Her Wedding Wish (11 page)

Love. She had so much of it. How could she rightfully pine for the one love she didn’t have? She turned to her mom, who watched her with concern. “I’m fine. I can make the spaghetti sauce if you want to go check on the men. Something tells me they need a woman’s advice.”

Another thump, thump came from upstairs.

“You’re right. I’d best keep my eye on them. You’re sure that you’re all right? Being in the hospital today had to make you remember when Jonas was in there. We all remembered, honey.”

Danielle’s throat felt thick. “That is all behind us. We’re here for Katherine now. She’s going to get all the tender loving care she can stand.”

“Exactly.” Mom skirted the corner of the counter. “I’d best get up there before some disaster happens. Oh, look at Madison. She left the door open.”

“I’ll close it, Mom. Go rescue the men.” Danielle went to close the door, and sure enough, Madison screeched to a halt in the wet grass.

“Mommeeeee! Look at me!” She took off in a run, little legs churning and feet flying.

A loud thump sounded directly over her head. She heard a flurry of voices, muffled by the ceiling, and Jonas’s calm baritone, rumbling in reassurance.

Her love for Jonas crashed through her like an ocean wave. It swept away her doubts and her fears for the moment, leaving everything in her heart fresh and whole and without limits.

The drive home was not a quiet one. Danielle spent most of her time trying to quiet Madison, who’d missed her afternoon nap and felt it, poor baby. No amount of comfort would soothe away the little girl’s upset over being strapped into her car seat. Tyler was revved up, talking a mile a minute over the top of her sobs of rage. Jonas seemed exhausted, although it did not show in his driving, which he insisted on doing, as the man of the house.

Exhaustion hung heavily on her, too. She’d grocery shopped with mom, cooked lunch for the crowd and helped her mom bake three low-sodium casseroles for the rest of the week. They’d chopped fresh veggies and bagged them for snacks. They’d washed the kitchen, did every dish, made the bed in the living room and set up as many conveniences as they could for Katherine.

The only saving grace was in knowing that she was home safe and sound, feeling better, and that her sudden onset of mild preeclampsia was being medicated and monitored.

“She’s going to be all right,” Jonas reassured her as he pulled onto their street. “Jack’s protective. If he didn’t think she should have left the hospital, she wouldn’t have.”

“I believe it.” Jack was nearly as impressive as Jonas, but then Danielle had to admit she carried a huge bias. No man was better than her husband. No man. “You did so much for my family today.”

“For
our
family.” He kept his attention on the road and spoke evenly over Madison’s “Noooooo! Hate the buckle!” and Tyler’s advice to his sister not to sweat it, you gotta wear a seat belt. “I see how it was when I was hurt. They’re there for us. We’re there for them. It’s what you do for people you love.”

His words struck her.
It’s what you do for people you love.
He used to say that all the time. It was a phrase she hadn’t heard since his injury.

Did that mean he was starting to remember? To come back to himself? She was too tired to filter her emotions and tears filled her eyes. It took all her strength to blink them away.

An electronic tune rang out, hard to hear with all the noise from the backseat, and she fished her cell phone from her purse. It was a long-distance number she didn’t recognize. “Hello?”

“Danielle? It’s me.” Aubrey’s voice sounded worried. “I just talked with Mom, and I’m really unhappy with you all right now. Someone should have told me about Katherine earlier than this. William’s rearranging our flights.”

“That’s why we didn’t call you.” Danielle loved her sister for her caring heart. “We knew you would be on the next available flight home, and Katherine and the baby are going to be fine.”

“She’s not fine. They put her in the hospital.”

“As a precaution. She had a sudden rise in blood pressure, but she’s all right now.”

“She’s on bed rest. That’s not all right. I should be there to help her.”

“You should be with your husband on your honeymoon. Kath has the rest of us at her beck and call.”

“But will she—” Aubrey paused, as if what she had to say would be too painful. “Will she lose the baby?”

“Not if she takes care of herself. That’s what we’re all making sure of. It’s a minor complication, is all. At least at this point.” Danielle understood her sister’s worries. She had them, too. “Promise me you’ll finish out your stay. Call Katherine if you have to. I’m sure that’s what she will want.”

“I don’t want to trouble her—”

“She’d love to talk with you. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch Mom and Rebecca. They were still there when we left. I think Rebecca was doing all the laundry, and Mom was scrubbing bathrooms.”

“Not that Katherine’s house needed that, as it’s always spotless, but that’s Mom for you.” Aubrey sighed, love clear in her voice. “All right. I’ll call Katherine and make sure. But if we stay, then I want your word, Dani. You have to call if there’s any change. I mean it.”

