Ruth Herne - A Family to Cherish

He drove off, leaving her to contemplate her current predicament. Was she stupid to have invested in this old place? Or was she savvy to have recognized the amazing potential?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Sage words. Sound advice she wished she’d embodied a few years ago before losing her heart to a man who led two lives, a man like her trouble-making illicit father. If she’d heeded her mother’s wisdom back then, she’d have averted a lot of unnecessary drama.

A stupid mistake, one she would never repeat and would rather forget. She hoped coming home to Allegany County allowed just that.

* * *

Some days Cam hated that the cemetery stood half a mile east of their home. Others, like today, he welcomed the proximity. Once the girls awoke, his hours would race from one task to another, a typical Saturday in the life of a single parent. And then he’d play catch-up on Sunday, taking care of menial tasks left undone during the busy week before starting all over again Monday morning. But he refused to dwell on the negatives. His beautiful girls made the time, the work and the sacrifice worthwhile.

Cam would have said the chill morning fog painted the trek from the gravel-stone path to the gray stone marker in monochromes, if he was prone to drama.

He wasn’t.

But the sigh in his heart softened his jaw as the etched words became more legible with each step.

Kristine DeRose Calhoun

Beloved wife, mother and daughter

The stark reality of the carved letters sucker-punched him every time. The all-consuming ache he’d felt those first weeks and months had dulled to an old sore, but he couldn’t come to the graveyard to pay respects without remembering Kristy there, on their old couch, gone forever.

Irreparable harm. That’s what he’d done. Not like he’d gone to bed expecting her to die, but he’d gone to bed cranky and bad-tempered, as if her time, her work with the girls, her tasks were less important than his. Sometimes that hurt more than her death, that he’d minimized her worth in sharp words that last night.

He laid the single red rose on the grave, a tribute to an old promise, when Kristy had scoffed at the idea of money wasted on twelve flowers, destined to be tossed away within days. “One flower,” she’d told him, smiling, trailing her hand along his scruffy cheek. “Just one, now and again. To show me you care.”

He had cared. Did care. As he stared at the single flush of color against dull grays of the early-spring graveyard, he wished he had a chance, one more chance to say he was sorry.

So sorry.

But he’d blown that, too, so he leaned down, laid his hand against the cold, smooth stone, and prayed the prayer that remained unanswered, a prayer for forgiveness.

The hard, flat surface yielded nothing, but he was used to that. He straightened and tipped the visor of his faded baseball cap, but didn’t wink like he used to when she was alive.

Because she wasn’t.

* * *

“Meredith!”

Meredith turned from the display of nineteenth-century-styled tinware and laughed as Rachel Calhoun raced around two tables of carved wooden bowls to tackle into her on Saturday morning. “Hey, Rach. How’s it going?”

“Rachel. Walk,” Cam said.

“Sorry, Dad. Meredith’s here!”

“I see that.”

Cam’s tone said she ranked pretty much last on the list of people he hoped to run into this cold, rainy Saturday, but she’d figured that out the other day. Meredith looked around, searching, then raised a brow of question to the little girl wrapped around her legs. “Where’s Sophie?”

“Indoor soccer practice,” Rachel explained. “I already had mine.”

“Which explains the cool athletic look you’re sporting,” Meredith noted. Rachel’s face brightened and she turned this way and that, peering over her shoulder in an unsuccessful attempt to see the number on her jersey. “I’m number seven, see?”

“It’s a great number.”

“Sophie’s number seven, too.”

“A little odd, but still wonderful,” Meredith said.

“It was my Mommy’s number in high school,” Rachel continued. “We asked the coaches if we could both use it ’cause we’re on different teams.”

“A marvelous family tradition.” Meredith stooped low and met the little girl’s frank gaze. “Your mommy must be very proud to have two beautiful athletic daughters following in her footsteps.”

“She’s dead.”

Silence yawned. Meredith swallowed hard, saw the stark honesty in the little girl’s expression, and looked up to Cam for confirmation. The look of loss in his light eyes offered affirmation. Meredith gave Rachel a quick hug. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know that.”

Rachel mused, then nodded. “You’re new. And she died when I was really small. Daddy remembers. So does Sophie. And I kind of do. A little.”

Meredith looked into this miniature version of Cam’s blue eyes and read the wistfulness there, a pensiveness that suggested she didn’t really remember but longed to.

Meredith’s heart opened wide, along with her arms. She hugged Rachel, then rocked back on her heels. “So. Are you good?” she asked, nodding at the light blue soccer uniform.

Rachel beamed. “Yes. Very.”

“I’m not a bit surprised.” Meredith laughed and stood, then grimaced as her knees unlocked.

“Are you all right?”

Cam’s voice actually sounded concerned, but that was because Cam Calhoun was one of the world’s nicest guys. “Fine. My knees do not like that position, though, and they remind me that I’m not twenty anymore. Or seven.” She smiled down at the little girl, then redirected her attention to Cam. “I assume since I haven’t heard from you that you’re going to pass on my project?”

“No.” He frowned slightly, as though her assumption surprised him, but then why hadn’t he called? Gotten back to her? It had been…

“It’s only been two days,” he reminded her. “And I need to get a better look at the upstairs measurements to do a full write-up, but as long as you’re not in a huge hurry for the work to be complete—”

Meredith didn’t clamp her guilty look in time.

Cam sighed and maintained eye contact using that assessing expression he seemed to have perfected. Patient with a hint of long-suffering that said more than words ever could. “What time frame were you expecting, Meredith?”

She flinched and admitted, “Six weeks.”

“Twelve,” he countered in a flat voice. “And that’s pushing it. It’s March. We’d be looking at a July finishing date.”

“You’re serious?”

“Always.”

She smiled, his one-word answer reminding her that he was generally serious. And sincere. And heart-wrenching handsome, with or without his glasses on. And a widower.

She hadn’t counted on that last fact. And while it shouldn’t make a difference, she’d taken stoic comfort in his married state these past two days when old memories ran like creek water on a summer’s day. But now twelve weeks of working together to get Stillwaters into shape?

“What will take so long?” His look of impatience made her rephrase the sentence. “I’m sorry, that sounded rude. I meant what aspects of the job push it to twelve weeks? The new plumbing? Electric upgrades?”

“My job.”

She frowned, not understanding.

Cam tipped his head. A tiny wrinkle between his brows begged to be smoothed away.

Meredith ignored the plea.

“I’m a teacher.”

Well, that explained those practiced classroom looks. The steady gaze, the heightened expectations. “A teacher? Really?”

“Is it that surprising, Mere? It’s been fourteen years.”

Oh, she knew that. She’d spent those fourteen years working, training, finessing and climbing her way up the ladder of spa success only to crash when the spa owner’s daughter decided her four-year business degree from a third-tier school bested fourteen years of hard-earned experience. Jude Anne Geisler played the trump card well, offering to let the world know that Meredith had been running around with Sylvia Sinclair Bellwater’s husband.