A Mother's Strength

by Allie Pleiter

  Sawyer had to admit Walker’s bit-of-a-renegade appearance and his cutting wit didn’t exactly line up with the kind of carnival barker who would run a Carousel of Happiness. Lots of people in Wander Canyon weren’t quite what they seemed on first pass.

  Then again, that could cut both ways. After all, he was more than he seemed, wasn’t he? There had been a lot of television footage of the squad car crash and the funeral of that mom and her boys. There was no escaping the inevitable: someone would connect the dots any day now, and he’d have to move on.

  Trouble was, he was growing to like it here. He’d never planned on that happening. But he’d never planned anything that Molly Kane thrust into his life.

  “You gave me the idea. It’s just a paint job, and mostly of Molly’s design at that.”

  “Anyone give you grief that it’s a Mountain Vista golf cart?”

  Sawyer had, in fact, been expecting someone to call him on that. Especially if Zack won some sort of prize. But it hadn’t happened...yet. “Not so far.”

  “Well, steer clear of Norma Binton and maybe you’ll get away clean.” Wyatt pointed to a sour-looking old woman standing on the other side of the street. “Town grump. And the town gossip, which is a bad combination.”

  What would Norma Binton do if she got wind of Sawyer’s role in that tragic accident? She’d be like all the others, not caring that the high-speed chase had been caused by a gang member. Giving no thought to how hard Sawyer had tried to avoid the crash, to how those final moments in his squad car played in his head all the time. People like Norma didn’t care that his mind constructed dozens of tiny split-second decisions he could have made differently. The regrets that hounded him. If he’d just angled the car a hair to the left. If his reaction time had been half a second faster. If he’d called it into dispatch instead. If, if, if—he spent his days running ahead of a constant avalanche of ifs.

  Sawyer made a mental note to avoid Norma Binton at all costs.

  “Hey, look, they’re starting.” Wyatt pointed to a stout-looking man in a red top hat at the front of the line of carts. “That’s Paul Redding. He was the perfect choice for grand marshal.”

  “Like the store?” Redding’s General Store was just across the street. It was a gifty kind of shop—throw pillows and mason jars in the windows and not the sort of thing he ever ventured into. Molly, however, talked about it often.

  “Paul ran it before his daughter Toni took it over. It’s sort of a Wander Canyon thing to head over there and pick out a little treat or toy or whatever after riding the carousel, so the connection is perfect.” Without his permission, Sawyer’s mind crafted the image of him walking Zack over there after a carousel ride. With Zack’s small hand in one of his and maybe even Molly’s hand in... Stop that, he told his imagination. That’s not for you.

  “What about those people?” Sawyer broke his thoughts by pointing to the handful of people walking behind Paul. Each had a bright red ribbon sash across their chest. “Who are they?”

  “The original carousel committee—or what’s left of it. They helped build the thing way back when one guy had the idea to create the carousel. He’d seen too much tragedy in the war and decided to make a big dose of happiness. He passed on a few years back, but I like to think he left a pretty amazing legacy.”

  “I’ll say.” Sawyer had been so focused on disappearing, the thought of leaving any kind of happy legacy behind seemed downright impossible. Except for maybe today. Today he felt like he’d put just a little bit of good into the world. Into Zack and Molly’s world, if nothing else.

  The trill of a whistle sailed across the air, and Paul Redding positively beamed as he hoisted some sort of crazy baton someone had made for him. As he started off down Main Street, the crowd erupted in a cheer. Sawyer felt himself cheering right alongside Walker and everyone else. A thin layer of the hard shell he’d built up around himself seemed to peel off despite every effort to hold it in place.

  Walker stayed beside Sawyer for the parade, giving his own commentary on the carts as they went past. “Not bad, brother!” Wyatt called out as the man Sawyer recognized as Chaz Walker and his wife, Yvonne, pushed their little boy, Henry, in a wagon done up as a goldfish. Yvonne was blowing bubbles for a special effect. Chaz looked rather embarrassed to be parading his son in the event, but Yvonne was having a ball and Henry seemed to be having fun.

