took Colt by surprise. Everyone has doubts from time to time. God can handle it. God can’t always undo the reality of life on this planet, but He can give us faith to get through. What we have to do is rely on Him, even when doubts arise.
Colt had plenty of doubts. He closed his eyes, remembering how it felt to drive up on Gavin’s patrol car that night, and to find his friend, a county officer, on the highway, bleeding—gasping for his last breath.
Powerless to help, Colt had cried out to God. He remembered that moment, kneeling on the highway, promising his friend things—promising to pray, promising to take care of a man’s wife.
He had made bargains that night, too. As if he could make deals with God.
A hand rested on his arm. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Lexi sat next to him, real, breathing and no longer a part of his life. Not really.
“You okay?”
“What?” He looked around. The sermon was over, people were standing up.
“I asked if you’re okay. I know this isn’t easy.”
“But I’m here.”
“You’re here.” She looked far too hopeful.
“I’m here because I promised. And because I have to cook.”
“Poor Colt, always being held hostage by that sense of commitment you prize.”
“Sarcasm isn’t you, Lexi.” He stood and she followed him toward the back door. He had parked his car back there and he had seen the grills already set up and ready to go.
“Maybe it’s the new me.” Relentless, Lexi kept up with him.
“I don’t think so.” He turned, smiling because she looked pretty in the deep blue dress and high heels. She was thin and tanned, and her hair hung like silk past her shoulders.
“Any leads on the identity of the little girl, Kasey?” She asked the question out of the blue. But not. Of course she’d want to know about a child.
He opened the door for her, and she slid through. He followed, out into bright afternoon sunshine and dry, late-summer heat. The charcoal in the grills had been lit and a few men were already cooking burgers.
Colt opened a cooler and pulled out a box of premade hamburger patties. Lexi stood at his side, waiting for an answer.
“No, I haven’t learned anything. I put articles in papers from surrounding areas, and the national news covered it a few weeks ago.”
“I saw that. You would think someone would be claiming the precious little thing.”
“Her parents are out there somewhere. I just hope they’re…” He couldn’t say it. Lexi nodded; she understood. They all hoped and prayed that the child’s parents were alive.
But if they were alive, what did that say about them? A living, breathing, caring parent would have claimed her. Right?
Or grandparents.
“You’ll find her family.” Lexi broke apart a few frozen burgers. He placed them on the grill as she handed them over.
“I don’t know, Lexi. I feel like I haven’t done enough.”
“You always feel that way, Colt. You’ve done everything, and you’re still beating yourself up, thinking the whole world needs you to take care of it.” She shot him a dark blue look of accusation in eyes that shimmered and then didn’t.
She was a lot stronger than he’d ever given her credit for.
When they first met, back in college, he’d treated her like a china doll that needed to be taken care of. Now she took care of thousand-pound horses and wrestled with sick cows. Today she looked like a princess. Tomorrow he’d probably see her in that truck of hers, wearing a stained T-shirt, faded jeans and work boots.
He smiled and he hadn’t meant to.
Lexi smiled back. She backed a step away, a retreat, still smiling. She looked like someone who had just won a battle. He didn’t know what he’d lost or what ground she’d gained. But somehow it mattered.
“I’m going to help with the children. They’re blowing bubbles.” Lexi touched his arm, her hand sliding down to his, pausing there for a minute and then breaking contact.
“Okay.” He could have said more, but he would have stammered. Not the way for a man to prove he was in control of a situation.
He watched her walk away, pulling her hair back with a clip as she went. He remembered those clips and how he used to like to pull them loose as she leaned over her desk.
At one time he would have leaned over her and kissed her neck, and she would have smiled, but pretended to ignore him.
“Colt, your grill’s on fire.”
Startled back to the moment he reached for the spray bottle of water and squirted the flaming coals. A quick glance over his shoulder and he saw Lexi turn to smile at him.
Lexi smiled as she watched Colt with the spray bottle, putting out the fire that had erupted in the grill. She liked seeing him not in control of a situation. He got a little scattered when it happened, because it happened so rarely. When he looked back at her, she nodded and turned away. Happy, because she had been the one to scramble his self-control.
She skipped away to the area where children of all ages were playing with all different types of bubble-blowing contraptions. In the open lawn area of the church others were flying kites and throwing Frisbees.
“Why the frown when you were smiling a few minutes ago?”
Jill. Lexi glanced at her friend who had left the small group she’d been talking to and was now at Lexi’s side.
“I didn’t mean to frown.” Lexi looked around the lawn at the people, and past to the buildings that were still damaged. “If you could focus on just this one spot, on the people having fun here, you could fool yourself into believing the tornado never happened.”
“I know. Sometimes I look out my window and it’s like I live somewhere else, somewhere other than the town I grew up in.” Jill smiled at a little girl who ran up to them with an unopened bottle of bubbles. “Do you need for me to open it?”
The child nodded, and Jill opened the bubbles and handed them back. The little girl scooted off, and Lexi didn’t know where else to go with the conversation, not when her mind kept turning back to the six hours in her basement with Colt holding her close.
Six hours that had given her hope that maybe, just maybe, she and Colt could work out their problems and rebuild their marriage.
As the workers dug them out that night, Colt had stayed by her side. He had held her close, whispering reassurances. He had stayed with her until they loaded her into the back of the ambulance. Alone, it had been hard to remain optimistic, believing his whispered promise.
She could still close her eyes and see his face in the window of the ambulance and hear the hand that had hit the door, giving them the okay to pull away. And when she woke up in the Manhattan hospital, it had been her mother’s face, not Colt’s.
Nothing had changed in that basement.
Let it go, she told herself. Today was a day of rebuilding, not reliving the past. Moving forward, that was the sermon’s title. Moving forward, knowing God is still in control and still able to answer prayers.
She had to let it go, because she still wanted more than Colt could give her. She wanted to be somewhere on the top of his list of priorities, not the person that came after everyone else.
She didn’t want to be the person waiting, wondering if he would come home.
It was hard to put that into words. In their marriage, she had failed to explain it to him. It had come out as accusations. She knew that, now. Too late.
“Come