefully, Keith nodded. “Yeah, okay.” His attention swung back to the conversation. “Friday at Tonie’s.” He sorted through the next rack, found nothing, and pushed the cart forward. They were running out of options.

  “And what time’s the big party start Saturday?”

  “Uh.” It took some searching to locate the information in his brain. “6:30. Dallas is flying in that morning at ten. I’ll go pick her up and then her folks get here at…” The correct times slip-slid through his mind, not stopping long enough to lodge there. He pulled another shirt out, examined it, and put it back. “Umm, one, one-fifteen, something like that I think. I’m sure we’ll pick them up, and then head back up to the mansion.”

  “You talked to Dallas recently?”

  “Uh, yeah.” This conversation was raking horrible feelings through him. “Last night. Night before last. She’s good. Studying her brains out. You know Dallas.” He caught sight of Maggie on the other side of the store but coming toward him. “Listen, Greg, I’ve gotta get. I’ll talk to you Friday.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  “You know me.”

  “Yeah. I know you. Don’t be late.”

  Keith laughed at that. “Later, man.” He hung up just as she walked back up. She started to put Peter in the cart, but at hip level she realized how much stuff was in there.

  “I’m not buying all of this.”

  “You’re right. You’re not. I am. You want to try it on or just take it?”

  Her gaze came up to his, and shock laced the edges of it. “Keith…”

  “No. This isn’t a discussion. You’re getting whatever fits, so do you want to try it on here or take it home and try it on there? Your choice.”

  She shook her head in frustration and checked her watch. “It’s almost two. The kids are exhausted. We’d better get back, or Patty Ann is going to go ballistic… if she hasn’t already.”

  In the front of the cart, Isabella did a forward bob as sleep dragged her down. Keith looked at her, and although he wanted some confirmation that the clothes would fit, he knew Maggie was right. “Okay, but don’t weasel out on me. You will keep and wear anything that fits.”

  “Me? Weasel?” Maggie shot him an innocent look that stole his heart. “I never weasel.”

  The kids were down for a nap, which took next to no effort to pull off. Maggie went to her room where the Wal-Mart bags were stacked on her bed. She shook her head. Somehow in the time she’d been gone, he’d accumulated far more than she’d wanted to get. Worse, he had sent her to the pickup with the kids so she couldn’t see how much it had all cost. With a sigh and knowing she couldn’t keep it all, she pulled the turquoise and white striped shirt out. She held it up to her and turned to the mirror over the dresser.

  A smile slid through her heart. He was crazy. She really loved that about him.

  “Hey. Sorry I’m late,” Keith said in one short string of words as he strode into the dining room at 6:05. He put his hat on the chair at the head of the table and was almost in his own chair when he took one look at her and stopped dead. “Wow.” He tilted his head to the side and ran his gaze up and down her. “Nice.”

  Her smile was a mix of happiness and shyness. “Like it?” With her hair pulled up and back from her face, the white collar just over the first turquoise stripe set off her skin.

  Slowly he lowered himself into the chair. “Are you kidding? They won’t know who you are when they come back.”

  “Eat. Eat. Eat.” Isabella knocked her hand on the high chair tray. The food was already on the table.

  “Did y’all already pray?” he asked, looking at Maggie, which wasn’t exactly safe at this point.

  “We were waiting for you.”

  His heart filled his chest. “Well, there’s a good excuse.” He held out his hand across the table to her, and she took it.

  Taking Isabella’s hand in hers, Maggie bent her head. “Dear Father, we thank You for this food and this time together again. Watch over us, and be with us tonight and always. Amen.”

  He loved hearing her pray, and it was getting harder and harder to not let his brain catalog everything else he was starting to love about her.

  “You don’t go to church?” Keith asked later as he followed Maggie to her door after their few minutes on either side of Peter’s bed. She pulled on his heart like a magnet, dragging him with her, making him want to stay with her as crazy as that sounded.

  “Church?” The question turned her around.

  “Yeah, you know. Big building with the steeple on it.”

  Annoyance drifted over her. “I know what church is. Why are you asking?”

  He shrugged. “Just a question. You pray like you were born in church. I just thought… Well, I wondered… Tomorrow is…”

  She lifted her chin in understanding. “You’re wondering why I don’t go on Sundays.”

  “No.” Sheepishly, he glanced at her. “I was wondering if you were planning to go tomorrow.”

  That thought wound through her eyes. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t really have a way to go unless I take my car, and I don’t know how far I’d trust it. Besides, I can’t just take the kids, and I can’t leave the kids either. Something tells me Patty Ann would take a very dim view of that.”

  He laughed. “Not to mention Inez.”

  “Yeah. There’s a comforting thought.” She sighed. “I don’t even know where the churches are around here, or what time they start.” With one hand she lifted the waves of hair out of her face.

  “But you’d go if that stuff wasn’t a problem?”

  She anchored her arms over her middle. “Well, yeah, probably. But they are… a problem.”