  Wyatt snapped a photo of the young family. “I can whip this photo out anytime Chaz gets too serious. Which is a lot.”

  “This one was a no-brainer,” Wyatt said as he pointed to a boy riding a cleverly designed turtle. “You had to figure Jake would rig up some kind of turtle for Cole.” Based on the pumping of the young boy’s body, Sawyer suspected a pedal-powered toy car was under the wide green kiddie pool that had been transformed into a turtle shell. He wore what looked to be a bicycle helmet painted green with half-white circles—baseballs?—painted to look like turtle eyes. It was a pretty impressive effort.

  “I think I met his dad in the hardware store,” Sawyer said.

  “You’ll get to know everyone in town eventually,” Wyatt replied. “That’s the beauty—and the pain—of Wander. No place to hide in this town.”

  Sawyer forced out a false laugh as the comment raced icily down his back. Wasn’t that exactly why he was here? Had he made the wrong choice in coming out here? Should he have gone to some other big city rather than flee out to the mountains?

  The thought warred with Molly’s constant proclamations of him as some kind of answer to prayer, as if he was supposed to be exactly here. As if God had led him here. That couldn’t be. He just didn’t see himself as being worthy of that kind of attention from the Almighty.

  “And there’s the cart of the hour,” Wyatt said as Molly and Zack drove slowly by. Cheers rose up as Zack waved. You could have lit the entire town up for weeks on the wattage of Molly’s smile. Even from this distance, her eyes beamed like bright blue stars. When Zack’s eyes found Sawyer, the joy in them shot through Sawyer like the jolt of a thousand coffees.

  “Suppose so,” Sawyer said, his throat unexpectedly thick. Looking at those two, at the rickety old golf cart that had now become a—yes, he’d admit it—pretty impressive hippopotamus, it wasn’t that hard to think he’d done some good here. Maybe not God-ordained, answer-to-prayer good, but a happy accident. A small positive to push back against all the regret and sorrow of the past year. “Turned out okay.”

  “More than okay. I mean, the cart’s awesome, but I gotta say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Zack Kane that happy. He always strikes me as such a serious kid. Somebody that young shouldn’t be such a bundle of worries, you know?”

  Wyatt meant no harm in the comment, but in the moment Sawyer understood a little of how Molly described the effect he’d had on Zack. People seemed to see Zack in terms of what he ought to be, or what he shouldn’t be. Sawyer liked him for who he was. Liked him a lot for who he was.

  Sawyer liked his mother—very much, too much—a lot, as well.

  He knew Molly had been very clear about the limits of their relationship—if you could even call it that. Still, none of those logical warnings changed the constant pull he’d felt strengthening toward her all week. She was vibrant and beautiful as she drove the golf cart down the street at this moment, but she was always vibrant and beautiful. Even tired and worried, she was beautiful.

  Life just radiated out of her, while he could only feel life seeping out of him. Draining out of him. Just being around her stemmed the tide of all the dark stuff. He’d spent so much delightful time around her getting this cart ready that next week terrified him.

  Next week he’d have no real excuse to spend so much time around her. He was coming to need that time, to crave it. Would all the darkness swirl back up around him without Molly to hold it back? They were in a perfect bubble—enough time to enjoy her company and marvel at her impossibly buo
yant spirit, but not enough time for her to figure out who he was and what he’d done.

  That was the thing about bubbles. They eventually burst.

  * * *

  To anyone else, Molly suspected this was just a simple, small-town festival. A bunch of people doing something creative and crazy to celebrate the pride Wander Canyon had in its carousel. And the carousel was worth celebrating. It was charming and whimsical and a little offbeat...just like Wander Canyon.

  To Molly, today was a gigantic victory. A foothold, a source of hope, an accomplishment and a golden memory all wrapped up in one goofy gray hippo cart.

  She steered the lumbering little cart slowly down Main Street with all the grandeur of a New York City ticker-tape parade. She waved to friends and neighbors as if she’d been crowned Queen of Everything. She watched Zack smile and wave as if his introverted self had somehow fallen away with all that sanding.