“I promise.”

“Good. And I’ll call anyway just to check.”

Danielle saw Jonas glance at her as he stopped in the driveway, and she hit the garage door remote clipped to the visor in front of her. “You enjoy Fiji, and bring back lots of pictures.”

“Okay. Give Jonas and the kids my love.”

Danielle said goodbye and hung up to find Jonas still watching her. “Aubrey has a hard time being so far away from us.”

“I can understand that.” It was too dark to see much of his expression, but his baritone rumbled pleasantly. “She’s the twin that got married, right?”

“Right.”

“See? I’m getting this. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

She remembered what he’d said on their first reenacted date, standing on the bridge.
I’m disabled. That’s what they call me now and it makes you sad. You need a whole man. A strong husband.

Her dear, sweet Jonas. “Normal? We were never normal, handsome.”

“Are you saying we were abnormal?”

His joke made both of them smile.

“We were blessed. We still are blessed.” She dropped the cell phone back into her purse, looking down into the shadows, hiding her face, hiding the breadth of her love for him.

“I’m not doubting that, Danielle. I can see how God has blessed me. But you—” He took a breath, as if gathering up his courage and the right words. “I’m fighting for you. You’re going to get back the man you married.”

Her chin came up and she forgot to protect her heart. “Oh, Jonas, trust me. I love you just the way you are.”
Even if you do not love me.
She bit back those words, keeping them inside, already hearing the silence settle between them.

Without a word, Jonas eased the minivan into the garage, and the moment between them had been shattered. She’d spoken her feelings too soon, shocking him, probably making him feel pressure to feel what he did not.

He shut off the engine, and to the sound of Tyler tumbling out of his car seat and Madison’s sniffles, he turned to her. “I don’t remember how much I loved you, Dani, but I want to.”

He pressed a kiss to her cheek, chaste and promising, her answered prayer.

D
anielle faced another day, as she always did, both remembering those quiet mornings before the kids were born when she’d had time for prayer, devotional reading and reflection over her morning cup of coffee—and being grateful for the constant noise, motion and refereeing.

“Madison, don’t you climb up on the dresser.” Danielle blew the shank of hair out of her eyes and opened the closet door. “You are troubles, bubbles.”

“But I’m a hummingbird, Mommy. Hayden said I was fast just like one.” She stuck out her arms and hummed.

And didn’t move a muscle from the opened dresser drawer, second from the bottom, where she had one foot in, one foot out. How long that was going to hold, was anyone’s guess.

“Hummingbirds don’t climb on dressers.” Danielle knowing full well what her daughter was up to, snagged her around the waist and snuggled her close. “I think you need to be punished.”

“No, Mommy! No!” Madison giggled with anticipation.

“Sorry, but you’re in big trouble now.” Laughing, too, she kissed her baby’s plump cheek with a smacking kiss.

“No-ooo!” Madison screeched in delight.

“One kiss.” Danielle smooched the other cheek. “Two kisses.”

“Mom-meeeee!” Madison giggled uncontrollably.

“Three kisses.” The tip of the nose. The middle of her forehead. “Four kisses, and you know what that means.”

“No tummy tickle!” The little girl squealed with glee, wiggling.

Danielle gave only the lightest of tickles, warm with happiness to the tips of her toes as her daughter wiggled and laughed.

“All right, what’s going on in here?” Jonas filled the doorway, dressed in his running shoes and sweats, ready for his early-morning physical therapy appointment.

“Daddy! Mommy’s kissin’ me.”

“Is that right? I’m afraid I can’t let this go on.” He came into the room, moving quickly with his cane, grinning ear to ear. “Not without me.”

“No! Daddy! No-ooo—” Madison’s protest dissolved into more happy squeals as Jonas gave her a loud smacking kiss on her cheek.

Why did he have to be so wonderful? Danielle felt her heart take a long slow glide, falling again, for this man. Love she could not stop. Love that had no beginning or end. Love that made her see Jonas from the past, taking precious time with his daughter. Love that made her see this new Jonas, enamored with their little girl.

Love wasn’t a sum of every past moment of shared history. She hadn’t realized that before, because she had always thought that it was their devotion to one another, day by day, that built upon itself to make their marriage a strong one.

But as Madison wrapped her arms around her father and laughed when he blew a raspberry against her throat, making her howl and squirm with delight, Danielle knew he didn’t remember the morning Madison came into the world, all pink and fresh and new. He didn’t remember how he’d been the one who could make her stop crying. That he was the one she called for when she was scared.

But being unable to remember hadn’t diminished his love for his child.