  Keith’s gaze took all of her in. The A-shirt, the tan pants, the gentle undulating waves over her soft, innocent face. He shouldn’t make the offer, and yet not making it would kill him. They would only get this one chance, and as stupid as that was, he would never forgive himself if he didn’t take it. “Tell you what. You get the kids ready and meet me out front at 9:30.”

  Her eyebrows lowered.

  “The car seats are still in my truck.”

  She shook her head. “But…”

  He hated pleading on most occasions, but this time it felt more like the only way to keep her from saying no. “Please, Maggie. Let me do this for you.”

  She gazed at him. “Why?”

  His smile was barely there. “Because I want to. That’s why.”

  Chapter Seven

  Isabella was perched on Maggie’s hip, Peter on Keith’s as the four of them walked into the little church on the other side of Pine Hill. Keith hadn’t been in this church in a long time. When he sat down in the bench and put Peter on his lap, Keith’s gaze went to the front. In his mind the casket still sat right there. With barely a sigh, he was right back there—the incomprehension, the sadness, the fear wrapping around him.

  Stoicism dropped into his heart. He wouldn’t cry. He hadn’t then, and he wouldn’t now. At that moment Maggie looked over at him and smiled. If he’d had only
a small amount of sanity less, he would’ve reached over and taken her hand. He knew what that hand felt like in his. It was wrong, but he wanted to feel it again and again forever.

  Hardly smiling at her, he turned his gaze up front. He could do this. For her, he could do this. He needed to if only to pay her back for giving him a piece of himself he had lost so long ago. Bowing his head, he let his mind go back to the memories waiting there.

  Her perfume, her gentleness, her tenderness. His heart filled with the memories of the woman who had shaped him into the man he was today.

  “I’ll be back, Keith. I promise,” she said again in his memory, and he had no trouble at all recalling that voice. “You be good while I’m gone.”

  Emotion surged to the surface, but he beat it back. He hadn’t done the best of jobs of keeping that last promise. He’d tried, but it wasn’t exactly the easiest assignment in the world.

  The service started, and Keith stood Peter next to him. Once on his feet, Keith glanced over at her. With Isabella on her hip and God in her eyes, Keith wondered how much she looked like his mother surely had, standing in this church with a little tow-headed boy standing right next to her.

  He put his hands on the bench ahead of him and arched his shoulders forward. She had been gone for seventeen years, but to him, she had never really left.

  “You want to stop somewhere and eat?” Keith asked when they were back in the pickup.

  Maggie turned to him pensively. “We’d probably better get back. I’m sure lunch will be waiting.”

  “Yeah. Right.” It took him more than a minute of driving before he got the emotions firmly put back in their place. Then he glanced over at her. “So, what do you say, horseback riding tomorrow? We could go out to the waterfall.”

  “Waterfall?”

  “It’s not bad. Real easy ride. The kids will love it.” His heart was now talking for him. “We could take a picnic, spend a few hours, let them play in the water. It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know. Inez might…”

  “Let me worry about Inez.”

  Maggie looked over at him, obviously still not convinced. “You don’t think they will be mad?”

  He didn’t really care what they would think. “Na. It’s one day, one afternoon. How could they get mad about that?”

  Maggie did her best to have everything ready Monday morning, but life wasn’t cooperating. Peter seemed to have grown two inches overnight, and suddenly nothing fit. She would have to mention that to someone, the prospect of which did not sound inviting. Isabella was not in the best of moods, and Maggie wondered if she might be getting sick.

  There were no real, solid signs, but a general lethargy that seemed to drag on the little girl’s spirit.

  “Are you not feeling good?” Maggie asked, and Isabella looked at her from the changing table with wide eyes that told her no more than she already knew. “Well, I think swimming is out for you today, little one.” With the child’s clothes changed, Maggie picked her up and turned Peter for the kitchen. “Let’s get some breakfast. We’ve got lessons to get done before Keith gets back to take us riding.”

  Her heart bounced on the mention of his name. Church the day before had been so wonderful. It was strange because she wouldn’t have pegged him for a church-goer, and in truth he had looked rather out of place. Yet he took her because he knew she wanted to go. Something about that made her heart dance.

  At breakfast, he was normal Keith again—down-to-earth, nice, and work-focused. Ike called again, apparently they had made it back from the race. Q-Main had gotten third. She couldn’t tell how he felt about that. In fact, information about reality was having a hard time crowding out information about how her heart felt every time he was around.

  He stood from the table and grabbed his hat. “I’ll be back about eleven. I talked to Inez. She’ll have lunch ready to take.”

  Maggie nodded, watching him, and wishing she could stop time. Here, in the breakfast area, him standing there, hat in hand, life felt so right, so perfect, and she never wanted that to end. “We’ll be ready.”

  Ready they were. Standing on the top step as if they belonged nowhere else. Keith had to pull in a breath before he could hit the door with his shoulder to get out of the pickup. Ike would never understand, but that was okay. They had today. And right now, to Keith, that’s all that mattered.