  For a shining half an hour, Molly watched her son triumph. What a gift that was. What a blessing, Lord. Thank You.

  Sure, there were a few sideways glances at the use of a golf cart. No one in Wander Canyon owned one, so she could almost watch a few bystanders figure out that it must have come from Mountain Vista. Norma Binton scowled, but then again, Norma Binton scowled at everything. Some defiant part of her was glad to have played a role in redeeming the resort for the town. Not everything was ever one hundred percent bad. She’d held fast to her belief that there was a sliver of good in even the worst of people, that rainbows always hid inside storms if you kept looking long enough.

  This hippo may be an ordinary gray, but he was every color of the rainbow in Molly’s eyes.

  And in someone else’s eyes.

  She scanned the length of the sidewalk until she saw Sawyer. He stood next to Wyatt Walker, then stopped talking with Wyatt to wave with uncharacteristic enthusiasm when he caught sight of Zack. Her whole body registered the moment her gaze locked with his. A powerful zing of gratitude, connection...and yes, affection surged through her.

  She was coming to care for him. Quite a bit, despite the mountain of questions he raised in her. His connection with Zack meant the world to her, but Molly was running out of ways to tamp down the connection she herself felt to Sawyer. He was loyal. He knew how to care, but was trying hard not to. He was wounded, although she didn’t yet know how or when.

  “Broken people can recognize broken people,” Mom had said. That was back in the final days of her mother’s own battle with breast cancer, as everyone was wrapping their sore spirits around the understanding that this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. “How do I keep going?” she’d wailed at her mother’s bedside. Losing Mom felt as if it would break her life in ways that couldn’t be repaired.

  Through her own damage—the failed marriage and the cancer—Molly had come to realize the truth of her mother’s statement. Brokenness was a gift of sorts. It gave a rare and particular empathy you couldn’t get any other way. A sense for the brokenness in others. Molly didn’t know it then, but losing Mom at nineteen had given her the empathy it took to raise a boy like Zack.

  It gave her the empathy to see so much in Sawyer’s eyes. To feel such a powerful pull by what she saw there.

  “Mom... Mom!” Zack was poking her arm even as they passed Sawyer and turned the corner to the parking lot in front of The Depot and the carousel, where all the carts were lining up at the end of the parade.

  “What?” Molly was embarrassed she’d let her thoughts stray so much while at the wheel of a vehicle. A slow golf cart, but a vehicle nonetheless.

  “Can you take my picture behind the wheel when we’re parked? Can I pretend like I’m driving it?”

  Not while the cart was moving, of course, but parked? What was the harm in a shot of him behind the wheel? It was a day worth remembering. She’d find a special frame and put the photo up on his bureau to remind him how new things could turn out wonderful. “Sure. But only after we’re parked.”

  Molly carefully backed the cart into its assigned spot, face out so that the judges could award prizes later today. Zack slid gleefully behind the wheel, eyes wide and smile even wider. She snapped a few shots of him as he pretended to drive.

  “Let’s get a video, too,” Molly suggested. She tapped the icon to switch her phone to the necessary mode.

  The sound of the golf cart’s horn—one that Sawyer had somehow rigged to make an old-fashioned owuuuga noise because Zack decided that was how a hippo horn would sound—echoed across the parking lot.

  It was a split second before Molly realized the horn only worked if the electric golf cart was turned on. Then it happened. The cart lurched backward, bumping hard up against the curb of the sidewalk.

  And bumping up just as hard against Samantha Laken, the church pianist. The blow rocked Zack from the driver’s seat and sent Samantha careening to the ground.

  Zack froze in utter panic. Cries of alarm went up all around the parking lot. Molly launched herself across the front of the cart to grab the little ignition key—the key she should have taken with her when she left the cart. Just as Zack began to cry and Molly clutched the key in her hand, Samantha moaned, “My arm! I think I broke my arm!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Calmed down yet?” Sawyer asked, looking as drained as Molly felt. It was nearly nine, and she’d spent the last thirty minutes trying to get Zack anywhere close to being able to sleep.