“Hey!” Tyler tromped into the room and wrapped his arms around his dad’s knees. “Do you know what? Today’s the perfect day for getting
something.
”

A dog. Danielle ruffled her fingers through Tyler’s hair and gave Jonas a warning look. “Don’t even think it.”

His eyes glimmered at her. “I don’t know. It could be a good day for getting something.”

“Jonas—” Oh, she could see how this was. “You two are teaming up against me.”

Tyler gasped. “So, can we do it? Can we get a dog?”

“I wanna dog!” Madison added, never to be left out of a conversation.

Danielle sighed. A dog. She had her hands more than full as it was, and yet one look at Tyler’s wide, pleading eyes—oh, he knew how to work her—and then at Jonas’s quieter, more serious request, all the reasons why now wasn’t the right time faded into none at all.

“All right.” She said those fateful words, hardly getting the last one out before Tyler shouted in triumph and Jonas gave her a loud smacking kiss on the cheek, just as he’d done to Madison. It made the kids laugh, but there was something else, just beneath the surface, that lurked like shadows in Jonas’s eyes.

This was important to him and Lord help her, she’d never been able to say no to the man. The man she now loved more, impossibly more, for how hard he had fought to come back to her.

Their past no longer mattered. Love was so much more than where they had been or where they were going.

It was where they were. Together.

Danielle had never imagined the heartbreak in the eyes of the rows and rows of kennels at the local shelter. Big dogs, little dogs, in-between dogs, all with big soulful eyes. From the moment the kids stepped foot in the aisle, nearly all the dogs raced to the front of their cages, offering friendly pants to excited yips to “look at me!” barks.

Jonas’s hand settled on her shoulder. “How are we ever going to pick?”

“I don’t know. It means saying no to all but one of them.” She knew next to nothing about dogs, but she liked them well enough. Grandpop, when he’d been alive, always had a dog. There certainly seemed to be so many nice ones, like the big yellow dog pressed against the metal cage, trying to get his tongue on Madison’s head.

“Stay with me, sweetie.” She held on to her daughter’s little hand firmly. “We don’t want to startle any of the dogs.”

“They love me, Mom.” Madison pulled hard, trying to get free. “Look at the curly one!”

A white curly-haired dog panted, as if trying to make friends.

“Look at the chocolate one!”

In the kennel next door, a brown dog danced happily, trying to steal the attention.

“Mom!” A few steps ahead, Tyler stood in the middle of the aisle, contemplating all his options. “Mom! That’s the one!”

His loudness seemed an invitation for all the dogs to make more noise. And as the barks echoed and a caretaker ordered them to hush, Tyler went down on his knees in front of a center cage, with his hand out. A white nose pressed against his palm and licked happily.

“He’s polka-dotted!” Madison gave a mighty yank, and her sticky fingers slid out of Danielle’s grip and raced over to her big brother.

“Mom!” Tyler was pink with delight. “This is him. It’s Lucky!”

A long list of why this might not be the dog rolled into her head and onto the tip of her tongue, but Jonas’s grip on her shoulder tightened just a touch.

“Let me,” he said in that resolute way of his, limping over to the children and the dog who was doing his best to win everyone’s affections.

Jonas had been raised with dogs, so she trusted him to know if this was a thoroughly gentle creature. He knelt down with some difficulty and began rubbing what he could of the dog’s head through the metal barrier. “Aw, you’re just a good guy, aren’t you?”

The dog, pure white sprinkled with black dots, panted happily and licked Jonas’s nose.

“I love him.” Tyler sighed with contentment, his mind—no, his heart—made up.

“Mommy! He licked my hand.” Madison rubbed her palm against her rosebud-sprinkled T-shirt to dry it off, but she was pink with joy.

Four pairs of eyes turned to her, all powerfully pleading. No words were necessary. Not a single one. From Tyler’s heart-deep pleading to Madison’s delight to Jonas’s silent nod to her, she felt her resistance buckle. Even the dog pleaded with her silently, big friendly eyes that were filled with too much sadness.

She had enough on her plate without falling in love with a dog—thankyouverymuch, as Rebecca would say.

Thirty-five minutes later Danielle was in the minivan driving toward home with all four of them in the van—plus the dog, collapsed on the floor at Tyler’s feet, yipping, his voice rising and falling, as if he were talking excitedly.

“Boy, he’s sure glad to have me for a best friend,” Tyler commented as he petted the Dalmatian’s head.

“Mommy!” Madison shrieked, giggling. “He licked my toes. It tickles. Ahhhhh!!”