  “Who’s ready to go riding?” he asked as his heart soared ahead of him up the stairs.

  “Me!” Peter jumped from the step into Keith’s arms. He was happier than Keith had ever seen him.

  “Well, what’re we waiting for?”

  They got the kids into the pickup. Maggie crawled in the front and locked her seat belt. “I don’t think we’re going to get to do the water thing.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “I don’t think Izzy’s feeling all that great.”

  Keith looked back into the seat behind Maggie. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. She’s just not herself this morning.” The concern was evident in Maggie’s demeanor.

  “You think she needs a doctor?”

  “No. Not yet anyway, but I also don’t think she needs to be inviting a cold either.”

  He had yet to put the pickup in drive. “You still want to go?”

  She smiled at him. “I think the sunshine will do her some good.” Her gaze fell to her jeans. “Besides, who knows when we’ll get to do this again.”

  The melancholy of what happened tomorrow hung over her, and with everything in him, Keith wanted to make it evaporate. “Then we’ll have a great day today and let Jesus take care of everything else.”

  Surprise jumped to her face, but when she looked at him, he smiled. After a couple seconds she nodded.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful.” They were the only words Maggie could think to say when the horses approached the waterfall. The shelf of rock high above dropped the water over its edge like a hand dropping pearls. In the bright sunlight the water glinted and glimmered like a thousand tiny diamonds.

  Her gaze stayed on the falls as she got off and pulled Isabella down too. “Oh, baby girl. Look at that. Look how pretty.”

  “P’itty,” Isabella said, and happiness burst through Maggie. She nosed her face into the soft blonde curls.

  “You are the cutest thing ever. You know that?”

  “Come on, you two,” Keith said, tilting his head and smiling at them as he stood there, the picnic basket in one hand and Peter’s hand in the other. “You’re wasting daylight.”

  Through the calf-high flowers, Maggie stepped over to him and followed him right up to the second shelf of rock which stood between the fall above and the pool of water below. Carefully she sat down. “This is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “One of the hidden treasures of the place,” Keith said. “The drive up is murder on vehicles, so most people don’t bother to come out here.”

  “But the horses didn’t have much trouble,” she said with concern.

  “No. Luckily they’re open access to out here.” Kneeling, he started laying out the picnic—sandwiches, potato chips, and little silver bags of juice.

  Maggie wondered if he would die of starvation before they got back. She’d seen him eat, and this didn’t look like nearly enough. “You come out here a lot?”

  “Not much anymore. I used come out here a lot.”

  She helped him and then set Isabella on her lap and tore her a piece of sandwich off. “What happened to that?”

  He shrugged. “I got busy. Things to do. People to see. Places to go. You know how it is.”

  “So, they keep you pretty busy, huh?” She took a half sandwich for herself.

  “Always something. They’ll be taking Q-Main to Del Mar in a couple of weeks, and we’re trying to get Transistor and Dragnet ready too.”

  Maggie laughed. “Where do you come up with these names? They sound like some kind of sci-fi aliens or something.”

  K
eith smiled. “Some come with their own names if we buy them somewhere else. Some we come up with on our own if we’ve bred them in-house.”

  “In-house?”

  “From our own stock. You breed them so the mare’s qualities compliment the stud’s and hopefully you get a racehorse that’s fast as lightning and strong as an oak.”

  He was feeding Peter. She was feeding Isabella.

  “That’s not always easy I take it?” she asked, fascinated by the topic and by his apparent knowledge on the subject.

  “No. It’s not that easy. Sometimes instead of the best of both worlds, you get the worse of both worlds. Then you’ve got a nag that has the manners of a spoiled brat.”

  She laughed. “You’ve had a few of those I take it.”

  He scratched the bottom of his chin. “More than our share, but we’re learning.”

  “We’re?”

  “Me and Ike, the trainer.”

  She lifted her chin in recognition of the name. Ike, the fifty-something guy who although way out of her age-bracket was still the gentleman every girl dreams about snagging. “You guys get a long pretty well, huh?”

  “He’s like a second father to me.” Keith’s gaze faded from her out onto the falling water as he chewed his sandwich. “I loved horses, couldn’t get enough of them, and Ike took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. He still does.”

  “You’ve been here awhile then—at the Ayer’s estate?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, awhile.” His face slid through the memories. “I graduated from A&M when I was 24. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “And how long is ‘ever since’?”

  His gaze came back to her. “Five years.”

  She nodded, doing the math in her head. “And you like it here?”

  This smile was more wistful than the others. “Yeah. I love it here.”

  The day passed like none had ever past before for Keith. When the sun got hot, they found a cool shade near the falls and let the kids take a nap. Lying on the ground, Isabella next to her and Peter’s hand in hers, Maggie looked like she belonged nowhere else. She never complained even when he knew she must be uncomfortable having been in the same position too long. Every move she made, every effort, every word came with the question of what was best for the kids clearly in mind.