  Molly collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, where they’d tried to get Zack to eat something. “He finally nodded off about ten minutes ago.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “He kept asking me if everyone would hate him for breaking Samantha’s arm.”

  “He didn’t break Samantha’s arm,” Sawyer defended. He’d been touchingly adamant in his defense of Zack’s role in the accident. He’d also not left their side since it happened, even taking off from work tonight. “He didn’t,” he repeated.

  “It’s gonna be a long haul to get him to believe that.” Molly couldn’t decide which pressed down on her worse: the exhaustion or the disappointment. Even the second-place ribbon was lost on Zack as he wallowed in guilt and worry over what had happened.

  “It isn’t his fault. It was an accident.” Sawyer looked as if he’d square off against anyone who dared to say otherwise. His loyalty spoke deeply to the frayed-thin corners of her spirit.

  “Why didn’t I take the keys out of the cart before I let him behind the wheel? What was I thinking?” Molly’s heart tore at the thought that her own carelessness had stolen Zack’s glorious day right out from underneath him.

  “Don’t do that.” Sawyer started to reach out his hand to hers, then pulled it back. She was grateful he hadn’t touched her. She would have melted into him if he had—she was fighting the need to do so even now—and that would just make everything worse. “This will settle down soon enough,” he said. His eyes told her he wasn’t any more sure that was true than she was. But she knew how hard it was for him to be optimistic, and it touched her so that he was trying for her. “A broken arm isn’t minor, but it’s not a major injury, either.”

  “It is if you’re the church piano player,” Molly moaned. She certainly had no optimism left after today. “I’ve hurt a friend and the entire choir in one thoughtless moment. And ruined everything for Zack.” She swiped at the tears trailing down her cheek, feeling foolish and unworthy and beyond sad.

  “You didn’t mean to do it. Accidents aren’t the same thing as setting out to hurt someone.” He paused for a moment, a faraway look in his eyes before he added, “No one remembers that.”

  Molly’s attention snagged on the telling comment. It was the first time he’d ever come close to hinting at whatever drove him to Wander Canyon. “You know...” She kept her tone casual and gentle. “People come to Wander Canyon because they like the idea of a friendly small town.”

  Sawyer sat back in his chair wi
th a quizzical look. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Molly leaned in just a little bit. “Because from the moment I met you, I’ve gotten the sense you ran here to hide. From something. Or someone.” She took a minute to gather her courage before asking, “Was it an accident of some kind? I mean, what you just said...”

  The silence hung thick between them as Molly watched him decide how much to say. Up until today, she would have said she was skilled at keeping up a positive front. And most days, she did. But Sawyer? He was determined to hold up a barricade ten feet thick. Complete with a moat. And alligators.

  “Depends on who you ask,” he finally admitted. His expression was one of someone—there wasn’t another word for it—captured. Cornered. The way Zack looked when he got in one of his moods and was trying to hide from her. A mix of mortification at being found and resignation that he couldn’t hide forever.

  “What happened?” It was hard to believe she’d never asked him before. But she’d never felt as close to Sawyer as she did right now.

  Part of him wanted to tell her. She could see it, clear as day. But it would mean crossing that big moat and tearing down part of that hulking barricade. Molly found herself wishing he would find the strength to cross it. And dreading it at the same time. It must be something terrible. Was she ready to learn something terrible about Sawyer? Would that ruin everything?

  Or simply save her from ruining everything?

  There was a moment where she thought he was going to tell her. He shifted his weight, and while he kept glancing away, his gaze would always return to her.

  Longing. That was what she saw in his eyes. He longed to cross the gap he’d put between himself and the world. Between himself and her. The space between them hummed with the possibility, with the wanting to and the last remnants of resistance. Molly held her breath.

  And then Sawyer closed himself off again. He straightened in his chair, even drawing his arms close to his chest. “That’s a conversation for some other day.”