Jonas, behind the wheel, flashed her a telling glance and spoke over the yip and yap of the dog’s chatter. “At least she’s forgotten to scream about the seat belt. See, the dog is a good thing already.”

Madison squealed again, and the dog vocalized even louder.

“Yes,” Danielle said, fighting not to laugh. “I can see how things have changed. Any louder, and the cops will pull us over and ticket us for breaking city decibel ordinances. We’re louder than a truck downshifting on a steep hill.”

Jonas laughed. “There’s Mr. Paco’s Tacos. How about we pick up a celebration lunch?”

“Sure.” The ham-and-cheese sandwiches she’d planned for lunch sounded a little drab.

When they swung through the drive-through, Tyler insisted on an extra taco for Lucky—who knew what would be the consequence of that? And the dog’s tail thumped continuously from the moment he smelled the bagged food.

“Homeward,” Jonas said, as he pulled out into traffic. “Unless there is anywhere else the lady wants to go?”

“Oh, I can think of a few places,” she quipped. “Some place really quiet. Maybe Fiji. I could see Aubrey and William.”

“You’d miss the kids before the plane got off the ground.” Jonas smiled at her, impossibly handsome even with his lopsided grin.

“True. There’s no other place I’d rather be.”

“Me, either.”

He stopped for a red light and for a long moment, his gaze met hers with unashamed intensity. Sweetness filled her. It was good to be with her husband with the kids in the back—a real family again.

When she glanced over her shoulder at the little ones, they both looked like the happiest children on earth. But not as happy as the Dalmatian, who drooled all over the upholstery.

“You lucked out, you know that,” she said to the dog and couldn’t help patting his head. His short hair was warm and velvety, and he pressed ardently against her touch. It was impossible not to adore him.

“When we get home, Mom,” Tyler began, talking a mile a minute over Madison’s squealing and the dog’s vocalizing, “can I take Lucky and show him my room? It’s his room now, too, and he’s gonna sleep with me so he should see it. We’re best friends, you know. Do you think he’ll like tacos? I hope so, cuz I do. And Tater Tots. And cookies. Then after lunch, I’m gonna show him—”

And so it went all the way home.

Why was it that whatever you were seeking was always in the very last place you looked? Danielle snatched the camera out of the back of her craft closet, not even remembering how it had gotten there. When was the last time she’d used it? Oh, for Madison’s second birthday in early December. Christmas last year had been spent in Seattle, and she had forgotten to bring it. That had been a tough holiday, with her family so far away and Jonas in a wheelchair. They had only stayed with him a few hours between the kids’ exhaustion from traveling and the clinic’s visiting hours. The upside had been that the kids never had the chance to figure out their father didn’t know them.

Maybe it had been best she didn’t have any pictures from that time in their lives, she thought, overcome with pain for them all. The shouts and squeals from the backyard drifting through the open window reminded her that better times had come back to them. God was gracious, indeed.

With camera in hand, she went to check the battery—and hoped it wasn’t dead—it was very low. Great. She went back through the closet looking for the plug-in and what did she find sitting next to it on the shelf? The stacks of pictures and half-done scrapbook pages she kept meaning to finish. She brought them out onto her work desk.

The phone rang, echoing through the upstairs, and the downstairs phone jingled in unison. She went to the desk, camera and charger in hand, and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Dani?” Katherine’s voice came across the line, sounding much better. “You called me twice, and I’m finally getting back to you.”

“You’ve been on my mind and in my prayers, but first Mom called during breakfast with a report on how you were doing. Lauren called when I was finishing up the breakfast dishes and then Ava called around ten, caught me on my cell when we were on the road.”

“Glad everyone kept you informed. Then you know I’m doing better. Were you on your way to another one of Jonas’s appointments?”

“No. Guess what we got?” Danielle plugged in the camera. “Something Tyler has been begging for for a while now.”

“A dog. That must mean things are getting back to normal for you guys. You and Jonas deserve to be happy again. It wasn’t fair what happened to him. It wasn’t right.”

“No, but sometimes life is like that. No one is immune to it. And Jonas is going to be fine.” Maybe not the same, but fine. Danielle’s gaze found him automatically. He was in sight of the window, outside with the kids, throwing a tennis ball for Lucky. The kids clapped and hopped in place with excitement. Their blissful sounds drifted in like the sunlight and made her soul ache with gratitude. “I know it will be all right. God is in charge.”

“He is,” Katherine agreed. “Do you want to know some scoop?”

“Ooh, do I.” Danielle slid into a nearby chair, keeping the window in sight. Jonas was calling advice to Lucky, who wasn’t sure he wanted to bring back the ball he’d run so far to catch. “Is this family scoop, or your news?”